lation were manumitted and turned loose among us; they would be
forced to subsist almost entirely by theft, and all the county jails
and state prisons in the Union, would not contain one in a hundred of
the convicts. The fact is, such would be their depredations on the
white population, that the whites would shoot them down with as little
ceremony as they now shoot a mad dog; and their ultimate extermination
would be the inevitable consequence! I appeal to facts. It was stated
a few years ago by an able writer; that in Massachusetts the free
negroes were 1 to 74, viz., there were 74 white persons for every free
negro in the State; and yet one-sixth of all the convicts were free
negroes. That in Connecticut the free negroes were 1 to 34; and that
one-third of the convicts were free negroes. That in New York the free
negroes were 1 to 35; but that one-fourth of the convicts were free
negroes. That in New Jersey the free negroes were 1 to 13; negro
convicts one-third. That in Pennsylvania the free negroes were 1 to 34,
and that one-third of the convicts were free negroes. He moreover
stated, that one-fourth of the whole expense connected with the prison
system of the entire North was incurred by crime committed by free
negroes; and that the same was true with regard to the pauper
expenditures of the entire North. In view of these facts, we can feel
but little surprise, that Indiana and Illinois have enacted laws to
interdict the immigration of free negroes into those States.

It appears from the above named States, that in 1845, about
_one-fortieth_ of the entire population in the free States were
colored persons; and yet about _one-fourth_ of the convicts were free
negroes; but notwithstanding that the colored and the white population
are very nearly balanced in the slave States, I do not suppose that
one in a hundred of the convicts are negroes! But there is another
fact with regard to free negroes North, that is still more remarkable!
Few, comparatively, very few, are members of any branch of the
church--probably not one in twenty of the entire adult population.
But, on the contrary, in the slave States, I think it probable that at
least three-fourths of the entire adult slave population are church
members; and I presume, that near one-half of the African professors
of the Christian religion, in the slave States, are attached to the
Methodist Episcopal Church South; and strange as it may appear, it is
nevertheless true,