life in the Chincha
Islands have never been matched in Kentucky or Louisiana. I believe that
the whole roll of authenticated cruelties exercised on the negroes in
any one year would be outnumbered and outdone by the brutalities
practiced within the same time upon the apprentices in our own coast
trade, and upon seamen--white and colored--in the American
merchant-service. With all this it should be remembered that the
ordinary slave-rations far exceed, both in quantity and quality, the
Sunday meal of an English west-country laborer; and that the comforts of
all the aged and infirm, whom the master is, of course, obliged to
maintain, are infinitely superior to those enjoyed by the like inmates
of our most lenient work-houses.

I think it is a mistake to suppose that the negroes, as a race, _pine_
for freedom; though, when it is suggested to them, they may grasp at it
with eagerness, much as they would at any other novelty. Many, no doubt,
can appreciate liberty, and use it as wisely and well as any freeborn
white: gradual emancipation would be one of the grandest schemes that
could be propounded to human benevolence: it is rife with difficulty,
but surely not impracticable. The indiscriminate and abrupt manumission
of the negro would, I am convinced, turn a quaint, simple, childish
creature--prone to mirth, and not easily discontented if his indolence
be not taxed too hardly, susceptible, too, of strong affection and
fidelity to his master, as many recent events have shown--into a sullen,
slothful, insolent savage, never remembering the past, except as a sort
of vague excuse for the present indulgence of his brutal instincts,
conscious that every man's hand is against him, without the meek
patience of a pariah; but only venturing to retaliate by occasional
outbursts of ruffianism or rapine. Where a body of these men is
subjected at once to military discipline, and overawed by the presence
of white soldiers in overwhelming numbers, the same danger cannot exist;
yet I doubt gravely as to the ultimate success, in any point of view, of
those negro levies. It seems hard to say, but I do think it is better
for us--even for the sake of Christian charity--to leave that Great
Anomaly to be dealt with by God in His own time.

Were the cause stronger than it is, it would be damaged, with many
moderate thinkers, by the absurdities and violence of its moat zealous
advocates. Ward Beecher, the great Abolition apostle, fairly outdoes t