to a free black, in my
hearing; "you don't belong to anybody!" Some States have given them
notice to quit, within a specified time, or they must be sold. Some here
insist that slavery is the only proper condition for the blacks, and
they would reduce them back to bondage. Others remonstrate at this as
cruel. Surely it is a choice of evils for them, to be free, or to be
slaves, if they remain here. There is one thought that affords a ray of
consolation,--they are better off, in either condition, than they once
were in Africa. It is unquestionable to my mind that their relation to
the whites, even in bondage, is, as the general rule, mercy to them,
while they are on the same soil with the whites. Allow it to be
theoretically wrong to be a slave,--it is, under existing circumstances,
protection and a blessing, compared with any arrangement which has yet
been proposed. I have not sufficient patience to argue with those, North
or South, who contend for slavery as a normal condition. I should be
called at the North "pro-slavery;" but the North is in a passion on this
subject. I am not, and I never can be, an advocate for this relation, in
itself, but as a present necessity.

I once heard a speaker at an anti-slavery meeting at home say, "They
tell us how elevated the blacks are, how intelligent, how pious; that
shows how fit they are for freedom, how wrong it is to hold such people
in bondage. As much as you raise the slaves in our opinion, you deepen
the guilt of the slave-holder."

This used to dwell much on my mind. I see the thing differently now. You
remember your Uncle Enoch, from Madras, who made your first Malay kite.
I remember a fable which he told you when he was flying the kite for the
first time. "A kite," he said, "high in the air, reasoned thus: If,
notwithstanding this string, I fly so high, what would I not do, if I
could break away! It gave a dash and became free, and was soon in the
woods." I do not mean to strain the comparison; but, certainly, a
_string_ has raised, and now keeps up, the colored race, here. How they
would do, if the string were cut, let wiser heads than mine decide.
They cannot have my scissors, at present.

The way to be friends of the slave, I now see, is to be the real friends
of their masters, and to pray that the influences of truth and love may
fill their hearts. Where this is the case, the slaves, as a laboring
class, are better off than any separate class of laboring people on