detail is a matter absolutely dependent upon the will of each individual
slaveholder, so that though the best cannot make the system in the
smallest particular better, the bad can make every practical detail of it
as atrocious as the principle itself; and then tell me upon what ground
you palliate a monstrous iniquity, which is the rule, because of the
accidental exceptions which go to prove it. Moreover, if, as you have
asserted, good preponderates over evil in the practice, though not in the
theory of slavery, or it would not maintain its existence, why do you
uphold to us, with so much complacency, the hope that it is surely if not
rapidly approaching its abolishment? Why is the preponderating good, which
has, as you say, proved sufficient to uphold the institution hitherto, to
become (in spite of the spread of civilisation and national progress, and
the gradual improvement of the slaves themselves) inadequate to its
perpetuation henceforward? Or why, if good really has prevailed in it, do
you rejoice that it is speedily to pass away? You say the emancipation of
the slaves is inevitable, and that through progressive culture the negro
of the Southern States daily approaches more nearly to the recovery of the
rights of which he has been robbed. But whence do you draw this happy
augury, except from the hope, which all Christian souls must cherish, that
God will not permit much longer so great a wickedness to darken the face
of the earth? Surely the increased stringency of the Southern slave-laws,
the more than ever vigilant precautions against all attempts to enlighten
or educate the negroes, the severer restrictions on manumission, the
thrusting forth out of certain States of all free persons of colour, the
atrocious Fugitive Slave Bill, one of the latest achievements of
Congress, and the piratical attempts upon Cuba, avowedly on the part of
all Southerners, abetting or justifying it because it will add
slave-territory and 600,000 slaves to their possessions;--surely these do
not seem indications of the better state of things you anticipate, except,
indeed, as the straining of the chain beyond all endurable tightness
significantly suggests the probability of its giving way.

I do not believe the planters have any disposition to put an end to
slavery, nor is it perhaps much to be wondered at that they have not. To
do so is, in the opinion of the majority of them, to run the risk of
losing their property, perhaps their li