eople of the United States, or be obtained by
loans, swelling the public debt to a size pregnant with evils
next in degree to those of slavery itself?

Happily, it is not necessary to answer this question by
remarking, that if slavery, as a national evil, is to be
abolished, and it be just that it be done at the national
expense, the amount of the expense is not a paramount
consideration. It is the peculiar fortune, or, rather, a
providential blessing of the United States, to possess a resource
commensurate to this great object, without taxes on the people,
or even an increase of the public debt.

I allude to the vacant territory, the extent of which is so vast,
and the vendible value of which is so well ascertained.

Supposing the number of slaves to be 1,500,000, and their price
to average 400 dollars, the cost of the whole would be 600
millions of dollars. These estimates are probably beyond the
fact; and from the number of slaves should be deducted; 1. Those
whom their masters would not part with. 2. Those who may be
gratuitously set free by their masters. 3. Those acquiring
freedom under emancipating regulations of the States. 4. Those
preferring slavery where they are to freedom in an African
settlement. On the other hand, it is to be noted that the expense
of removal and settlement is not included in the estimated sum;
and that an increase of the slaves will be going on during the
period required for the execution of the plan.

On the whole, the aggregate sum needed may be stated at about six
hundred millions of dollars.

This will require 200 millions of acres, at three dollars per
acre; or 300 millions at two dollars per acre; a quantity which,
though great in itself, is perhaps not a third part of the
disposable territory belonging to the United States. And to what
object so good, so great, and so glorious, could that peculiar
fund of wealth be appropriated? Whilst the sale of territory
would, on one hand, be planting one desert with a free and
civilized people, it would, on the other, be giving freedom to
another people, and filling with them another desert. And if in
any instance wrong has been done by our forefathers to people of
one colour, by dispossessing them of their soil, what better
atonement is now in our p