practicable, would fall short of simple justice.
We owe to that injured race, an immense debt, which the liberation of
their bodies alone would not liquidate. It has been the policy of the
slaveholder to keep the man whom he has doomed to interminable
servitude, in the lowest state of mental degradation: to withhold from
him as much as possible the means of improving the talents which
nature has given him. In short, to reduce him as near to the condition
of a machine as a rational being could be. Every inducement--every
excitement, to the exertion and development of native talent and
genius, is wanting in the slave.--Hence, to throw such a being, thus
degraded, thus brutalized, upon society, and then expect him to
exercise those rights which are the birthright of every son and
daughter of Adam, with advantage to himself, or to the community upon
which he is thrown, is to suppose that the laws established for the
government of universal nature, should in this case be changed. As
well might we expect a man to be born in the full maturity of his
mental faculties, or an infant to run before it had learned the use of
its limbs.

A plan, then, for universal emancipation, to be practicable, must be
gradual. The slave must be made to pass through a state of pupilage
and monority, to fit him for the enjoyment and exercise of rational
liberty.

"If then the extremes of emancipation, and perpetual, unlimited
slavery be dangerous," and impolitic, "the safe and advisable measure
must be between them." And this brings us again the question, How can
we get clear of the evils of slavery, with safety to the master, and
advantage to the slave? For the solution of this difficult problem,
the following outlines of a plan for a gradual, but _general_ and
_universal_ emancipation is proposed. Let the slaves be attached to
the soil,--give them an interest in the land they cultivate. Place
them in the same situation as their masters, as the peasantry of
Russia, in relation to their landlords. Let wise and salutary laws be
enacted, in the several slave holding states, for their general
government. These laws should provide for the means of extending to
the children of every slave, the benefits of school learning. The
practice of arbitrary punishment for the most trivial offences, should
be abolished.

An important step towards the accomplishment of this plan, would be,
to prohibit by law the migration, or transportation of slaves from one