iction of injustice? Better, far
better, for us, had they been kept in bondage, where the
opportunity, the inducements, the necessity of vice would not
have been so great. Deplorable necessity, indeed, to one borne
down with the consciousness of the violence we have done. Yet I
am clear that, whether we consider it with reference to the
welfare of the State, or the happiness of the blacks, it were
better to have left them in chains, than to have liberated them
to receive such freedom as they enjoy, and greater freedom _we
cannot, must not_ allow them.' * * 'There is not a State in the
Union not at this moment groaning under the evil of this class
of persons, a curse and a contagion whereever they reside.' * *
'The increase of a free black population among us has been
regarded as a greater evil than the increase of
slaves.'--[African Repository, vol. iii. pp. 24, 25, 197, 203,
374.]

'Mr. Mercer adverted to the situation of his native State, and
the condition of the free black population existing there, whom
he described as a horde of miserable people--the objects of
universal suspicion; _subsisting by plunder_.'--[Idem, vol. iv.
p. 363.]

'They leave a country in which though born and reared, they are
strangers and aliens; where _severe necessity_ places them in a
class of degraded beings; where they are free without the
blessings and privileges of liberty; where in ceasing to be
slaves of one, they have become subservient to many; where,
neither freemen nor slaves, but placed in an anomalous grade
which they do not understand and others disregard; where no kind
instructer, no hope of preferment, no honorable emulation
prompts them to virtue or deters from vice; their industry
waste, not accumulation; their regular vocation, any thing or
nothing as it may happen; their greater security, sufferance;
their highest reward, forgiveness; vicious themselves and the
cause of vice in others; discontented and exciting discontent;
scorned by one class and _foolishly envied by another_; thus,
and WORSE CIRCUMSTANCED, they, cannot but choose to
move.'--[Idem, vol. v. p. 238.]

'Of all the descriptions of our population, _and of either
portion of the African race_, the free people of color are, by
far, as a class, the MOST CORRUPT, DEPRAVED, AND ABANDONED. The
law