the strange "purpose" of "pinching" themselves.

Whether "the black class" would, or would not migrate, I am much more
pleased to have you say what you do on this point, though it be at the
expense of your consistency, than to have you say, as you do in another
part of your speech, that abolition "would end in the extermination or
subjugation of the one race or the other."

It appears to me highly improbable, that emancipation would be followed
by the migration of the emancipated. Emancipation, which has already
added fifty per cent. to the value of estates in the British West
Indies, would immediately add as much to the value of the soil of the
South. Much more of it would be brought into use; and, notwithstanding
the undoubted truth, that the freedman performs twice as much labor as
when a slave, the South would require, instead of any diminution, a very
great increase of the number of her laborers. The laboring population of
the British West India Islands, is one-third as large as that of the
southern states; and yet, since these islands have got rid of slavery,
and have entered on their career of enterprize and industry, they find
this population, great as it is, insufficient to meet the increased
demand for labor. As you are aware, they are already inviting laborers
of this and other countries to supply the deficiency. But what is the
amount of cultivable land in those islands, compared with that in all
the southern states? It is not so extensive as the like land in your
single state.

But you may suppose, that, in the event of the emancipation of her
slaves, the South would prefer white laborers. I know not why she
should. Such are, for the most part, unaccustomed to her kinds of labor,
and they would exact, because they would need, far greater wages than
those, who had never been indulged beyond the gratification of their
simplest wants. There is another point of view, in which it is still
more improbable, that the black laborers of the South would be displaced
by immigrations of white laborers. The proverbial attachment of the
slave to his "bornin-ground," (the place of his nativity,) would greatly
contribute to his contentment with low wages, at the hands of his old
master. As an evidence of the strong attachment of our southern colored
brethren to their birth-places, I remark, that, whilst the free colored
population of the free states increased from 1820 to 1830 but nineteen
per cent., the like population i