subject of slavery, preserve it on no other subject, and are pushing the country as fast as they can into misrule and anarchy. The only salvation of the country is for the non-slaveholding States to assert their own principles, and to send to the national legislature men of principle, Christians, philanthropists, men that fear God, —not pledged and packed men, but men whose consciences their constituents can trust, not men, who need to be instructed, but such as shall go thoroughly furnished for every good work.

We have as yet said nothing of anti-slavery societies. We know little of their movements. We have seldom seen, and never read their reports; nor have we examined any of their documents, except in search of facts bearing upon the general subject. The only anti-slavery meeting that we ever attended was one, to which we were drawn a few months ago, by the fame of certain negro orators, who were to be present. We suppose that the anti-slavery movement has done both good and harm, and probably very much more good than harm. So far as those societies have breathed a denunciatory spirit, "we heartily disapprove of it. Yet they have not been the aggressors, nor can there have been anything in their most bitter speeches and writings, which can bear comparison with the rancor of their assailants, and the contumely and injury, which have been heaped upon them without redress. They have never mobbed defenceless women, nor stormed churches, nor set fire to public buildings, nor taken the lives of their opponents. We would far sooner have stood in their ranks than in those of their adversaries; for, whatever their excesses may have been, they have had principle on their side, though we wish that they had had grace, after their great Master's example, when they were reviled, not to revile again, when they suffered, to threaten not, but to commit themselves to him that judgeth righteously. Had they all breathed this spirit, as many of them uniformly have, their cause would by this time have outgrown all opposition. Had such men as the lamented Follen and Channing, and some living luminaries of the church, whom we could name, (men who never harbored an unkind thought, or wrote or uttered an ungentle word,) given the whole tone to the anti-slavery movement, we should by this time have seen the most glorious and successful reformation in modern Christendom far advanced towards its completion. But though the professed advocates of this cause have not done

all that they might, or so well as they might, though they have been men of like passions with other men, and not angels, which reformers are always expected to be, and never are, they deserve at our hands a few words of vindication, as to the alleged injury to their own cause, which has been charged upon them.

It is said, that their movement has closed many hearts against the claims of the slaves. Many hearts have indeed remained closed; but, in addition to the many thousands of active and zealous members of anti-slavery organizations, there is a far more general and strong feeling on the subject throughout the entire North, than when this movement commenced. Nor was this a new movement. There had been, all over the non-slaveholding States, and in the more northerly of the slaveholding States, abolition societies under that express name, in active operation for many years from the adoption of the Federal Constitution, and in the Northern and Middle States till 1820. In looking over their reports and memorials, we find that they used as strong and earnest language on the subject of slavery, as can have been used in the most vehement recent publications. Their reprobation of the whole system is unlimited and intensely emphatic; and they numbered among their active members the confessedly first and best men in Church and State. They poured in upon Congress petitions and memorials against the admission of Missouri into the Union, and in these documents the strongest, most uncomprising antislavery ground was assumed, as the unanimous expression of Northern sentiment. That was their last great battle. Defeated then through the treachery of men, on whom they implicitly depended, they left the field, and were probably disbanded; for we find no subsequent traces of their existence.

The defection of the North from its legitimate principles on that occasion no doubt deadened the general conscience; and little was said or thought on the subject of slavery for the succeeding ten or twelve years. Meanwhile new relations were growing up between the North and the South. The Southern cotton trade during this interval rose from utter insignificance to a place second to no other branch of business. The manufactories of the New England States became numerous and extensive, and depended on the South for their raw material. Our New England ships, shut out by universal peace from the general carrying trade, which they had once enjoyed, found

the transportation of Southern cotton their surest and most lucrative employment. Thus had the North in a very brief space of time become connected with the South by the closest and most constraining pecuniary ties, so that the republication of views, which twenty years before it had been scandalous not to adinit, now touched new chords of interest, on which it jarred barsh and unwelcome music. The principles were not new; but the relations of Northern men had become changed.

Maryland and Virginia abolitionism owes its decline to a similar chain of causes. For many years slavery had been in those States an intolerable pecuniary burden. For the ordinary operations of agriculture, slave labor was well known to be less lucrative than free labor; and yet the latter could not be had, while the former was employed. Much of the cultivated land of those States was exhausted by the perpetual succession of the same crops, and it could not be improved, nor could new land be brought under cultivation, without a larger capital in human stock, than owners could generally afford, or the profits of agriculture authorize. The African slave-market was open until 1808, and the more Southern States could buy slaves stolen ready grown in Africa, cheaper than they could be raised in Virginia and Maryland; and the suspension of the African slave trade left the country fully stocked, if not overstocked with slaves, and, Southern industry remaining nearly stationary for a series of years, the slave-growing States found no regular or lucrative market for their inNo wonder that they talked loud and long of emancipation. They were undoubtedly on the eve of decided action. But when cotton, from being little cultivated, became in a few years the great staple of the South, the demand for slaves grew large and constant, the raising of slaves for the market became the most lucrative business in the country, and Virginia and Maryland found a mine of wealth in an institution, which had long been draining their resources. What room then is there for surprise, that public feeling in these States should have undergone an entire revulsion? And is it not much more reasonable to attribute this revulsion to new mercenary motives operating in behalf of slavery, than to the re-echoing from the North of the very sentiments of Washington, Jefferson, and Randolph, of sentiments, which for nearly fifty years had found free and fervent utterance in the legislature of Virginia?

crease.

It is often said, that the anti-slavery movement at the North has been the cause of many hardships and disabilities to the slaves at the South, particularly of the restrictions upon their movements and social gatherings, and of the laws against their being taught to read. But we find on examination, that most of these effects preceded their alleged cause. The American Anti-Slavery Society was formed in December, 1833; the New England Society, which accomplished but little, a year or two sooner. It was not till 1834, or 1835, that the recent anti-slavery movement became of sufficient magnitude to attract attention at the South, or to be generally regarded at the North as anything more than an ephemeral effort of a few visionary and fanatical philanthropists. But the severest of the slave-laws are as old as the constitutions of the respective States; and most of the additional restrictions and disabilities may be traced back to at least ten or twelve years before the formation of the American Anti-Slavery Society. The prohibition of Sunday and other schools for the education of slaves, we can trace back in South Carolina to 1821; and, on looking over Niles's Register for the four or five years next preceding and following that date, we find numerous enactments of the same kind in that and other Southern States, and very many indications of an anxious and disturbed state of feeling with reference to the negro population, which we do not find within the last ten years. Possibly laws of this character may have been more rigorously executed since the formation of the American Anti-Slavery Society; but very few such laws have been enacted since that time. The state of things, which Northern abolitionists have been so freely charged with bringing about, existed in full during the interval when the North hardly lifted a voice against slavery. With regard to the present condition of the slaves, we have unimpeachable testimony that they are better treated than formerly; and this is doubtless to be attributed to the influence of public opinion at the North, even in the partial and distorted forms in which it has reached the people of the South. It is said in the article in the Southern Review, which we made the subject of comment in our March Number, "The fact is notorious, that slaves are better treated now than formerly, and that their condition is still improving." Gen. Scott, in a recent letter, in which he expresses strong disapprobation of the anti-slavery movement, makes the same assertion. So much for the alleged injury to the slave from his Northern friends.

It is also said, that the efforts of Northern abolitionists have fanned an insurrectionary spirit at the South. Against this charge there is abundant primá facie evidence, without our looking into the history of slave insurrections. It is well known that living anti-slavery agents are not suffered to go at large in the Southern States. The only effort that can be made, therefore, at the South, is by sending anti-slavery books, pamphlets, and newspapers. These are indeed sent and circulated in large numbers, not among the slaves, (for the slaves cannot read,) but among the masters; and, if the slaves are made acquainted with their contents, it must be through the gratuitous agency of their masters. In point of fact, all the great slave rebellions on record took place before the formation of the American Anti-Slavery Society. The writer in the Southern Review, already referred to, says, that "under no circumstances can a servile war ever take place;" that "in vain has the United States mail been infested and burdened with incendiary documents;" and that "no temptations or artifices can seduce the slaves from their allegiance." This Review is published at Charleston, which was the seat in 1823 and 1832 of extensive negro insurrections, discovered just on the eve of execution. It is well known to many of our readers, that the whole population of Charleston was, for a long series of years, in a state of perpetual alarm and apprehension from the slaves, and that South Carolina took the lead in those legislative restrictions, which imply a state of dread and consternation. It is truly gratifying, while anti-slavery principles are so rapidly extending themselves at the North, to find descriptions of a state of entire and fearless security emanating from the highest literary authority in that very city and State, in which, prior to the anti-slavery movement, the most fearful elements of combustion were believed to exist.

Is it farther said, that the anti-slavery movement at the North is entirely devoid of influence upon the South? Not thus do Southern people say. We might fill half a score of pages with unimpeachable Southern testimony to the effect of this movement upon the Southern mind and heart. Judge Upshur, a member of the present cabinet, said, in his prospectus for the establishment of the Southern Review: "The defence of the peculiar institutions of the slave-holding States is the great and leading object of the work. That they are in dan'ger, it would be folly to disguise. A party has arisen in