402
lina fifty-five per cent.[1] Such was the proportion of the black population to the whites in the year 1830. But this proportion is perpetually changing, as it constantly decreases in the north and augments in the south.
It is evident that the most southern states of the Union cannot abolish slavery without incurring very great dangers, which the north had no reason to apprehend when it emancipated its black population. We have already shown the system by which the northern states secure the transition from slavery to freedom, by keeping the present generation in chains, and setting their descendants free; by this means the negroes are gradually introduced into society; and while the men who might abuse their freedom are kept in a state of servitude, those who are emancipated may learn the art of being free before they become their own masters. But it would be difficult to apply this method in the south. To declare that all the negroes born after a certain period shall be free, is to introduce the principle and the notion of liberty into the heart of slavery; the blacks, whom the law thus maintains in a state of slavery from which their children are delivered, are astonished at so unequal a fate, and their astonishment is only the prelude to their impatience and irritation. Thenceforward slavery loses in their eyes, that kind of moral power which it derived from time and habit; it is reduced to a mere palpable abuse of force. The northern states had nothing to fear from the contrast, because in them the blacks were few in number, and the white population was very considerable. But if this faint dawn of freedom were to show two millions of men their true position, the oppressors would have reason to tremble. After having effranchised the children of their slaves, the Europeans of the southern states would very shortly be obliged to extend the same benefit to the whole black population.
- ↑
We find it asserted in an American work, entitled, “Letters on the Colonization
Society,” by Mr. Carey, 1833, that “for the last forty years the black race has increased
more rapidly than the white race in the state of South Carolina; and that if we
take the average population of the five states of the south into which slaves were first
introduced, viz, Maryland, Virginia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Georgia,
we shall find that from 1790 to 1830, the whites have augmented in the proportion of
80 to 100, and the blacks in that of 112 to 100.”
In the United States, 1830, the population of the two races stood as follows:—
States where slavery is abolished, 6,565,434 whites; 120,520 blacks. Slave states, 3,960,814 whites; 2,208,102 blacks.
