the part in the recent struggle against slavery which reverted to them of right.  They have done a great deal, whatever may be said; they are disposed to do still more, and their attitude has improved visibly within a year.  But this cannot suffice; there are two problems to resolve instead of one; the question is now, to approach both face to face.  True equality is founded, under the eye of God, through the community of hopes and of repentance, through close association in worship, in prayer, in action; and this equality has nothing in common with the jealous spirit of levelling which suffers old grievances to subsist, and continually invents new; it is peaceable, forgetful of evil, confiding, truly fraternal.  I do not dream, of course, of the universal conversion of the population of the United States, both black and white; I know only that the Gospel, though it deeply penetrates comparatively few hearts, extends its influence much further, and acts on those that it has not won.  Let the Christians of America set to work, let them reject, for it is time, the scandals still presented here and there by their apologists for slavery, let them forbear to spare that which is culpable, to call good evil, or evil good, and they will render to their country a service which they alone can render it, and to which nothing on earth can be compared.

The United States do not know how great will be the transformation of their internal condition, and the increase of their good renown abroad, when their churches, their schools, their public vehicles, their ballot-boxes, shall be widely accessible to persons of color, when equality and liberty shall have become realities on their soil; they do not know how great will be their peace and their prosperity.  Let the two inseparable problems of slavery and the coexistence of races be resolved among them under the ruling influence of the Gospel, and they will witness the birth of a future far better than the past.  No more fears, no more rivalries, no more separations in perspective, their conquests will become accomplished of themselves; and, no longer destined to swell the domain of servitude, they will win the applause of the entire world.

And all this will not be purchased, as men seem to believe, by the sacrifice of the cotton culture.  At the present time, this culture incurs but one serious risk:  the momentary triumph of a party that dreams of a slavery propaganda; it will be saved alone by the progress of liberty.  On the day when emancipation shall be achieved, if wrought by the action of moral agents and social necessities, instead of by that of civil wars and insurrections, the cultivation of cotton in the Southern States will receive the impetus to a magnificent development.  The emancipated negroes make large quantities of sugar in the Antilles; why should they not make cotton on firm ground?  If affranchisement produced the destruction of planting in St. Domingo, we know now the reason.  It is a proved fact that negroes who do not owe their liberty to insurrection, remain disposed to devote themselves to labor in the fields.