[Footnote A:  Mr. Mercer, of Virginia, some years ago, asserted in Congress, that “CARGOES” of African slaves were smuggled into the southern states to a deplorable extent.  Mr. Middleton, of South Carolina, declared it to be his belief, that THIRTEEN THOUSAND Africans were annually smuggled into the southern states.  Mr. Wright, of Maryland, estimated the number at FIFTEEN THOUSAND.  Miss Martineau was told in 1835, by a wealthy slaveholder of Louisiana, (who probably spoke of that state alone,) that the annual importation of native Africans was from THIRTEEN THOUSAND to FIFTEEN THOUSAND.  The President of the United States, in his last Annual Message, speaking of the Navy, says, “The large force under Commodore Dallas [on the West India station] has been most actively and efficiently employed in protecting our commerce, IN PREVENTING THE IMPORTATION OF SLAVES, &c.”]

[Footnote B:  Within the last few years, four slaves, and one citizen of color, have been put to death in this manner, in Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, and Arkansas.]

Certain it is, that the time when southern slavery derived countenance at the North, from its supposed connection with “chivalry,” is rapidly passing away.  “Southern Chivalry” will soon be regarded as one of the by-gone fooleries of a less intelligent and less virtuous age.  It will soon be cast out—­giving place to the more reasonable idea, that the denial of wages to the laborer, the selling of men and women, the whipping of husbands and wives in each others presence, to compel them to unrequited toil, the deliberate attempt to extinguish mind, and, consequently, to destroy the soul—­is among the highest offences against God and man—­unspeakably mean and ungentlemanly.

The impression made on the minds of the people as to this matter, is one of the events of the last two or three years that does not contribute to lessen the hopes or expectations of abolitionists.

4.  The ascendency that Slavery has acquired, and exercises, in the administration of the government, and the apprehension now prevailing among the sober and intelligent, irrespective of party, that it will soon overmaster the Constitution itself, may be ranked among the events of the last two or three years that affect the course of abolitionists.  The abolitionists regard the Constitution with unabated affection.  They hold in no common veneration the memory of those who made it.  They would be the last to brand Franklin and King and Morris and Wilson and Sherman and Hamilton with the ineffaceable infamy of attempting to ingraft on the Constitution, and therefore to perpetuate, a system of oppression in absolute antagonism to its high and professed objects, one which their own practice condemned,—­and this, too, when they had scarcely wiped away the dust and sweat of the Revolution from their brows!  Whilst abolitionists feel and speak thus of our Constitutional fathers, they do not justify the dereliction of principle into which