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 in the slave states increased, in the same period, thirty five per cent;—­and this, too, notwithstanding the operation of those oppressive and cruel laws, whose enactment was dictated by the settled policy of expelling the free blacks from the South.

That, in the event of the abolition of southern slavery, the emancipated slaves would migrate to the North, rather than elsewhere, is very improbable.  Whilst our climate would be unfriendly to them, and whilst they would be strangers to our modes of agriculture, the sugar and cotton fields of Texas, the West Indies, and other portions of the earth, would invite them to congenial employments beneath congenial skies.  That, in case southern slavery is abolished, the colored population of the North would be drawn off to unite with their race at the South, is, for reasons too obvious to mention, far more probable than the reverse.

It will be difficult for you to persuade the North, that she would suffer in a pecuniary point of view by the extirpation of slavery.  The consumption of the laborers at the South would keep pace with the improvement and elevation of their condition, and would very soon impart a powerful impulse to many branches of Northern industry.

Another of your charges is in the following words:  “The subject of slavery within the District of Florida,” and that “of the right of Congress to prohibit the removal of slaves from one state to another,” are, with abolitionists, “but so many masked batteries, concealing the real and ultimate point of attack.  That point of attack is the institution of domestic slavery, as it exists in those states.”

If you mean by this charge, that abolitionists think that the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia and in Florida, and the suppression of the interstate traffic in human beings are, in themselves, of but little moment, you mistake.  If you mean, that they think them of less importance than the abolition of slavery in the slave states, you are right; and if you further mean, that they prize those objects