There is one subject which no person who pretends to convey to the reader the honest thoughts and impressions which occupied his mind during his travels in this vast Republic, can pass over in silence; and that subject, I need scarcely observe, is Slavery.  It is an institution which deserves most serious consideration; for while a general unity of sentiment binds the various States together in a manner that justifies the national motto, “E pluribus unum,” the question of slavery hangs fearfully over their Union; and the thread by which it is suspended is more uncertain than the fragile hair of the sword of Damocles, for it is dependent upon the angry passions of angry man.

So true do I feel this to be, that were I a citizen of one of the Free States of America, I might hesitate before I committed my opinions to the Press.  I trust, however, that I may so treat the subject that no cause for ill-blood may be given.  Unquestionably, the origin of the evil is wholly with the mother country.  We entered into the diabolical traffic of our fellow-creatures, and forced the wretched negro upon a land which had never before received the impress of a slave’s foot; and this we did despite all the remonstrances of the outraged and indignant colonists; and with this revolting sin upon our shoulders, it is but natural we should feel deeply interested in the sable ivy-shoot we planted, and which now covers the whole southern front of the stately edifice of the Giant Republic.  Time was when a Newcastle collier might have carried the sable shoot back to the soil whence it had been stolen; now, the keels of many nations combined would scarce suffice to move the rapid growth.

But, while at England’s door lies the original guilt, America has since put the solemn seal of her paternity upon it; every foot of land which, in the rapid career of her aggrandisement, has been sullied with the footsteps of the slave for the first time, mars the beauty of the cap of liberty, and plants a slave-trader’s star in the banner of the nation.  She is only doing a century later what we wickedly did a century before—­viz., planting slavery on a soil hitherto free, and enlarging the market for the sale of flesh and blood.  The futile excuse sometimes offered, that they were merely moved from one part to another of the same country, cannot be admitted; or, if it be, upon the same principle all the Free States might return again to slavery.  If it be no sin to introduce slavery into a free Sovereign State, then was England not so guilty in the first instance, for she sent slaves from a land of ignorance, cruelty, and idolatry, to an enlightened and Christian colony.  It is in vain for either England or the United States to shirk the guilty responsibility of introducing slaves on free soil.  England has the additional guilt of having acted against the wishes of the colonists; the United States has the additional guilt of increasing slave territory a century later, and when the philanthropists of every country were busied in endeavours to solve the problem, “How can slavery be abolished?”