I look upon slaves as public securities; and I am of opinion, that a legislature’s enacting laws for their emancipation, is as flagrant a piece of injustice as would be the cancelling of the public debt.  Slave-holders are only share-holders; and philanthropists should never talk of liberating slaves, more than cancelling public securities, without being prepared to indemnify those persons who unfortunately have their capital invested in this species of property.

As many varieties of countenance are to be found among blacks as among whites.  There are Africans in this city who have really handsome features, and whose proportions are just, with strong and finely rounded limbs.  On becoming more intimate with the general character of the Africans, I like it better:  I find they steal, cheat, and hate their masters; and if they were to do otherwise I should think them unworthy of liberty—­they justly consider whatever they take to be but a portion of their own.  The policy is to keep them as much as possible in utter ignorance—­that their indignation should therefore develope itself in the most degrading manner, is not surprising.

There are two public schools established at New Orleans, which are supported out of the fund arising from five gaming-houses, they paying a tax of 25,000 dollars per annum.  These schools are conducted on the Lancastrian system, each having a Principal and a Professor, and the studies are divided into daily sessions.  The morning session is devoted to reading, spelling, arithmetic, and English grammar; commences at nine A.M., and closes at one P.M.  The evening session commences at three, and ends at five o’clock; and is devoted to penmanship, geography, and the French language.  This is the arrangement of the English primary school, which is kept in the Old Poydras House, Poydras-street, in the upper part of the city; and is called the Upper Primary School, to distinguish it from the French establishment, which is kept in the lower part of the city.  The English school has an English principal, and a French professor; and the French school, a French principal and an English professor.  Dr. Kinnicutt, the principal of the Upper Primary School, is a gentleman of considerable ability, and to his friendly politeness I am indebted for the above information.

The ravages of the yellow fever in New Orleans are immense; but I am credibly informed that many deaths occur here from neglect after the fever has subsided, when the patient is in a totally debilitated condition, incapable of affording himself the slightest assistance.  Orleans is generally crowded with strangers, who are most susceptible to the epidemic; and it is decidedly the interest of persons keeping hotels and boarding-houses that such guests should give up the ghost, for in that case their loose cash falls into the hands of the proprietor.  I do not mean to insinuate that a knife is passed across the throat of the patient; but merely that it is the opinion of physicians, and some of the most respectable people of the city, that every facility is afforded strangers to die, and that in many cases they actually die of gross neglect.