“Getting Sick of Them.—The colored persons of Toronto, having had a meeting to denounce Colonel John Prince, a member of the Canadian Parliament, for speaking against them, he publishes a reply, in which he says,—
“’It has been my misfortune, and the misfortune of my family, to live among those blacks (and they have lived upon us) for twenty-four years. I have employed hundreds of them, and with the exception of one, named Richard Hunter, not one of them has done for us a week’s honest labor. I have taken them into my service, fed and clothed them, year after year, on their arrival from the States, and in return have generally found them rogues and thieves, and a graceless, worthless, thriftless set of vagabonds. This is my very plain and simple description of the darkies as a body, and it would be indorsed by all the Western white men, with very few exceptions.’”
“Underground R.R. Return Trains.—The ‘Cleveland Plaindealer’ states that every steamboat arriving at that place brings back from Canada families of negroes, who have formerly fled to the Provinces from the States. They are principally from Canada West. They describe the life and condition of the blacks in Canada as miserable in the extreme. The West is, therefore, likely to have large accessions to its colored population. The Canada folks do not want them, and have shown a disposition in their Parliament, and otherwise, to discourage their coming to, or remaining in the Provinces. In some instances, the question of ejecting those now resident there, has been discussed. Our Western States will be likely to experience a similar attack of the black vomito, when they shall have become satisfied with this peculiar Southern luxury. In some localities the superabundant free negro population has already become a burden, while in others they are under severe restrictions, which amount almost to an exclusion from the limits of the state.
“Should this exodus from Canada continue to any great extent, it would throw such a burden upon those states which have adopted the most liberal policy towards the negro, that it would occasion a reaction in the public sentiment which would compel them to abandon their abolition doctrine and practice, for their own self-protection. We should then hear of fewer attempts to abduct slaves from the slave-holding states; and abolitionists would be content to allow slaves to remain under the care and protection of their masters. Even though at heart sympathizing with the oppressed and task-worn negro, and yearning towards him with all the love of the professed philanthropist, he would still be permitted to toil and bleed; for now that the route to Canada has been closed, there is no alternative but to take them to their own bosoms.”
Compare with this the condition of the free blacks in South Carolina. The amount of property held by them is $1,600,000; their annual taxes, $27,000; and the free blacks own slaves to the amount of $300,000 in value.