_A._ I agree with them entirely. The masters are to be deeply pitied; because the long continuance of a wicked system has involved them in difficulties, and at the same time rendered them generally blind to the best means of getting rid of those difficulties. They are likewise to be compassionated for the effects which early habits of power produce on their own characters. Mr. Jefferson, who lived in the midst of slavery, says: “The whole commerce between master and slave is a perpetual exercise of the most boisterous passions; the most unremitting despotism on the one part, and degrading submission on the other. Our children see this, and learn to imitate it. The parent storms; the child looks on, catches the lineaments of wrath, puts on the same airs in a circle of smaller slaves, gives loose to the worst of passions; and thus nursed, educated, and daily exercised in tyranny, cannot but be stamped by it with odious peculiarities. The man must be a prodigy, who can retain his morals and manners undepraved in such circumstances.” The general licentiousness produced by this system can never be described without using language too gross to be addressed to a civilized community. Some idea of it may be derived from the fact, that every female slave is completely in the power of her master, of his sons, of his overseers, and his drivers. The law does not allow her to offer resistance to a white man, under any circumstances; and the state of public opinion is such that any pretensions to virtue on her part would be treated with brutal ridicule. The slave is not allowed to have any right in his wife and children. If his master’s interest can be served by his keeping three or four wives, or by his wife’s having a succession of husbands, he cannot dispute the commands of his owner. The wife, or the husband, is sometimes sold, and sent thousands of miles from each other, and from their little ones, without the slightest hope of ever meeting again. Under these circumstances, the man, or the woman, is soon ordered to take another partner; because it is for the interest of the master that they should do so. It is a shameful fact that the laws and customs of our country make it absolutely impossible for a large portion of our population to be virtuous, even if they wish to be so. The wealth of Virginia is principally made by the breeding of slaves and horses; and persons unaccustomed to the system would be shocked by the detail of well authenticated facts, which prove that about as little regard is paid to decency in one case as the other. _Mulatto_ slaves bring a higher price than _black_ ones; hence licentiousness in slave States becomes a profitable vice, instead of being expensive, as it is under other forms of society. _Q_. I have been told that a great many of the slaves have very light complexions. Is it so?