There never was a large slave population in the Northern States, owing to the unsuitableness of the climate. The question arises, How did this system operate with the few they had? It is well known that the owners anticipated the time appointed for the law of emancipation to go into operation, and sold their slaves in the South! This law only operated to transfer the slaves, for the most part, to a climate and soil more congenial to their constitution and habits. The operation of the scheme, therefore, resulted only in the emancipation of a few of the whole number, (see Lecture I., page 22;) and these few, as has been proved, have, by the social, and, we may add, in many instances, by the municipal regulations of the States within which they reside, been essentially injured by the change instead of benefited. Hence the scheme did not succeed well in the Northern States. And can it be assumed that it would succeed better in the Southern States? On the contrary, the result would be much more fatal in the Southern, for the reason that we have a much larger African slave population than existed in the Northern States at the time their emancipation laws were adopted. Now, suppose (what, however, can scarcely, if at all, be allowed a supposable case) that all the Southern States should simultaneously pass laws, providing for the gradual emancipation of the slaves, and hence, ultimately, effect their emancipation, as provided for by law, for the reason that there would be no market open for the sale of them, as was the case when the scheme was attempted at the North: even in such a state of things, you cannot fail to perceive that the propriety of such a measure turns entirely upon the truth or error of a position already discussed. If my position be correct, (and it is evidently established by the facts adduced in the preceding lecture,) that their mental imbecility and moral degradation is such that, whilst it remains a fact that for physical and uncontrollable causes they cannot amalgamate, any material addition to our present number of free colored population would result in their extermination, humanity, leaving all other reasons out of the account, would forbid the measure! Nor can I persuade myself that there is an emancipationist, however fanatical, this side the strange delirium of a deliberately wicked purpose to do wrong, who would not “pause upon the brink of this Rubicon,” when assured that the Southern people generally believed that extermination would, in all probability, be the result of his priceless experiment.