But it is extremely idle to suppose that all the Southern States would simultaneously pass such a law; nor does the scheme assume that they would do so. No: the plan advocated is, that the District of Columbia, and the States of Delaware and Maryland, should first emancipate their slaves; then Virginia, then Kentucky, then Missouri, and so on, until the work should be consummated by a gradual process, requiring several years in each State. Let us now inquire what this plan promises. If the owners of slaves in the States which first in order passed such a law, did not anticipate the time of its taking effect, (as in the case before referred to,) and sell them in the States where no such law had, as yet, been passed, the result would be, as already stated, an accumulation of free colored population, with its inevitable consequences. But this would certainly not be the general operation of such a law. For if cupidity should not prompt a different course, the owners, foreseeing the results of such an accumulation of free colored population, both to the whites and the blacks, would anticipate the law, in by far the greater number of instances, and sell their slaves in the States in which no such law had been passed. Still, many, no doubt, would not take this course: a want of forecast, and most generally a mistaken notion of humanity, would prevent its adoption. In this way, we cannot hesitate to believe that the accumulation of free colored population would be so great as to induce their extermination at no distant day. This calamity could be averted only by a sale of the slaves into some other State in anticipation of the law providing for their manumission. Now, whatever of mere selfishness there may be in the proposed measure, nothing is more certain than that it is entirely destitute of all humanity for the slave, and of all just regard to his progress in civilization, and his more speedy elevation to moral fitness for freedom. For by the time this work had progressed through the District of Columbia, the States of Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, and, it might be, North Carolina and Tennessee, the far greater part of the numerous slave population of the whole country would be accumulated in the remaining States of the South and South-west. This would be the inevitable result. For the free-soilers, it seems, are determined, if the effect of agitation can accomplish it at the ballot-box, that there shall be a cordon of free States, formed by the newly acquired territory of New Mexico and California; and in this case there would be no further outlet for the retiring slave. Let us now inquire what would be the effect of the accumulation of the race within the limits of a few States: