In view of these considerations, the policy of the South on this subject, allow me to affirm, is founded no less in benevolence to the African and the peace of the commonwealth, than in the soundest principles of political economy. It relies upon the _domestic_ element of the system of slavery, as the _natural_, the only _safe_, and ultimately the _effectual_ means of the intellectual and moral elevation of the African--so far as any means can be effectual in the accomplishment of that object. 1. It is the _natural_ way--that is, the way adapted to their condition as an inferior and naturally distinct race, who, both on account of the physical facts which constitute them a distinct race, and the low state of civilization (if it may be called civilization at all) which they have yet been able to attain, should not be admitted to a social footing by intermarriage with the superior race. In a former lecture, it was demonstrated that an uncivilized race, dwelling in the midst of a civilized community, had _no right_ to social equality, and, for a still stronger reason, _no right_ to political sovereignty in such a community. It was also shown that their natural rights entitled them to _protection_, and reasonable provision for their _improvement_, and, as in the case of minors, to such “_authoritative control_” as is best calculated to preserve their power of self-action--their power of volition--from that enslavement to the baser passions of depraved nature, which is destructive of all true liberty, and the most degraded and ruinous form of slavery--subjection to the devil; in comparison with which, a physical subjection to a fellow-man, in civilized life, with a power, defined by law, only to control his time and labor to a reasonable extent, is a paradise. These--we of the South say--are their _natural rights_--the good to which they are entitled in virtue of their humanity. Now as these rights are in their nature relative, they imply the _duty_ on the part of the civilized race amongst whom, in the providence of God, they dwell, to afford them both the _protection_ and _control_ in question. Their DUTY, in these respects, is clearly reciprocal with the _rights_ of the Africans. They can no more omit these duties to the blacks with impunity, than they can do so to the minors and imbeciles of their own race. Now what form of control will more naturally or appropriately fulfil the conditions of this problem? They are to exercise the _sovereign_ control: all political freedom is denied the blacks by their condition. They have no right to it. It is not, to them, the essential good. Their _rights_ lie, as in the case of imbeciles of any other race, in being governed, not in governing themselves, in those matters which constitute the objects of civil government. To exercise this sovereign control of the blacks, and at the same time afford them the _protection_ and _improvement_ which are appropriate to a necessary condition of slavery, or state of