exercise of domestic authority, no less in the case of the slave than in the case of the child or the apprentice, is sanctioned, and, in cases demanding it, is duly enforced by public opinion and sentiment. In all communities in which Christianity is the presiding influence, African slavery must, therefore, be a mild form of domestic servitude. It even contributes in a measure to a knowledge of letters. Many servants are raised by their associations with civilized life to a desire to read the word of God. The domestic relation often supplies them with the means of gratifying this desire. Many pious slaves read the word of God as a part of their family worship; and instances are not wanting of those of whom it may be said, they “are mighty in the Scriptures.” Such are the tendencies and capabilities of domestic slavery as a system recognized by law; and apart from those abuses which all good men deplore--no less in the case of the slave than in the case of the child and the apprentice, who are no further protected from inhumanity by the provisions of law than is the slave. Hence this system is the natural way of protecting, improving, and governing the African for the mutual benefit of society. It is evidently indicated by Providence. No other can be appropriate to a mass of population who can never be politically free in our midst, for the reason that, in the order of Divine Providence, they never can amalgamate with us. But it is, 2. The only _safe_ way. It is slow, it is true, but it is for that reason only the more safe. Its effects are, for the most part, without observation. Hence, it produces no irritation of the public mind. It develops the law of sympathy on both sides in the ratio in which it unfolds the intellectual and moral nature of the subordinate race. It raises no visionary and fanatical hopes in the one, nor excites any morbid fears in the other. I say, its results march forward without observation. A _revenue tariff_, for example, affords a full support to the government by a virtual tax upon the pockets of the people; and it does this at a time when they would not for a moment consent to pay that tax, if it were made a _direct_ tax, to be collected by the authority of an exciseman. So, without observation, the domestic element of slavery is accomplishing its results, with equal safety. Or, more in point, perhaps, it is like the “kingdom of heaven,” which “comes without observation.” The “kingdom of heaven,” in the form of _principles_, diffuses itself through the mass of society, and ultimately works, as a legitimate result, the boldest political revolutions. But by diffusing itself quietly, or “without observation,” it prepares the public mind for its changes in the exact ratio in which it effects them; and thus accomplishes that, by the popular will, the attempt to do which in another way would have razed the foundations of civil society, and closed the history of civilization for ages to come.