This has been frequently attempted in the Southern States, and has as often failed for the want of success. Eminently humane, though mistaken men, have tried this experiment with their slaves. Some have tried it on a small scale: standing only as their nominal owners, and giving them the control of their time and labor, and the use of necessary lands for cultivation. Others have tried the same plan on a more extended scale of operations. But if there is a single successful experiment now in operation in the Southern country, I am not aware of it. In every instance the owners have been compelled to resume the control of their slaves, to prevent them from becoming a tax on the community, and a nuisance in the neighborhood. Second. The result of the experiment in the case of the free colored population, is equally in proof that the race, taken collectively, is not fitted for self-government. Humane individuals have, from time to time, freed their slaves. In this way a large number has been accumulated. There is not a county in any one of the older States in which there are not many, and in some a large number. In this experiment we have a full test of what the African is in the enjoyment of civil liberty, or of his capacity for self-government, at least in the midst of a people with whom he cannot amalgamate. The result is daily before our eyes, and may be known and read of all men. After a few honorable exceptions, the multitude are by no means as well fed or clothed, and otherwise provided for, as the slaves in their vicinity. They make but little provision against the inclemency of winter, and in sickness are often the objects of public charity. A disposition to live by petty depredations upon society, instead of by honest industry, and a general depravation of morals, are characteristic of the caste. Their retrograde tendency is so obvious, that no doubt is entertained among men of reflection that, but for the props and checks thrown around them by the laws and usages of civilization, they would soon relapse into the savage state. These facts are so obvious as long since to have engaged the attention of our domestics. Among them, the term “free nigger” is one of deepest reproach. Those who respect themselves, it is well known, form no matrimonial alliance with them, from sheer contempt of their degradation. I have frequently met, in my travels, with old men, in independent circumstances, who by the doctrines of the pulpit, enforced by the personal influence of a favorite minister in private life, were induced, in early life, to free their slaves, who now confess, with the result of their mistaken piety before their eyes, that they conferred no boon upon them, but rather inflicted an injury both upon them and upon society. They console themselves with the reflection that they intended all for the best. This picture is not surcharged. You will do me the justice to remember that no dark