difference it would make in future ages for the prospects of republican institutions, and our civilization generally, if instead of the manly population descended from cognate nations the United States should be inhabited by the effeminate progeny of mixed races, half Indian, half negro, sprinkled with white blood. Can you devise a scheme to rescue the Spaniards of Mexico from their degradation? Beware, then, of any policy which may bring our own race to their level. These considerations lead me naturally to the inquiry into the peculiarities of the two races, in order to find out what may be most beneficial for each. I rejoice in the prospect of universal emancipation, not only from a philanthropic point of view, but also because hereafter the physiologist and ethnographer may discuss the question of the races and advocate a discriminating policy regarding them, without seeming to support legal inequality. There is no more one-sided doctrine concerning human nature than the idea that all men are equal, in the sense of being equally capable of fostering human progress and advancing civilization, especially in the various spheres of intellectual and moral activity. If this be so, then it is one of our primary obligations to remove every obstacle that may retard the highest development, while it is equally our duty to promote the humblest aspirations that may contribute to raise the lowest individual to a better condition in life. The question is, then, what kind of common treatment is likely to be the best for all men, and what do the different races, taken singly, require for themselves? That legal equality should be the common boon of humanity can hardly be matter for doubt nowadays, but it does not follow that social equality is a necessary complement of legal equality. I say purposely legal equality, and not political equality, because political equality involves an equal right to every public station in life, and I trust we shall be wise enough not to complicate at once our whole system with new conflicting interests, before we have ascertained what may be the practical working of universal freedom and legal equality for two races, so different as the whites and negroes, living under one government. We ought to remember that what we know of the negro, from the experience we have had of the colored population of the North, affords but a very inadequate standard by which to judge of the capabilities of the pure blacks as they exist in the South. We ought, further, to remember that the black population is likely at all times to outnumber the white in the Southern States. We should therefore beware how we give to the blacks rights, by virtue of which they may endanger the progress of the whites before their temper has been tested by a prolonged experience. Social equality I deem at all times impracticable,--a natural impossibility, from the very character of the negro race. Let us consider for a moment the