SLAVERY IN MARYLAND BRIEFLY CONSIDERED. By JOHN L. CAREY. BALTIMORE: PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY JOHN MURPHY, 178 MARKET STREET. 1845. ENTERED, according to Act of Congress, in the year one thousand eight hundred and forty-five, in the clerk’s office of the District Court of Maryland. LETTER I. DODON, March 12th, 1845. DEAR SIR,--A short time before the October election, I heard some one say that it was your intention to devote much of your time, should you be elected to the House of Delegates, to the subject of the black population of our State, and to promote, if possible, measures for their gradual emancipation. It gave me, a slaveholder and citizen of Maryland, infinite pleasure to hear it; and it was with the deepest regret I learned soon after that you were not returned to the house. If I have been correctly informed, I beg leave to say I honor you for your sentiment, and I hope you will not allow so good a resolution to die, but will kindle it anew, and seek some other equally practical means of bringing this subject fully and fairly before the public. It is one that has long occupied much of my thoughts, and I have watched anxiously for some one to show his hand in this cause. At this moment my attention has been more distinctly called to it, by the manly, high-minded letter of Mr. C. M. Clay, addressed to the people of Kentucky. There is not a sentiment or a political principle expressed by him to his fellow citizens that does not with equal force apply to our noble little State, and every prediction applies _to us_ as forcibly as it does to them. The time has come, there can be no doubt of it, to take the needful steps; slaveholders themselves are anxious for it, and will not be displeased to see the subject _fairly_ taken into consideration. I have been a planter for five years, and have had an opportunity of discussing these points with slaveholders of all parties, and I do not remember a single instance in which objection was made to the principle of emancipation; some difference, it is true, exists as to the manner and time, but none as to the necessity. Heretofore this whole subject has been wrapt in a mystery, as imposing as the secrets of Free Masonry, and no one, not a member of the order of slaveholders, has been allowed to open his mouth and say any thing about it; it is a dangerous question--it is an exciting subject--it is a matter that belongs to slaveholders themselves--have been the usual and repeated injunctions laid upon all who honestly and humanely have desired to inquire into the merits and demerits of this cause. Is this as it should be? Is it the course that should be pursued by an educated people, who have at command the means to defend the truth and expose error? Certainly not. If our State is laboring under an evil, let the cause and nature of the malady be investigated, and then let us apply the remedy. If, on the contrary, none can be shown to exist,