But in the West Indies the blacks, for the most part, are scarcely one grade beyond the natives in Africa. They are not so transfused throughout a white population as our negroes are; they live in gangs or communities to themselves, where they speak a gibberish dialect, and retain their native superstitions. They are a far inferior race to the colored people of the United States. Of course they would not work when compulsion ceased; their highest ideas of freedom included nothing more precious than the privilege of being idle. And it is very well for the existing generation of whites in those islands, that the emancipated mass preferred torpid repose to activity. At present the planters of Jamaica are obtaining laborers from Africa, under the name of emigrants, who, by a pleasant fiction, are entered as volunteers in the fields. The British cruisers, when they capture a slaver at sea, send the cargo to the West Indies, and thus benefit the plantations, at the expense of the slave captain and owners--the latter suffering confiscation, and the former running the risk of being hanged. So, certain of the eagle tribe, disdaining to fish, sit on a high tree or rock and watch the fishing hawk; and when the latter secures his prey in his talons and is rising with it, the eagle darts forth from his eminence and pounces upon the spoil, which he appropriates without further ceremony to the use of his own nest. Nevertheless, it is not my purpose to dwell on this point of the adaptation of slave labor to hot climates. We may safely leave it to time and to the progress of the age to determine that matter as it ought to be determined. It is Slavery in Maryland which we are considering; and in Maryland the heat of the climate can not be taken into the account at all, as disqualifying free labor. The States farther south have their own responsibilities on the subject of Slavery. They will know of themselves when the system becomes productive of evil to such an extent as to call for its removal. It is not for us to judge for them, to judge them. Let each State act for itself and act only when its judgment and sense of duty dictate. For years past our cotton growing States have been exporting their soil; and with that improvidence which Slavery generates, that love of present indulgence, careless of what may follow, the south has received in return the means of enjoyment only--nothing wherewith to renovate the outraged ground. Such a process long continued must, in the end, ruin the finest lands in the world. Its effects are apparent in the Atlantic States of the south, which are losing their population, the attraction of the new and rich lands in the south-west operating irresistibly to draw the planters of Carolina and Georgia from their worn out fields.