This, then, is the great matter; the public mind should be turned to it seriously and at once. Maryland has no precedent to follow. Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, New England had none of her difficulties. They could emancipate and leave results to take care of themselves; or they might have refrained from emancipation with pretty nearly equal indifference. No strong, deeply rooted slaveholding interest could ever have grown up in those States; for the same reasons which prevent any such from fastening itself upon western Maryland and western Virginia. Slavery never could have become ingrained in the fibre and texture of the communities north of us, as it has grown into ours. Hence while the putting of it off by them was a mere rejection of something uncongenial with the system, it will be with us a serious alterative process to root out a constitutional malady which has crept into the blood, and blended itself with the very springs of life. If we should rush precipitately upon emancipation, and rest with that as though it were every thing--let us see what would come of that. One hundred and fifty thousand black people, deprived of the guardianship and control of masters, the bonds of domestic relationship which united them with the community being rent asunder, and that identity of interest gone which secured them a definite and harmonious, though humble sphere in the social organism--shall they be left to the mercy of stringent laws and police restrictions, and have the life worried out of them by the incessant fretting of petty persecutions? Poor unfortunates, thrust forth out of the pale of communion to maintain a separate existence, with no foundation to rest it upon, with no element of social or political life wherewith to nourish it, with nothing to cling to, nothing to be engrafted upon, an existence without entity, miserable, forlorn, who could be so unfeeling as not to commiserate their condition! Nor would it be the slowly wasting process of petty persecutions which they would have alone to encounter. Day by day the pressure of competition would become more and more grievous, driving them from every avocation in which they could hope to find employment. Forced from the city into the country, they would be compelled to seek refuge from the country in the obscure alleys of the city. I have alluded to the riots in Cincinnati and Philadelphia a few years ago, the causes of which are too well known. In the city of New York, if my information is correct, negroes are excluded from cab driving and similar occupations. If such things are seen in communities where the number of blacks is comparatively small, what might not be expected in a community where the blacks are so numerous as they are in ours?