In the next place, the number and character of the slaves form an appalling difficulty. It is not believed by many of the sincere friends of the slaves, that their immediate emancipation would be conducive to their own real welfare, or consistent with the safety of the whites. To let them loose, without any provision for the young, the feeble, and the aged, would be inhuman cruelty. Slaves, who have regarded labour as an irksome task, can have little idea of liberty, except as an exemption from toil. To liberate them, without some arrangement for their subsistence, would produce starvation, or impel them to acts of lawless violence. Emancipation must, therefore, as those friends of the slaves contend, be gradual and prospective. The British Parliament have not decreed an _immediate_ emancipation, in the West Indies; thus recognizing the principle, that the slaves must be _prepared_ for freedom by moral and intellectual culture. But this preparation must be commenced and conducted by the _masters_; and they must, of course, become the willing and zealous friends of emancipation, before it can be accomplished. We have thus shown, that the slaves in this country cannot be emancipated, except by the free consent of the masters; and that they cannot be prepared for freedom, without the voluntary and energetic co-operation of the masters. For both these reasons, it is necessary to adopt a kind and conciliating course of conduct towards the slave-holders. The British Parliament might assume a peremptory tone towards the slave-holders in the West Indies; because the power of Parliament is not restricted like that of the American Congress; and because the situation of the slaves in the West Indies renders the preliminary preparation less necessary to the safety of the white population. In the British West Indies, the slaves are dispersed among eighteen or twenty islands, where the military and naval power of the mother country might be easily applied to quell insurrections. In the United States, there are above two millions of slaves, spread over a part only of the surface of the Union, with no large military force to overawe them, and no obstacle to a rapid combination of insurgents. We presume, that the people in England would feel somewhat differently on the subject of emancipation, if the slaves were among themselves, and the perils of this moral volcano were constantly impending over their own heads.