"In this deplorable, this benighted condition, the negro nevertheless shows tokens of a capacity for better things. He is an eager trader, and knows the value of his ebony, bar-wood, beeswax, palm oil, ivory. He has learned how to cheat; nay, more, infrequently he can out-cheat the white man. He can adulterate the caoutchouc and other products he brings down to the coast and pass them off as pure. His color secures him from the detection of a blush when he lies. Though utterly ignorant of any conception of art, he is not unskillful in the manufacture of cooking pots and tobacco pipes of clay; he has a bellows-forge of his own invention; he can reduce iron from its ores and manufacture it. He makes shields of elephants' hide, cross-bows, and other weapons of war. But in the construction of musical instruments his skill is chiefly displayed. From drums of goat-skins, from harps and gourds, he extracts their melancholy sounds and disturbs the nocturnal African forests with his plaintive melodies. "It has been affirmed by those who have known them well, that the equatorial negro tribes do not increase but tend to die out spontaneously. This is attributed to infanticide and to the ravages of miasmic fever, which in its most malignant form will often destroy its victim in a single day. Even though quinine be taken as a prophylactic no white man can enter their country with impunity. The night dews are absolutely mortal."] The most conclusive answer to all the slanders against Southern slave owners is to be found in the rapid multiplication of the slaves by natural increase, which could not have taken place if such barbarities had been practiced or such immorality had existed, as has been represented. Our detractors have convicted themselves of the slanders they have uttered by taking the Southern slave from the Cotton fields to the ballot box and vested him with all the privileges of an American citizen. If the institution of slavery has so tutored the negro that immediately his bonds are loosened, he is qualified for the privileges of the ballot box, what a civilizing tendency that institution must have had. If on the contrary that institution has kept him in utter ignorance of moral and Christian duty and made him the cringing, degraded creature he has been represented, what a monster must be he who proposes to vest in the untutored savage the power of governing others while the white man is disfranchised. In his native land he has never reached the dignity of a civilized being, and he has never been civilized until transplanted into slavery. Even till this day there are native Africans who continue in a state of barbarism despite the civilizing influence of the British government and the efforts of missionaries. In the western country away from the coast and civilization, tribes of the "hinterland" practice cannibalistic rites, the victim being preferably a blood relation of the sacrificer.