You possess, notwithstanding your distance, better information concerning Miss Wright, and her experiment, than we do here. We learn only that she has chosen for it a remote spot in the western part of Tennessee, and has commenced her enterprise; but with what prospects we know not. Her plan contemplated a provision for the expatriation of her Eleves, but without specifying it; from which I infer the difficulty felt in devising a satisfactory one. Could this part of the plan be ensured, the other essential part would come about of itself. Manumissions now more than keep pace with the outlets provided, and the increase of them is checked only by their remaining in the Country. This obstacle removed, and all others would yield to the emancipating disposition. To say nothing of partial modes, what would be more simple, with the requisite grant of power to Congress, than to purchase all female infants at their birth, leaving them in the service of the holder to a reasonable age, on condition of their receiving an elementary education? The annual number of female births may be stated at twenty thousand, and the cost at less than one hundred dollars each, at the most; a sum which would not be felt by the nation, and be even within the compass of State resources. But no such effort would be listened to, whilst the impression remains, and it seems to be indelible, that the two races cannot co-exist, both being free and equal. The great _sine qua non_, therefore, is some external asylum for the coloured race. In the mean time, the taunts to which this misfortune exposes us in Europe are the more to be deplored, because it impairs the influence of our political example; though they come with an ill grace from the quarter most lavish of them, the quarter which obtruded the evil, and which has but lately become a penitent, under suspicious appearances.[16] TO JOSEPH C. CABELL MONTPELLIER, January 5, 1829. _Dear Sir_,--I have received yours of December 28, in which you wish me to say something of the agitated subject of the basis of representation in the contemplated convention for revising the State Constitution. In a case depending so much on local views and feelings, and perhaps on the opinions of leading individuals, and in which a mixture of compromises with abstract principles may be resorted to, your judgment, formed on the theatre affording the best means of information, must be more capable of aiding mine than mine yours.