In my estimate of the experiment instituted by the Colonization Society, I may indulge too much my wishes and hopes, to be safe from errors. But a partial success will have its virtue, and an entire failure will leave behind a consciousness of the laudable intentions with which relief from the greatest of our calamities was attempted in the only mode presenting a chance of effecting it. I hope I shall be pardoned for remarking, that in accounting for the depressed condition of Virginia, you seem to allow too little to the existence of slavery, ascribe too much to the tariff laws, and not to have sufficiently taken into view the effect of the rapid settlement of the Western and Southwestern country. Previous to the Revolution, when, of these causes, slavery alone was in operation, the face of Virginia was, in every feature of improvement and prosperity, a contrast to the Colonies where slavery did not exist, or in a degree only, not worthy of notice. Again, during the period of the tariff laws prior to the latter state of them, the pressure was little, if at all, regarded as a source of the general suffering. And whatever may be the degree in which the extravagant augmentation of the Tariff may have contributed to the depression, the extent of this cannot be explained by the extent of the cause. The great and adequate cause of the evil is the cause last mentioned, if that be indeed an evil which improves the condition of our migrating citizens, and adds more to the growth and prosperity of the whole than it subtracts from a part of the community.