WHITE AND BLACK IN THE UNITED STATES. THE last anti-slavery
agitation in the United States effected any thing but an improvement in the condition of the Negroes. It irritated the slaveowners and alarmed the powerful manufacturing and commercial interests in the non-slaveholding States, which depend almost for existence, certainly for any chance of com- peting successfully with foreign countries, on the produce of slave labour. The Negroes in the South were put under more vigilant and severe restraint, the Abolitionists in the North were mobbed. Such was the result of the last grand movement in America for the abolition of slavery; and we may safely predict, that until the question is viewed in connexion with the facility of obtaining land in the United States,—until the Abolitionists learn something like sound political economy, and go below the surface of things to get at the origin and cause of slavery,—such will be the deplorable result of all attempts, however well-intentioned and enthusiastic, to convert the Negro population of the South into freemen. Holding this opinion, we cannot j-in our elcquent con- temporory the True Sun, in his rejoicings on the " preeeedings of the Anti-Slavery Convention of American Women, liel4 in the tity of New York," though we honour the writer's ft clings. "The Convention," says the True Sun," war. regularlv constituted c.f se- ven:v.(4:c delegates, from the States of New Hampshire, SlesqachusettF.,Hhe,!e island, Nea• York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. The names of 106 ether., including women from Connecticut and South Carolina, :were enrolled as corresponding members; and they appear to have assisted at the proceed- ins. The most businesslike regularity was observed throughout. 1 he reso- lutions are uniformly pertinent, calm, decided, dignified, and imbued with that r&igions feeling and principle by which the whole procedure was characterized. Nothing could be better adapted to repress the cavilling, rebuke the insolence, and abash the rudeness, by which they were sure to be assailed. For our readers must remember, that the slavery question is a very different thing in America from what it ever was here. his mat one of those remote concerns of philantluopy and religion, about which any one may 1;e zealous unquestioned, and even With some credit. It belongs to the great intere•ts of the country. It affects the rights of properte and chartered privileges. To assail it, is like cir touching sonic vital branch of Church apt State—salve timediallowed stitution out of which a large pat ty realizes large profits. And a similar storm of clamour is the consequence. It is always so, when ab.use is most inveterate, and reformation most needed."
We are not sure that the praise hero awarded to the American ladies dues not go rather beyond the mark. It is observable that, with the exception of some from South Carolina, (doubtless be- longing to the North,) all of them are residents in non-slaveholding States, where there is a very powerful and numerous party of Abolitionists. Most of them, doubtless, were accustomed to meet and discuss questions connected with religion in the societies which abound in Massachussetts, Connecticut, and Pennsylvania ; and there was nothing very formidable to them in assembling to pass anti-slavery resolutions, at a time when there was no po- pular excitement on the subject. They resolved-
" That as certain rights and duties are common to all moral beings, the time has come for woman to move in that sphere which Piovidence has assigned her, and no longer remain satisfied in the circumscribed limits with which corrupt custom and a perverted application of Scripture have encircled her ; then fore that it is the duty of woman, and the province of woman, to plead the cruse of the oppressed in our laud, and to do all that she can by her voice, and her pen, and her purse, and the influence of her example, to overthrow the horrible sys'em of American slavery."
Now there is no fondness for slavery in the United States. All the intelligent men who support the system admit that it is dangerous and expensive, and heartily wish they were rid of it. The attempt to excite horror of slavery is superfluous ; and it is quite unnecessary to declaim about its injurious influence on the country. Give the slaveholders free labour, and they would gladly ship off every Negro to Senegal : but until a supply of free labour can be secured to them, all the words of persuasion that can flow from the fairest lips on earth will be unheeded. The only practicable methed of putting an end to slavery, is to make land clear, in a country where, at present, millions of acres are to be had at a nominal price. The period may be hastened by the interference of the Government—it must eventually arrive: but this view of the subject seems never to strike the American Abolitionists, who still persevere in the old useless plan of merely irritating the slaveowners, by declamation on their wickedness, mid highly-wrought descriptions of the horrors of the system. So far as the resolutions of tine female Abolitionists will have any effect, they will tend to make tine condition of the Negro more miser- able now, without in the slightest degree advancing the time of his manumission. The sympathies of the ladies are estimable in themselves ; at present they are wrong-directed. It is not merely with the slaves that the resolutions of the American ladies dual; they touch upon a subject which is really for them delicate and difficult—the social condition of the free Blacks in tine free States. It is well known that the practice of the warmest Abolitionists—persons wino are never weary of pro- claiming the equality in the eye of Goal of the Negro with the White noto—is to treat the former as a being of a degraded caste. The fair Co: ventionists have resolved to break through the osta- blishcd forms of society in this matter, and put Black and White on a par as regards social intercourse. One of their resulu- rims fur the practical enforeetneut of the principle is-
" Tina we, as Abolitionists, use our influence in haring our Col,,urial friends sr,:trioGniisevousig in all one congregations n and that as long as our churches are disgt aced with side-seats and corners set apart her them, we will, as much as take fair scuts With MEM."
There is real intrepidity here; the extent of which can only be imagined by those who have been in one of the Boston churches on a " hobelitionolay '' in July, the mercury ranging from 115 to 130, with not so much as a drop of lavender water or eau de Co- logne to be had for love or money. That the " promiscuous seat- ing" will prevail to any extent, is not credible—certainly not in summer : the pledge to sit among the Negroes as much as possi- ble means, that the ladies will bear it as long as they eau; but their philanthropy will be fur more conspicuous in .Tanuary than in July. The example of a few persons associating with their servants because they are black, while they would never dream of such
familiarity with white persons of the same class, will not be exten- sively followed, or have much influence in elevating the Negr a far an equality with the White man. It will not tend to produce kindly feeling between the Whites and Negroes of the same class; rather, we should suppose, it will augment tho antipathy w hleir exists in the North among all "decent'. persons with fair skins to connexion with the Negroes. Until the two races can intermarry without stigma to the White person, there will be no equality ; and we question whether even the zealous Conventionists of Note Yolk would go so far as to recommend Black husbands to their daughters. On the whole, therefore, with every inclination to do justice to the benevolence which has actuated the American halies in convention assembled, we are not sanguine enough to anti- cipate any material advantage to tine Negro, whether bond or free, from the course their amiable philanthropy has resolved upon.
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