PLANTERS AND SLAVES.
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a patient study of the times; and the planters who now live will find the assertion verified. I criminate no man's intentions, acknowledge real difficulties and am compassionate to hereditary prejudices. But compassion becomes party when prejudice degenerates into obstinacy. There are parts in the West I n dian system which no plea of necessity can justify. Why should the planters refuse to change them? Few put them in execution; the majority condemn them; none profit by them. Why should a man, who will not beat a woman himself, be loth to secure a woman from being beaten by others? Why should a man, who is just himself, deny the resource of public justice to those beneath him? How can the Christian, who prays for the improvement of all mankind, block up the inlets to the spiritual regeneration of the coloured men around his house? Why should he wish to do so? What does he fear? Insurrections? It is not knowledge, but uncertainty, which does and will beget commotion; it is not reading and writing, but the forbidden desire of reading and writing; not the light, but glimpses of the light withholden from them, which inflict the torments and inspire the frenzy of Tantalus. The planters do too much or too little in this matter. If they will not enlarge the sphere of civil action nor add to the catalogue of civil pirvileges in favour of the slave, then they do too much for their own safety in permitting any x