There is a question of equal magnitude respecting the colored population, not only of the South, but of the whole country.  It is involved in the inquiry:  Can the colored population be converted into an element of national strength?  Physiologically and mentally, the native negro race stands as the middle-man in the five races—­the Caucasian and Malay being above, and the American aborigines and the Alforian below.  The mixture of blood with the Caucasian in America, places the negro element of the United States at least upon a level with the Malay race in natural powers, and from association, much the superior in practical intelligence.  Notwithstanding the crushing laws designed by slaveholders to perpetuate the ignorance and helplessness of the negro, he would improve.  Notwithstanding the brutal and studied policy of slaveholders to slander and disparage the negro capacity for improvement, all the arts of lying hypocrisy have occasionally been set at naught by some convincing exhibition of truth, springing from a fair experiment on the colored man’s susceptibilities.  The white man’s dishonoring inclination to strike the helpless—­made helpless by brutal laws—­has occasionally recoiled in an exposure of the atrocious practice.  The late attempt to introduce a bill into the South-Carolina Legislature, providing for the sale of the free negroes of the State into slavery, led to a disclosure worthy of contemplation.  The Committee to whom the bill was referred stated that—­

’Apart from the consideration that many of the class were good citizens, patterns of industry, sobriety, and irreproachable conduct, there were difficulties of a practical character in the way of those who advocated the bill.  The free colored population of Charleston alone pay taxes on $1,561,870 worth of property; and the aggregate taxes reach $27,209.18.  What will become of the one and a half millions of property which belongs to them in Charleston alone, to say nothing of their property elsewhere in the State?  Can it enter into the mind of any Carolina Legislature to confiscate this property, and pot it in the Treasury?  We forbear to consider any thing so full of injustice and wickedness.  While we are battling for our rights, liberties, and institutions, can we expect the smiles and countenance of the Arbiter of all events, when we make war on the impotent and unprotected, enslave them against all justice, and rob them of the property acquired by their own honest toil and industry, under your former protection and sense of justice?’[E]

This slight exhibition in the Carolina Legislature presents an epitome of the whole argument of cultivated brutality on the one hand, and of humane sense and rationality on the other.  What were the protection and sense of justice here spoken of; and what the sequences flowing from such protection and justice?  The whole question is answered in three words:  Improvement, following encouragement.  What was