{By the census of 1840, the population of the two races was as follows: States where slavery is abolished, 9,556,065 whites; 171,854 blacks. Slave states, 4,633,153 whites; 2,581,688 blacks.}
{252} This opinion is sanctioned by authorities infinitely weightier than anything that I can say; thus, for instance, it is stated in the Memoirs of Jefferson (as collected by M. Conseil), "Nothing is more clearly written in the book of destiny than the emancipation of the blacks; and it is equally certain that the two races will never live in a state of equal freedom under the same government, so insurmountable are the barriers which nature, habit, and opinions, have established between them."
{253} If the British West India planters had governed themselves, they would assuredly not have passed the slave emancipation bill which the mother country has recently imposed upon them.
{254} This society assumed the name "The Society for the Colonization of the Blacks." See its annual reports; and more particularly the fifteenth. See also the pamphlet, to which allusion has already been made, entitled "Letters on the Colonization Society, and on its probable results," by Mr. Carey, Philadelphia, April, 1833.
{255} This last regulation was laid down by the founders of the settlement; they apprehended that a state of things might arise in Africa, similar to that which exists on the frontiers of the United States, and that if the negroes, like the Indians, were brought into collision with a people more enlightened than themselves, they would be destroyed before they could be civilized.
{256} Nor would these be the only difficulties attendant upon the undertaking; if the Union undertook to buy up the negroes now in America, in order to transport them to Africa, the price of slaves, increasing with their scarcity, would soon become enormous.
{257} In the original, "Voulant la servitude, il se sont laissé entrainer, malgré eux ou à leur insu, vers la liberté."
"Desiring servitude, they have suffered themselves, involuntarily or ignorantly, to be drawn toward liberty."—Reviser.
{258} See the conduct of the northern states in the war of 1812. "During that war," said Jefferson, in a letter to General Lafayette, "four of the eastern states were only attached to the Union, like so many inanimate bodies to living men."
{259} The profound peace of the Union affords no pretext for a standing army; and without a standing army a government is not prepared to profit by a favorable opportunity to conquer resistance, and take the sovereign power by surprise.