"'I have given you thus hurriedly and disconnectedly my views on these subjects. They are important enough to demand more time and consideration in their discussion, but I believe the opinions I have advanced you will find shared in by a large proportion of the residents of the Province. I am, my dear sir, faithfully yours.' —— ——.
"In addition to the testimony of the writer of the above communication, my views upon the subject under examination were confirmed by the valuable opinion of the Hon. Colonel Prince, the representative of the county in the Provincial Parliament for a long term of years. Colonel Prince has bestowed much consideration upon the negro question, and he has practical experience of the condition and conduct of the colored population. In June, 1858, in the course of a debate in the Legislative Council, Col. Prince was reported to have spoken as follows:
"'In the county of Essex the greatest curse that befell them was the swarm of blacks that infested that county. They were perfectly inundated with them. Some of the finest farmers of the county of Kent had actually left their beautiful farms, so as not to be near this terrible nuisance. If they looked over the criminal calendars of the country they would see that the majority of names were those of colored people. They were a useless, worthless, thriftless set of people, too lazy and indolent to work, and too proud to be taught. . . . . Were the blacks to swarm the country and annoy them with their rascalities? Honorable gentlemen might speak feelingly for the negroes, but they had never lived among them as he had done. Notwithstanding all that he said about them, they would say, if asked on the subject, that they had no better friend than Col. Prince. But there was no use in trying to get the white man to live with them. It was a thing they would not do. There was a great sympathy always expressed for the black man who escaped from the slave life; but he had lived with them twenty-five years, and had come to the conclusion that the black man was born for servitude, and was not fit for any thing else. He might listen to the morbid philanthropy of honorable gentlemen in favor of the negro; but they might as well try to change the spots of the leopard as to change the character of the blacks. They would still retain their idle and thievish propensities.'
"While Col. Prince claims that he was very inaccurately reported, and that he never said one word in favor of slavery, which he professes to abhor with a holy horror, he yet adheres to the opinion that the colored race is not fit to live and mix in freedom with the whites. He deplores deeply the action of such of his countrymen as improperly interfere in the affairs of the States, and condemns the lawless running off of slaves from the South, and the attempts to raise servile insurrection in the slaveholding States. As a constitutional British gentleman, he reveres the laws, and believes that where they are bad, or where the constitution of a country is unwise, the remedy lies in the power of the people by legal means. He sees the evil effect, morally and socially, of the influx of fugitive slaves into Canada, and would shut them out if he could. He knows that the negroes form an enormous portion of the criminals of his county, and the county of Kent, and he is doubly annoyed that men who come from servitude to freedom should abuse their privileges as the negroes do. He admits that every distinct attempt to make a settlement of negroes self-supporting and prosperous, has failed, and he believes that the negro is not yet fit for self-government, and requires over him a guiding, if not a master's hand.
Col. Prince is a gentleman of the old school—hale, hearty and whole-souled—and does not fear to express the sentiments he entertains.
"The lessons taught by an examination into the action of the Canadian abolitionists, and of the condition and prospects of the fugitive slaves in the Province, should be made useful to the American people. The history of the past proves that Great Britain would gladly destroy the Union of the States, which makes the American republic a leading power among nations. As in days past she sought to accomplish this object through the instrumentality of traitors and of the foes of the Union, so now she seeks aid in her designs from the republican abolition enemies of the confederacy in our own States. The intrigues of the British emissaries in Canada should stay the hand of every man who fancies that in helping to rob the South of its slaves he is performing an act of humanity; for they should teach him that he is but helping on the designs of those who look eagerly to the slavery agitation and the sectional passions engendered thereby, to accomplish a disruption of the Union, and encompass the failure of our experiment of free government. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
"Let our merchants and our farmers carefully consider these facts, and then reflect upon what they are required by the abolition agitators to do. To what end are the systematized negro stealing of the North, the attempts to incite insurrection at the South, and their natural results, a dissolution of the Union, to lead? Are we to render New York and the other free States subject to the same deplorable evils as afflict the western counties of Canada? Are our Northern farmers willing to have the value of their lands depreciated, and to subject their crops and stock to constant depredations by inviting here the same class of neighbors that at present deplete whole Canadian townships of their sheep? Unless we desire to accomplish such results, why, under a mistaken idea of charity to the negro, do we take him from a life of usefulness and content at the South to plant him in freedom and suffering at the North? Why do we consent to help forward, directly or indirectly, an agitation that can only incite a disruption of the Union and bring upon us the very evils we deplore?"
IMPORTANT DECISIONS.
Since the volume was in type, the Supreme Court of Ohio has made a decision of great importance to the free colored people. We copy from the Law Journal, December, 1859: