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Show 44 ing life one long day of unprofitable ease. I should rejoice to raise them from children into men. But when I contrast this tranquil, unoffending life with the horrors of a slave plantation, it seems to me a paradise. What matters it that they send next to no coffee or sugar to Europe? How much better, that they should stretch themselves in the heat of the day under their gracefully waving groves, than sweat and bleed under an overseer for others' selfish ease! Hayti has one curse, and that is not freedom, but tyranny. Her President for life is a despot under a less ominous name. Her government, indifferent or hostile to the improvement of the people, is sustained by a standing army, which undoubtedly is an instrument of oppression. But in so simple a form of society, despotism is not that organized robbery which has flourished in the civilized world. Undoubtedly in this rude state of things, the laws are often unwise, partial, and ill administered. I have no taste for this childish condition of society. Still I turn with pleasure from slavery to the thought of a million of fellow beings, little instructed indeed, but enjoying ease and comfort, under that beautiful sky and on the bosom of that exhaustless soil. In one respect Hayti is infinitely advantaged by her change of condition. Under slavery, her colored population, that is, the mass of her inhabitants had no chance of rising, could make no pro- ; 45 gress in intelligence and in the arts and refinements of life. They were doomed to perpetual degradation. Under freedom their improvement is possible. They are placed within the reach of meliorating influences. Their intercourse with other nations, and the opportunities afforded to many among them of bettering their condition, furnish various means and incitements to progress. If the Catholic church, which is rendering at this moment immense aid to civili~ation and pure morals in Ireland, were to enter in earnest on the work of enlightening and regenerating Hayti, or if (what I should greatly prefer,) any other church could have free access to the people, this island might in a short time become an important accession to the Christian and civilized world, and the dark cloud which hangs over the first years of her freedom would vanish before the brightness of her later history. My maxim is, " Any thing but slavery! Poverty sooner than slavery !" Suppose that we of this good city of Boston ,were summoned to choose between living on bread and water and such a state of things as existed in the West Indies. Suppose that the present wealth of our metropolis could be continued only on the condition, that five thousand out of our eighty thousand inhabitants should live as princes, and the rest of us be reduced to slavery to sustain the luxury of our masters. Should we not |