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Show 260 LIBERTY AND SLA\'Rl:\1. ploded."* lie even dccbrcd, that rho f•·ce negro "understands his interest as 'Yell as a Yaukce."t These confident statements, made by an eye-witness, were hailed by tbe abolitionists as conclusive proof tbat the experiment was working admirably. "The great truth has o.ome out," says Dr. Channing, "that the hopes of the most sanguine advocates of emancipation have been realized-if not surpassed-by the West Indies." What! the negro become idle, indeed! "lie is more likely," says the enchanted doctor, "to fall into the civilized man's cupidity than into the filth and sloth of the savage." But all these magnificent boasts were quite premature. A few short years ha1>e sufficed to demonstrate that the deluded authors of them, who had so lamentably failed to predict the future, could not even read the present. Their boasts are now exploded. Their former hopes are blasted ; and their cry is changed. -The song now is,-" Well, suppose the negroes will not work: they are Fl\EE! They can now do as they list, and there is no man to hinder." Ah, yes! they can now, at the it· own sweet will, * Gumey's Letters on tho West Indiee. t Ibid. Al\GUMENT Fl\OM THE PUBLIC OOOD. 261 ~!retch themselves "undur thei1· graccfully-wavmg groves," and be lulled to sleep amid the sound of watctfalls ancl the song of birds. Such, precisely, is the paradise for which the negro sighs, except that he docs not care for the waterfalls ancl the birds. But it should bo remarked, that when sinful man was driven from the only Paradise that earth has ever seen, he was doomed to cat his bread in the sweat of his brow. This doom he cannot reverse. Let him make of lilc-as the liaytiau negroes do-" one long day of unprofitable case,"* and he may dream of Paradise, or the abolitionists may dream for him. But while he dreams, the laws of nature are sternly at their work. Indolence benumbs his feeble intellect, and inflames his passions. Poverty and want are c~cepiug on him. Temptation is surrounding h1.m ;_ and vice, with all her motley train, is wmdmg fust bet· deadly coils around his very soul, and making him the devil's slave to do his work upon the earth. Thus, the b{ossoms of his parm:l.ise arc fine wm·ds, and its fruits are death. "If but two hours' labor per day,'; says * Dr. Channing. |