putable settlement was acknowledged by England as a free republic many years ego. The circumstances of the cotton trade for some time past have loosened the grasp of the slaveholders upon it: it seems to have been allowed of late to make its own growth, free from the burden of shiploads of helpless negroes, deported from Southern plantations. The President could hardly have proposed at any former time to recognise the existence of a State formed out of the dregs of Southern plantations, in whose representative some member of Congress might chance to meet a former slave of his own—got rid of fur being dangerously clever or hopelessly stupid; but the state of opinion at Washington is now such as to induce Mr. Lincoln to propose to acknowledge the Republic of Liberia at the same time with the more advanced, hopeful, and dignified Republic of Hayti.
Both, however, are made to usher in the necessary but perplexing question—What is to be done with the slaves in the Confederate States?
The question itself shows that Mr. Lincoln regards emancipation as certain. This is good: but all the rest is so wrong and foolish that we might safely assume that Mr. Lincoln proposed something that would not do, in order to throw upon others the responsibility of whatever will have to be done, He tries to accommodate himself to the vulgar prejudice of colour by taking for granted that the negroes must all go away somewhere. He openly declares that he hopes the free blacks will go away with the slaves; and he holds this out as the great recommendation of the plan to the citizens of the North.
The people are, by Congress, to give money to buy a territory somewhere, outside of their own country; and there the four millions of slaves are to be transported, with as many free blacks as can be induced or compelled to go with them. There they are to be colonised, at the expense, and by the care, of the people of the United States. Such is Mr. Lincoln’s pretended scheme.
Thus, the land of the Southern States would be left without labourers. The owners would be left without servants, or any means of tilling their cotton-fields, or raising food, or keeping their live stock, or having their dinners cooked and their houses swept. The plantations would be left to run to waste. The four millions of negroes would be carried away from shelter and food, to be set down in a wilderness to starve. It is such nonsense to talk of separating the capitalists, the land, and the labourers, so as to render all the three helpless and desolate, that no further words are needed. Mr. Lincoln is perfectly well aware that the planters want the negroes, and that the negroes want the land and wages; and he has no apprehension that he will be taken at his word. The proposal is a safe way of making the admission that emancipation has become a necessity which cannot be deferred inch longer.
What, then, is to be done with the negroes?
The only serious difficulty is in the state of feeling of slave owners towards their negroes. The simile way of settling the matter is to fix a day, near at hand, when the labourers will receive wages instead of supplies in kind, on their agreeing to certain terms, By those terms, the hours and conditions of labour will be agreed upon, and the rent of their dwellings, and the amount of wages. If the owners were living at home, in peace and quiet, the change would be practicable and easy for all just-minded and kind-hearted men; and they would find it very profitable. So it was with the Northern States, and wherever the process has been well managed. But slave-holders are not, generally speaking, just-minded men, where their labourers are concerned; and not all of them are kind-hearted; and thus difficulties have arisen in emancipation cases, and complaints have been made that the negro is idle;—to which the negro replies that he cannot get his pay, and is badly used besides. In the present case, there is the serious embarrassment that the planters are not at home, in peace and quiet. Some are in the army: some have repaired to the cities for safety: some have armed their negroes against an enemy who is described to the slave as having a particular appetite for negro meat: and all are in more or less dread of what may happen under their "peculiar institution.” Last month is not the first time that a great part of Charleston has been burnt; and the negroes knew how to burn cotton before they saw their masters doing it now, all along the coast and the rivers where the Yankees (understood to be a sort of gorillas) can by any means get it. In short, emancipation is necessary now to preclude that worst of horrors, a servile insurrection. It is this pressing need which makes Mr. Lincoln speak of schemes which are an admission of the crisis; and instead of crying out, as some of our journals are doing, against emancipation as setting the slaves to murder their masters, everybody ought to see that in emancipation is the only security for the slave-holders. It is when freedom is denied, and not when it is conferred, that slaves take their case into their own hands. Thus far, American negroes have shown themselves, not murderous but thievish,—not savage but sly. Like our West India negroes, they work to accumulate property; are vain in displaying it; are fond of putting it to pious uses; are ambitious of education for their children; are social, imitative, gregarious,—everything which prevents their running into the wilds to squat, or lurking as banditti, as ignorant people suppose. They are fugitive, and not freed slaves, who infest the swamps. The Abolitionists know the negroes well; and the Abolitionists have proposed what the President is probably aware that he will have to carry out. As in former wars in the same States, the presence of the military and civil officers will free the slaves, and appoint the conditions of that freedom. Those conditions will secure the tillage of the soil, and the carrying on of the regular work of the plantations, under the management of the owners, when they are loyal, and of Government agents when the owner is hostile. Such is the provisional method which will preclude an outbreak at the beginning, and afford time and opportunity for such regulations as may be requisite for the negro, om his ceasing to be a slave, and before he is qualified to become
a citizen. Beside such a feasible and simple pro-