Page:A Chapter on Slavery.djvu/122

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108
A CHAPTER ON SLAVERY.

make thee an eternal excellence, a joy of many generations.’"[1]

Observe that in this process of separation, which is already begun and must finally be consummated, be tween the two races, it is not the blacks, in all cases, that will have to withdraw. In the West Indies, it is the whites, rather, that are removing; and this will probably continue, and to a still greater extent. This is the case especially in the West India Islands According to a report, made to the Assembly of Jamaica in January, 1853 — there had been, since 1848, a 3 total abandonment of no fewer than one hundred and twenty-eight coffee estates, and a abandonment of seventy-one; also, an entire abandonment of ninety-six sugar estates, and a partial abandonment of sixty-six. This course of things, though exceedingly mortifying and distressing to the whites, may be in accordance with the purposes of Divine Providence in reference to those Islands, and will, we hope, result in final From the large island of Hayti or St. Domingo, formerly a French colony, the whites have, we know, been driven by force; and it is now altogether in the possession of the blacks. In Jamaica and the other English West India Islands, such a measure, we trad; will never need to be resorted to; the blacks having now been emancipated, the whites will, in all probability, be found gradually and voluntarily to withdraw. This process seems already to have begun. It is the natural order of things, that those should possess who can occupy and use. The negro race is fitted by nature to live and labor in the torrid zone, the

  1. Uncle Tom's Cabin, chap. xliii