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[We find the following pages in Fraser's Magazine. it would be very proper to commune earnestly Are they by Mr. Carlyle? They will be a grief to many of his admirers in this region, and yet they, and others, (if others indeed there be !) will think it desirable to read whatever the sage may write.]

OCCASIONAL DISCOURSE ON THE NEGRO
QUESTION.

with one another, and discourse together on the leading elements of our great Problem, which surely is one of the greatest. With this view the council has decided, both that the Negro Question, as lying at the bottom, was to be the first handled, and if possible the first settled; and then also, what was of much more questionable wisdom, that-that, in short, I was to be speaker on the occasion. An honorable duty; yet, as I said, a painful one!-Well, you shall hear what I have to say on the matter; and you will not in the least like it.

West-Indian affairs, as we all know, and some

THE following occasional discourse, delivered by we know not whom, and of date seemingly above a year back, may perhaps be welcome to here and there a speculative reader. It comes to us-no speaker named, no time or place assigned, no commentary of any sort given-in the handwriting of the so-called "Doctor," properly "Absconded Reporter," Dr. Phelim M'Quirk, of us know to our cost, are in a rather troublous whose singular powers of reporting, and also condition this good while. In regard to West whose debts, extravagances, and sorrowful insidi- Indian affairs, however, Lord John Russell is able ous finance-operations, now winded up by a sudden to comfort us with one fact, indisputable where so disappearance, to the grief of many poor trades- many are dubious, That the negroes are all very people, are making too much noise in the police- happy and doing well. A fact very comfortable offices at present! Of M'Quirk's composition we indeed. West Indian whites, it is admitted, are by no means suppose it to be; but from M'Quirk, far enough from happy; West Indian colonies as the last traceable source, it comes to us ;- not unlike sinking wholly into ruin at home too, offered, in fact, by his respectable unfortunate the British whites are rather badly off; several landlady, desirous to make up part of her losses millions of them hanging on the verge of conin this way. tinual famine; and, in single towns, many thouTo absconded reporters who bilk their lodg-sands of them very sore put to it, at this time, not ings, we have of course no account to give but to live "well," or as a man should, in any sense if the Speaker be of any eminence or substantiality, and feel himself aggrieved by the transaction, let him understand that such, and such only, is our connection with him or his affairs. As the colonial and negro question is still alive, and likely to grow livelier for some time, we have accepted the article, at a cheap market-rate; and give it publicity, without in the least committing ourselves to the strange doctrines and notions shadowed forth in it. Doctrines and notions which, we rather suspect, are pretty much in a "minority of one," in the present era of the world! Here, sure enough, are peculiar views of the rights of negroes; involving, it is probable, peculiar ditto of innumerable other rights, duties, expectations, wrongs and disappointments, much argued of, by logic and by grape-shot, in these emancipated epochs of the human mind!-Silence now, however; and let the Speaker himself enter.

temporal or spiritual, but to live at all—these,
again, are uncomfortable facts; and they are ex-
tremely extensive and important ones. But, thank
Heaven, our interesting black population-equal-
ling almost in number of heads one of the ridings
of Yorkshire, and in worth (in quantity of intel-
lect, faculty, docility, energy, and available
human valor and value) perhaps one of the streets
of Seven Dials-
s—are all doing remarkably well.
"Sweet blighted lilies," as the American
epitaph on the nigger child has it-sweet blighted
lilies, they are holding up their heads again!
How pleasant, in the universal bankruptcy abroad,
and dim dreary stagnancy at home, as if for
England too there remained nothing but to sup-
press Chartist riots, banish united Irishmen, vote
the supplies, and wait with arms crossed till black
anarchy and social death devoured us also, as it
has done the others; how pleasant to have always
this fact to fall back upon: Our beautiful black
darlings are at last happy; with little labor except
to the teeth, which surely, in those excellent horse-
jaws of theirs, will not fail!

My Philanthropic Friends,-It is my painful duty to address some words to you, this evening, on the Rights of Negroes. Taking, as we hope we do, an extensive survey of social affairs, Exeter Hall, my philanthropic friends, has had which we find all in a state of the frightfullest its way in this matter. The twenty millions, a embroilment, and, as it were, of inextricable final mere trifle despatched with a single dash of the bankruptcy, just at present; and being desirous to pen, are paid; and, far over the sea, we have a adjust ourselves in that huge upbreak, and unut- few black persons rendered extremely "free" interable welter of tumbling ruins, and to see well deed. Sitting yonder with their beautiful muzthat our grand proposed Association of Associa- zles up to the ears in pumpkins, imbibing sweet tions, the UNIVERSAL ABOLITION-OF-PAIN Asso- pulps and juices; the grinder and incisor teeth CIATION, which is meant to be the consummate ready for every new work, and the pumpkins golden flower and summary of modern Philanthropisms all in one, do not issue as a universal "Sluggard-and-Scoundrel Protection Society,"we have judged that, before constituting ourselves,

cheap as grass in those rich climates; while the sugar-crops rot round them uncut, because labor cannot be hired, so cheap are the pumpkins ;—and at home we are but required to rasp from the breakfast

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take his own time in supplying it. Higher wages, massa; higher, for your cane-crop cannot wait; still higher-till no conceivable opulence of canecrop will cover such wages! In Demerara, as I read in the blue book of last year, the cane-crop, far and wide, stands rotting; the fortunate black gentlemen, strong in their pumpkins, having all struck till the "demand" rise a little. Sweet, blighted lilies, now getting up their heads again !

loaves of our own English laborers some slight hour a day, (such is the calculation,) can supply "differential sugar-duties," and lend a poor half- himself, by aid of sun and soil, with as much million, or a few more millions, now and then, to pumpkin as will suffice, he is likely to be a little keep that beautiful state of matters going on. A stiff to raise into hard work! Supply and destate of matters lovely to contemplate, in these mand, which, science says, should be brought to emancipated epochs of the human mind; which bear on him, have an uphill task of it with such a has earned us not only the praises of Exeter Hall, | man. Strong sun supplies itself gratis, rich soil, and loud, long-eared hallelujahs of laudatory psalm- in those unpeopled or half-peopled regions, almost ody from the friends of freedom everywhere, but gratis; these are his supply; and half an hour a lasting favor (it is hoped) from the Heavenly Pow-day, directed upon these, will produce pumpkin ers themselves;-which may, at least, justly which is his "demand." The fortunate black appeal to the Heavenly Powers, and ask them, if man, very swiftly does he settle his account with ever, in terrestrial procedure, they saw the match supply and demand ;-not so swiftly the less forof it? Certainly in the past history of the human tunate white man of these tropical localities. He species it has no parallel; nor, one hopes, will it himself cannot work; and his black neighbor, have in the future. rich in pumpkin, is in no haste to help him. Sunk Sunk in deep froth-oceans of "Benevolence," to the ears in pumpkin, imbibing saccharine juices, "Fraternity, 'Emancipation-principle,' ""Chris- and much at his ease in the creation, he can listen tian Philanthropy," and other most amiable-look-to the less fortunate white man's" demand," and ing, but most baseless, and in the end baleful and all-bewildering jargon—sad product of a sceptical eighteenth century, and of poor human hearts left destitute of any earnest guidance, and disbelieving that there ever was any, Christian or heathen, and reduced to believe in rosepink sentimentalism alone, and to cultivate the same under its Christian, anti-Christian, broad-brimmed, Brutus-headed, and other forms—has not the human species gone strange roads during that period? and poor Exeter Hall, cultivating the broad-brimmed form of Christian sentimentalism, and long talking and bleating and braying in that strain, has it not worked out results? Our West India legislatings, with their spoutings, anti-spoutings, and interminable jangle and babble; our twenty millions down on the nail for blacks of our own; thirty gradual millions more, and many brave British lives to boot, in watching blacks of other people's; and now, at last, our ruined sugar-estates, differential sugar-duties, "immigration loan," and beautiful blacks sitting there up to the ears in pumpkins, and doleful whites sitting here without potatoes to eat; never, till now, I think, did the sun look down on such a jumble of human nonsenses;-of which, with the two hot nights of the MissingDespatch Debate,* God grant that the measure might now at last be full ! But no, it is not yet full; we have a long way to travel back, and ter-will be a consummation. To have " emancipated" rible flounderings to make, and in fact an immense load of nonsense to dislodge from our poor heads, and manifold cobwebs to rend from our poor eyes, before we get into the road again, and can begin to act as serious men that have work to do in this Our own white or sallow Ireland, sluttishly Universe, and no longer as windy sentimentalists, starving from age to age on its act-of-parliament that merely have speeches to deliver and despatches" freedom," was hitherto the flower of mismanageto write. Oh Heaven, in West-Indian matters, ment among the nations; but what will this be to and in all manner of matters, it is so with us-a Negro Ireland, with pumpkins themselves fallen the more is the sorrow! scarce like potatoes? Imagination cannot fathom The West Indies, it appears, are short of labor; such an object; the belly of Chaos never held the as indeed is very conceivable in those circum-like. The human mind, in its wide wanderings, stances. Where a black man, by working half an has not dreampt yet of such a "freedom" as that *Does any reader now remember it? A cloudy remi- will be. Towards that, if Exeter Hall and sciniscence of some such thing, and of noise in the news- ence of supply and demand are to continue our papers upon it, remains with us-fast hastening to aboli-guides in the matter, we are daily travelling, and

tion for every man.

Science, however, has a remedy still. Since the demand is so pressing, and the supply so inadequate, (equal in fact to nothing in some places, as appears,) increase the supply; bring more blacks into the labor-market, then will the rate fall, says science. Not the least surprising part of our West Indian policy is this recipe of" immigration;" of keeping down the labor-market in those islands by importing new Africans to labor and live there. If the Africans that are already there could be made to lay down their pumpkins and labor for their living, there are already Africans enough. If the new Africans, after laboring a little, take to pumpkins like the others, what remedy is there? To bring in new and ever new Africans, say you, till pumpkins themselves grow dear; till the country is crowded with Africans; and black men there, like white men here, are forced by hunger to labor for their living? That

the West Indies into a Black Ireland—“ free," indeed, but an Ireland, and black! The world may yet see prodigies, and reality be stranger than a nightmare dream.

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even struggling, with loans of half a million and be; but has an indisputable and perpetual right such-like, to accelerate ourselves.

to be compelled, by the real proprietors of said Truly, my philanthropic friends, Exeter Hall land, to do competent work for his living. This philanthropy is wonderful; and the social science is the everlasting duty of all men, black or white, -not a "gay science," but a rueful-which finds who are born into this world. To do competent the secret of this universe in "supply and de- work, to labor honestly according to the ability mand," and reduces the duty of human governors given them; for that, and for no other purpose, to that of letting men alone, is also wonderful. was each one of us sent into this world; and woe Not a 66 gay science," I should say, like some we is to every man who, by friend or by foe, is prehave heard of; no, a dreary, desolate, and in-vented from fulfilling this the end of his being. deed quite abject and distressing one; what we That is the " unhappy" lot; lot equally unhappy might call, by way of eminence, the dismal sci- cannot otherwise be provided for man. Whatsoence. These two, Exeter Hall Philanthropy and ever prohibits or prevents a man from this his sathe Dismal Science, led by any sacred cause of black cred appointment to labor while he lives on earth emancipation, or the like, to fall in love and make—that, I say, is the man's deadliest enemy; and

a wedding of it—will give birth to progenies and prodigies; dark, extensive moon-calves, unnameable abortions, wide-coiled monstrosities, such as the world has not seen hitherto !

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all men are called upon to do what is in their power or opportunity towards delivering him from it. If it be his own indolence that prevents and prohibits him, then his own indolence is the eneIn fact, it will behove us of this English nation my he must be delivered from; and the first to overhaul our West Indian procedure from top right" he has-poor indolent blockhead, black to bottom; and to ascertain a little better what it or white-is, that every unprohibited man, whatis that fact and nature demand of us, and what only soever wiser, more industrious person may be passExeter Hall wedded to the Dismal Science de- ing that way, shall endeavor to" emancipate” him mands. To the former set of demands we will from his indolence, and by some wise means, as I endeavor, at our peril-and worse peril than our said, compel him to do the work he is fit for. purse's, at our soul's peril—to give all obedience. This is the eternal law of nature for a man, my To the latter we will very frequently demur; and beneficent Exeter Hall friends; this, that he shall try if we cannot stop short where they contradict be permitted, encouraged, and, if need be, comthe former; and especially before arriving at the pelled to do what work the Maker of him has black throat of ruin, whither they appear to be intended by the making of him for this world. leading us. Alas, in many other provinces be- Not that he should eat pumpkin with never such sides the West Indian, that unhappy wedlock of felicity in the West India Islands is, or can be, the Philanthropic Liberalism and the Dismal Science blessedness of our black friend; but that he should has engendered such all-enveloping delusions, of | do useful work there, according as the gifts have the moon-calf sort; and wrought huge woe for been bestowed on him for that. And his own us, and for the poor civilized world, in these days! happiness, and that of others around him, will And sore will be the battle with said moon-calves; alone be possible by his and their getting into such and terrible the struggle to return out of our delu- a relation that this can be permitted him, and in sions, floating rapidly on which, not the West case of need that this can be compelled him. I Indies alone, but Europe generally, is nearing the beg you to understand this; for you seem to have Niagara Falls. [Here various persons, in an ag- a little forgotten it, and there lie a thousand inferitated manner, with an air of indignation, lift the ences in it, not quite useless for Exeter Hall, at room; especially one very tall gentleman in white present. The idle black man in the West Indies trousers, whose boots creaked much. The president, had not long since the right, and will again under in a resolved voice, with a look of official rigor, what-better form, if it please Heaven, have the right ever his own private feelings might be, enjoined, "Silence! Silence!" The meeting again sat motionless. My philanthropic friends, can you discern no fixed headlands in this wide-weltering deluge of benevolent twaddle and revolutionary grape-shot that has burst forth on us; no sure bearings at all? Fact and Nature, it seems to me, say a few words to us, if happily we have still an ear for fact and nature. Let us listen a little, and try.

And first, with regard to the West Indies, it may be laid down as a principle, which no eloquence in Exeter Hall, or Westminster Hall, or elsewhere, can invalidate or hide, except for a short time only, that no black man, who will not work according to what ability the gods have given him for working, has the smallest right to eat pumpkin, or to any fraction of land that will grow pumpkin, however plentiful such land may

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(actually the first "right of man" for an indolent person) to be compelled to work as he was fit, and to do the Maker's will, who had constructed him with such and such prefigurements of capability. And I incessantly pray Heaven, all men, the whitest alike and the blackest, the richest and the poorest, in other regions of the world, had attained precisely the same right, the divine right of being compelled (if permitted" will not answer) to do what work they are appointed for, and not to go idle another minute, in a life so short! Alas, we had then a perfect world! and the millennium, and true organization of labor," and reign of complete blessedness, for all workers and men, had then arrived-which, in these our own poor districts of the planet, as we all lament to know, it is very far from having yet done.

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Let me suggest another consideration withal.

West India Islands, still full of waste fertility, them, they were as if not yet created-their noble produce abundant pumpkins; pumpkins, however, elements of cinnamon, sugar, coffee, pepper black you will please to observe, are not the sole requi- and gray, lying all asleep, waiting the white Ensite for human well-being. No; for a pig they chanter who should say to them, Awake! Till are the one thing needful-but for a man, they are the end of human history and the sounding of the only the first of several things needful. And trump of doom, they might have lain so, had now, as to the right of chief management in cul- Quashee and the like of him been the only artists tivating those West India lands; as to the "right in the game. Swamps, fever-jungles, man-eating of property" so called, and of doing what you Caribs, rattle-snakes, and reeking waste and putrelike with your own. The question is abstruse faction-this had been the produce of them under enough. Who it may be that has a right to the incompetent Caribal (what we call cannibal) raise pumpkins and other produce on those islands, possessors till that time; and Quashee knows, perhaps none can, except temporarily, decide. himself, whether ever he could have introduced The islands are good withal for pepper, for sugar, an improvement. Him, had he by a miraculous for sago, arrowroot, for coffee, perhaps for cinna-chance been wafted thither, the Caribals would mon and precious spices-things far nobler than have eaten, rolling him as a fat morsel under their pumpkins, and leading towards commerces, arts, politics, and social developments, which alone are the noble product, wheremen (and not pigs with pumpkins) are the parties concerned! Well, all this fruit, too, fruit spicy and commercial, fruit spiritual and celestial, so far beyond the merely pumpkinish and grossly terene, lies in the West India lands; and the ultimate " proprietorship" of them-why, I suppose, it will vest in him who can the best educe from them whatever of noble produce they were created fit for yielding. He, I compute, is the real "Vicegerent of the Maker" there; in him, better and better chosen, and not in another, is the "property" vested by decree of Heaven's chancery itself!

tongue; for him, till the sounding of the trump of doom, the rattle-snakes and savageries would have held on their way. It was not he, then; it was another than he! Never by art of his could one pumpkin have grown there to solace any human throat; nothing but savagery and reeking putrefaction could have grown there. These plentiful pumpkins I say, therefore, are not his; no, they are another's; they are his only under con-ditions-conditions which Exeter Hall, for the present, has forgotten; but which Nature and the Eternal Powers have by no manner of means forgotten, but do at all moments keep in mind; and, at the right moment, will, with the due impres siveness, perhaps in rather a terrible manner, bring again to our mind also!

If Quashee will not honestly aid in bringing out those sugars, cinnamons, and nobler products of the West Indian Islands, for the benefit of all mankind, then I say neither will the powers permit Quashee to continue growing pumpkins there for his own lazy benefit; but will sheer him out, by and by, like a lazy gourd overshadowing rich ground; him and all that partake with him—perhaps in a very terrible manner. For, under favor of Exeter Hall, the "terrible manner" is not yet quite extinct with the destinies in this universe; nor will it quite cease, I apprehend, for soft sawder or philanthropic stump-oratory now or hence

Up to this time it is the Saxon British mainly; they hitherto have cultivated with some manfulness; and when a manfuller class of cultivators, stronger, worthier to have such land, abler to bring fruit from it, shall make their appearance, they, doubt it not, by fortune of war and other confused negotiation and vicissitude, will be declared by Nature and Fact to be the worthier, and will become proprietors-perhaps also only for a time. That is the law, I take it; ultimate, supreme, for all lands in all countries under this sky. The one perfect eternal proprietor is the Maker who created them; the temporary better or worse proprietor is he whom the Maker has sent on that mission; he who the best hitherto can forth. No; the gods wish, besides pumpkins, educe from said lands the beneficent gifts the Maker endowed them with; or, which is but another definition of the same person, he who leads hitherto the manfullest life on that bit of soil, doing better than another yet found can do, the Eternal Purpose and Supreme Will there.

that spices and valuable products be grown in their West Indies; thus much they have declared in so making the West Indies :-infinitely more they wish, that manful industrious men occupy their West Indies, not indolent two-legged cattle, however "happy" over their abundant pumpkins! And now observe, my friends, it was not Black Both these things, we may be assured, the immorQuashee, or those he represents, that made those tal gods have decided upon, passed their eternal West India Islands what they are, or can by any act of parliament for; and both of them, though hypothesis be considered to have the right of grow-all terrestrial parliaments and entities oppose it ing pumpkins there. For countless ages, since to the death, shall be done. Quashee, if he will they first mounted oozy on the back of earth- not help in bringing out the spices, will get himquakes, from their dark bed in the ocean deeps, and self made a slave again, (which state will be a reeking saluted the tropical sun, and ever onwards little less ugly than his present one,) and with till the European white man first saw them some beneficent whip, since other methods avail not, three short centuries ago, those islands had pro- will be compelled to work. Or, alas, let him duced mere jungle, savagery, poison-reptiles, and look across to Haiti, and trace a far sterner prophswamp-malaria; till the white European first saw ecy! Let him, by his ugliness, idleness, rebel

will be, that Quashee give work for privilege to grow pumpkins. Not a pumpkin, Quashee, not a square yard of soil, till you agree to do the state so many days of service. Annually that soil will grow you pumpkins; but annually also without fail shall you, for the owner thereof, do your appointed days of labor. The state has plenty of waste soil; but the state will religiously give you none of it on other terms. The state wants sugar from these islands, and means to have it; wants virtuous industry in these islands, and must have it. The state demands of you such service as will bring these results, this latter result which includes all. Not a black Ireland, by immigration, and boundless black supply for the demand; not that-may the gods forbid !— but a regulated West Indies, with black working population in adequate numbers; all "happy,” if they find it possible; and not entirely unbeautiful to gods and men, which latter result they must find possible! All " happy" enough; that is to say, all working according to the faculty they have got, making a little more divine this earth which the gods have given them. Is there any other "happiness"-if it be not that of pigs fattening daily to the slaughter? So will the state speak by and by.

lion, banish all white men from the West Indies, | sion and fated turn of the wheel-brought about and make it all one Haiti-with little or no sugar these present confusions. Fair towards Britain it growing, black Peter exterminating black Paul, and, where a garden of the Hesperides might be, nothing but a tropical dog-kennel and pestiferous jungle does he think that will forever continue pleasant to gods and men? I see men, the rosepink cant all peeled away from them, land one day on those black coasts; men sent by the laws of this universe, and the inexorable course of things; men hungry for gold, remorseless, fierce as old Buccaneers were ;-and a doom for Quashee which I had rather not contemplate! The gods are long-suffering; but the law from the beginning was, He that will not work shall perish from the earth, and the patience of the gods has limits! Before the West Indies could grow a pumpkin for any negro, how much European heroism had to spend itself in obscure battle; to sink, in mortal agony, before the jungles, the putrescences and waste savageries could become arable, and the devils be in some measure chained there! The West Indies grow pine-apples, and sweet fruits, and spices; we hope they will one day grow beautiful heroic human lives too, which is surely the ultimate object they were made for beautiful souls and brave; sages, poets, what not; making the earth nobler round them, as their kindred from of old have been doing; true "splinters of the old Harz Rock;" heroic white men, worthy to be called old Saxons, browned with a mahogany tint in those new climates and conditions. But under the soil of Jamaica, before it could even produce spices or any pumpkin, the bones of many thousand British men had to be laid. Brave Colonel Fortescue, brave Colonel Sedgwick, brave Colonel Brayne-the dust of many thousand strong old English hearts lies there; worn down swiftly in frightful travail, chaining the devils which were" work," and of a world all going to waste for manifold. Heroic Blake contributed a bit of his life to that Jamaica. A bit of the great Protector's own life lies there; beneath those pumpkins lies a bit of the life that was Oliver Cromwell's. How the great Protector would have rejoiced to think that all this was to issue in growing pumpkins to keep Quashee in a comfortably idle condition! No; that is not the ultimate issue; not that.

Any poor idle black man, any idle white man, rich or poor, is a mere eye-sorrow to the state; a perpetual blister on the skin of the state. The state is taking measures, some of them rather extensive in Europe at this very time, and already, as in Paris, Berlin, and elsewhere, rather tremendous measures, to get its rich white men set to work; for, alas, they also have long sat negrolike up to the ears in pumpkin, regardless of

their idleness! Extensive measures, I say; and already (as, in all European lands, this scandalous year of street-barricades and fugitive sham-kings exhibits) tremendous measures; for the thing is instant to be done.

The thing must be done everywhere; must is the word. Only it is so terribly difficult to do; and will take generations yet, this of getting our rich European white men set to work!" But The West Indian whites, so soon as this bewil-yours in the West Indies, my obscure black derment of philanthropic and other jargon abates friends, your work, and the getting of you set to from them, and their poor eyes get to discern a it, is a simple affair; and by diligence, the West little what the facts are and what the laws are, Indian legislatures, and royal governors, setting will strike into another course, I apprehend! I their faces fairly to the problem, will get it done. apprehend they will, as a preliminary, resolutely You are not "slaves" now; nor do I wish, if it refuse to permit the black man any privilege what- can be avoided, to see you slaves again but deever of pumpkins till he agree for work in return. cidedly you will have to be servants to those that Not a square inch of soil in those fruitful isles, are born wiser than you, that are born lords of purchased by British blood, shall any black man you-servants to the whites, if they are (as what hold to grow pumpkins for him, except on terms mortal can doubt they are?) born wiser than you. that are fair towards Britain. Fair; see that That, you may depend on it, my obscure black they be not unfair, not towards ourselves, and still friends, is and was always the law of the world, more, not towards him. For injustice is forever for you and for all men to be servants, the more accursed and precisely our unfairness towards foolish of us to the more wise; and only sorrow, the enslaved black man has-by inevitable revul- futility and disappointment will betide both, till

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