Page:A Chapter on Slavery.djvu/167

 on that account, more resigned to his condition. But when he is once admitted to a political equality, much of this prestige would soon disappear. The effects of property, education, natural talent, would soon dispel the greater part of their own sense of inferiority, without proportionally altering the opinions of the whites; and the sullen ill-will, which even now occasionally exists, would be exchanged for the more bitter and implacable animosity that arises between equals and rivals struggling for the mastery. History affords little light upon this subject; but the fierce contests between the Saracenic and Gothic races in Spain, — and yet more, between the blacks and the whites of St. Domingo, which ended only in the extermination of the weaker party, — seem to be too much in accordance with the ordinary principles of our nature, not to warn us against so fearful an experiment."

Certainly, the present condition of the great mass of the free colored population in the United States, affords but little encouragement to the sincere friends of emancipation and of the African race. Their degraded