Page:Letters on the condition of the African race in the United States.djvu/36

34 cents for the rest. The miserable apartments in the houses brought about the same prices. Some rooms, however, rented as high as one dollar per week. In the damp double row of the 'Astor building,' we found, although occupied by apparently young married people, there was no child. Neither were there children to be found, except as a very rare instance, in any of the pens we examined on other property around. Struck with the fact, we concluded that an infant, if born in them, could scarcely survive there many weeks. In those families occupying apartments in buildings, which might by courtesy be called houses, though all in these parts were miserably destitute of comforts, there were a few children. They were not, however, either in number or appearance, to be compared with those healthy, happy beings, who swarm around the colored man's home in country places. "The preceding investigation has been carefully made from the statistics obtained by personal inquiry, from door to door, and which were as accurate as can be expected from such inquiries addressed to people, many of whom are too ignorant themselves to give competent answers. The general results may, it is believed, be relied upon as exhibiting the comparative situation of the different sections of our colored population; and, without placing too much reliance upon the numerical statements, they are probably near approximations to the truth."

Such then, my brother, is the condition of the degraded portion of the negroes in Philadelphia. Can you be surprised, then, that I assert, that I can feel sympathy for a great many classes of sinners; but for the abolitionist, the faithless, heartless, wicked smuggler of our slaves, who holds out the word of promise to the ear, and breaks it to the hope; who entices him from his master and his home; who harbors and conceals him from the law, when he commits murder and treason, and indulges in other diabolical passions; and then, after he has, through their instigations, become an outlaw towards God and man, leaves him to perish temporally and eternally;—I say, for the abolitionists, whose creed leads them to do such things, I hope never to feel any sympathy, except that of wishing them converted to Christianity, and then immediately transported to heaven; for their fanaticism could never be subdued by any religion yet attained on earth; but, if they were all safely housed in heaven, they would be beyond the reach of temptation to fall back into their old sinful ways.