Page:The Homes of the New World- Vol. III.djvu/266

Rh in the cities, by their religious festivities, and their songs and dances.

From what I have seen of the good understanding between the white man and the negro, I believe that many of the best heads and the ablest hands among the negro-people would prefer remaining in America, to emigrating from it.

The traveller may then visit these States with an admiration free from any depressing reservation, for they will then advance in moral beauty and political power, and the American Union will then, without an exception, become what it has already declared itself willing to become, a great asylum, diffusing the blessings of liberty to all the nations of the earth, by both precept and example.

It is evident that such an emancipation cannot take place at once, nay, perhaps not for several tens of years. It may be delayed for a century, if we can only see that it is approaching, if we can only see the commencement of its dawn, so that we may know that it will advance into the perfect day.

And it cannot be otherwise; the streaks of dawn are already, even at this moment, piercing the nocturnal shadows which the late political contests between the Free States and the Slave States, called forth over the Union.

I have already mentioned to your Majesty the labours of the Colonisation Society, both in the Northern and the Southern States, as advancing the work of enfranchisement in Africa. I place among the movements, the aim of which is an emancipation of the black slave population of America, the scheme of a law, by that noble, patriotic statesman, Henry Clay, which should declare free all the children of the negro slave born after a certain year, 1856 I believe, a scheme which, however, did not meet with the support of the less noble statesmen; and the endeavours of various noble private individuals for the education and liberation of their slaves.