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COLONIZATION OF THE UNITED STATES.

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riches, those of the Carthaginians to the isles of the Mediterranean, and the coasts of Spain and Africa; necessity, those of the Athenians into Asia Minor, the people becoming too numerous for their limited and barren territory; prudence, that of the Lacedemonians to Tarentum, to deliver themselves from some turbulent citizens; and urgent policy, the numerous small and unimportant colonies of the Romans, who showed their wisdom in giving up to their colonists a portion of the conquered countries; because they appeased the people, who incessantly demanded a new division of the land, and because they thus formed of the discontented themselves a sure guard in the countries which they had subdued. The ardour for plunder, and the fury of war, much more than the excess of population, sent the colonies, or rather irruptions of the people of the north into the Roman empire; and a romantic piety, greedy of conquest, those of the European croisaders into Asia.

After the discovery of America, the folly, injustice, and avarice of individuals thirsting after gold, threw them upon the first countries to which their barks conveyed them. The more rapacious they were, the more they separated; they wished not to cultivate, but to lay waste. Those, indeed, were not true colonists. Some time afterward, religious dissensions gave birth to more regular establishments; thus the puritans took refuge in the north of America; the English catholics in Maryland; the quakers in Pennsylvania; whence Dr. Smith concludes, that the vices, not the wisdom of European governments, peopled the new world. Other great emigrations likewise, were owing to a gloomy policy, falsely called religious. Thus Spain rejected the Moors from her bosom; France the protestants; almost all governments the Jews; and every where the error which had dictated such deplorable counsels was recognized too late. They had discontented subjects, and they made them enemies who might have served, but were forced to injure, their country.

The inhabitants of the United States consist of Europeans and their descendants, African negroes and

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their descendants, and the Aboriginal Indians,-of which last it is not intended to treat, as they are verging rapidly to extinction, under the pressure of American encroachment, which Mr. Monroe, in his Message of the 2d of December, 1817, maintains to be quite proper, and says, "The hunter state can exist only in the vast uncultivated desert. It yields to the more dense and compact form, and greater force of civilized population; and, of right, it ought to yield, for the earth was given to mankind, to support the greatest number of which it is capable, and no tribe or people have a right to withhold from the wants of others more than is necessary for their own support and comfort."

The great mass of our people is of English origin, and not made up, originally, of convicts, mendicants, and vagabonds, according to the vulgar, but erroneous opinion. The first settlers in this country were, for the most part, of respectable families and good character, who came hither under the guidance of intelligent and distinguished leaders, and laid the basis of an innumerable people in the best principles and habits of religious toleration, political independence, and social virtue. These early colonists fled from civil and religious persecution in their native country, to find an asylum in the western world, and have given birth to a people who still retain the puritanical precision, the stern republicanism, and the daring intrepidity of their ancestors. New-England was settled altogether by Englishmen, except an Irish colony in the hilly part of one county of Massachusetts, and a few Scottish and Irish settlements in New-Hampshire. With these exceptions, the New-England population is, at this hour, entirely of English origin. The same source also supplies a great majority of the people in the middle, and a still larger proportion in the southern states. The Germans make about a fourth of the population of Pennsylvania, and a part of the inhabitants of New-York and New-Jersey. They are, however, fast yielding their language, habits, and customs to the predominance of the English. The same may be said of the Dutch

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settled in New-York, New-Jersey, and Pennsylvania. A few French protestants settled at New Rochelle and Staten-Island, in the state of New-York, and in Charleston, South-Carolina. The Irish emigrants are found chiefly in Pennsylvania and Maryland; and many are scattered over New-York, New-Jersey, Kentucky, and some other states. Those who are papists, from the middle and south of Ireland, compose the bulk of the day labourers in our large cities; the protestants from the north of Ireland generally become agriculturists in the interior of the country.

The Scottish, who are generally intelligent, industrious, good citizens, have settlements in New-Hampshire, New-York, New-Jersey, Pennsylvania, and North-Carolina. Some Swedes are found in NewJersey, Pennsylvania, and Maryland; and some Swiss are settled in the state of Indiana. Some small Welsh settlements have been made in Pennsylvania and NewYork. The new states, which are continually rising, like exhalations from the earth, in the western country, and denoting a growth of population rapid and gigantic, beyond all parallel in the history of nations, are supplied with settlers chiefly from the annual surplus of New-England, which indeed has been for many years the officina gentium to the states of New-York, Ohio, Kentucky, and all the interminable regions of the west.

The accessions from foreign countries make but a small proportion of the aggregate of American population. From 1785 to 1815, the annual importation of foreigners into the United States did not exceed five thousand. Since that period the European migrations hither have been more abundant. Of these, the French, in great numbers, direct their steps to the Alabama territory; and the Irish are endeavouring, under the auspices of Mr. Emmet, of New-York, to get up an Hibernian colony in the Illinois country. Many of our imported foreigners are the lees and dregs, the refuse, the vilest specimens of Irish and English population, who reside chiefly in the large cities on our seaboard, and show forth their patriotism by incessantly vilifying

all the institutions of their native country, and by violating the laws of their adopted nation. The proportion of these imported politicians, however, to the whole community, is not great. The New-England States, throughout, are unpolluted with the mixture of foreign population; and our yeomanry, generally, all over the Union, are native Americans.

Full one million seven hundred thousand negroes are held as slaves in the United States, which also contain upwards of two hundred thousand free people of colour. Both these classes, however, acquire occasionally an admixture of the blood of the white portion of our population, and the mestizos are gaining fast in number upon the blacks. The great body of American negroes are to be found in our southern states.

The experience of all history proves that the struc ture of society in slave-holding countries is unfavourable to internal security and peace at all times; and still more so to security and strength in the season of foreign warfare. Indeed, all moral evil possesses a dreadful power of perpetuating and augmenting its own atrocity; whence, the evil of slavery, once established, scarcely admits of remedy; because the emancipation of slaves in large masses is nearly, if not quite impracticable; the difference between the habits of a slave and those of a free citizen being wide as the poles asunder. A slave is ignorant of the very elements of industry, which is the basis of all social prosperity. While in bondage he only obeys the impulse of another's will, he is actuated by no other motive than the dread of the lash; whereas, when made free, he must think, will, plan, provide for himself and family, and perform all the duties of a citizen. It is necessary to make a slave a man, an animal capable of thought and reflection, before he is made a free man. The slave, recently liberated, has experienced only the most laborious and irksome of the occupations of a citizen, and not having learned any forecast, is unwilling to toil when free. The negroes of St. Domingo at first knew only the two extremes of slavery and rebellion; afterward they experienced the

SLAVES IN THE UNITED STATES.

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blessings of military despotism, under the pressure of which they at this hour bend and groan; and it is not easy to determine from which of these three miserable states the transition to the social and orderly rank of a free citizen is most difficult.

Besides, our slaves are in a very uncivilized state; and, as is peculiarly exemplified in our aboriginal Indians, the industry of a savage, his habits of voluntary obedience, his perception of political rights, his capacity of becoming the citizen of a regular community, is still lower than that of a mere slave. He is quite ignorant. of the necessity of voluntary exertion and peaceable submission, which forms the strongest cement of civilized society. Savages know no medium between the extremes of unlimited servility and uncontrolled despotism; among them it is the lot of the slave to obey and toil, the privilege of the master to command and be idle. This is manifested all over the coast of Africa, where the sable chiefs exercise absolute sway over their wretched subjects, or slaves. We are not, therefore, to expect that a body of emancipated slaves, whether emancipated by manumission or rebellion, can be converted into a community of free citizens, living under a regular government and equitable laws. Much instruction on this point may be derived from a careful perusal of Mr. Brougham's very able and learned work on "Colonial Policy; and Sir James Lucas Yeo's recent letter to Mr. Croker contains some very interesting information respecting the condition and conduct of the free negro colony at Sierra Leone.

The experience of St. Domingo, for nearly twentyfive years past, proves that revolted slaves are incapable of receiving and enjoying the blessings of free institutions, for they have only exchanged the horrors of civil bondage for those of military despotism. And the emancipated Negroes of Massachusetts prove that such an order of beings have not the capacity of availing themselves of the benefits of civil liberty. For in that state, where slavery is abolished by law, and which consequently opens an asylum to fugitive slaves from

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