As was before observed, the whole black race may, in a few years, be swept off from the country; but who will undertake to say that, as the people of other nations have been employed by Providence to make our railroads and canals, the black race may not be employed for a much longer term to be our servants, both North and South, both East and West?
And who will say that the tenure of 'ownership' may not be the wisest and most benevolent arrangement for all concerned?
I repeat it, I am not arguing for this; I am only trying to show you that the present abuses in slavery are no valid argument against the relation itself; that this may remain when the abuses cease, and therefore that at the present time we ought to discriminate in our arguments against slavery, and direct our assaults, if we continue to be assailers, against its abuses." "On one disagreeable subject," I said to him aside, "I will make this general remark: The Southern slaves are, as a whole, a religious people; their religion, indeed, is of a type corresponding to their condition.
But still, if the South were one festering pool of iniquity, as many at the North fancy, would the colored people show such evidences as they do of moral and spiritual improvement?
Look at Hayti.

A very large majority of the children are not born in wedlock.

Slavery is a moral restraint upon the Southern colored people.

Evil as slavery is, it is, in many things, taking the slaves as they are, a comparative blessing." "But," said Mr.North, "our people generally insist that abuses, oppression, cruelty, are so inherent in slavery that they cannot be removed without destroying the relation itself." "Here," said I, "is the mistake under which Southerners perceive that we labor, and which prevents us from having the least influence with them.
"This, however, is unquestionably true: as human nature is, we would not choose to give men unlimited power over their fellow-men who are slaves.
If, in the course of events, it is found by good men that the abuses flowing from such power are inevitable, that legislative enactments and public opinion cannot control the relation, their consciences will not be quiet till it is abolished.

I am willing to confide this to men as good as we, acting as they will on their responsibility to God.