I see the thing differently now.

You remember your Uncle Enoch, from Madras, who made your first Malay kite.
I remember a fable which he told you when he was flying the kite for the first time.

"A kite," he said, "high in the air, reasoned thus: If, notwithstanding this string, I fly so high, what would I not do, if I could break away! It gave a dash and became free, and was soon in the woods." I do not mean to strain the comparison; but, certainly, a _string_ has raised, and now keeps up, the colored race, here.

How they would do, if the string were cut, let wiser heads than mine decide.
They cannot have my scissors, at present.
The way to be friends of the slave, I now see, is to be the real friends of their masters, and to pray that the influences of truth and love may fill their hearts.

Where this is the case, the slaves, as a laboring class, are better off than any separate class of laboring people on earth, both for this world and the next.
As to setting them free at once and indiscriminately, it would be as unjust to them as it originally was to steal them from Africa.