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Untitled Article
hostile collisions with the native powers , and , also , because it is important to avoid all unnecessary sacrifice of the elements from which a more healthy state of feeling may in time be generated in the United States themselves .
But it must not be concealed , that it more especially concerns us to view this question as it affects the condition of the negroes in the West Indies . Now , it is difficult to see with what consistency those who are , at length , contending earnestly for the immediate emancipation of the slaves in our own colonies , can
unite with a Society proceeding on the avowed assumption that a slave must be expatriated before it is politic or even safe to make him free . To do so would be to furnish their opponents with a practical argument ^ of which they are too acute not to perceive the application .
The relative proportion , however , of the three classes in the West Indies is so different from what prevails in America , as materially to affect the results fairly deducible from the same (general principles . In the former , even the free blacks are nearly double in number to the whites , and far from being a living
pestilence / the off-scouring of the population , ' * a greater nuisance than the slaves themselves / they form in many of the
islands an important and valuable portion of the community . They own a considerable amount of property , and , in some instances , mulattoes , at least , are even members of the legislature , a thing unheard of in the United States . That they are to the full as respectable when taken collectively as the corresponding ranks of the whites , we may infer from the fact that in proportion
to their respective numbers , the white paupers are more than double the free blacks , notwithstanding that all the gentry , all the professional men , and a very large proportion of all the substantial classes , are necessarily of the European complexion . But in the West Indies the idea of expatriating all the negroes is clearly inadmissible . To leave these settlements to the exclusive
occupation of the whites , would be to annihilate them at once . If the idea should gain a footing there of the utter incompatibility of the two races , the separation must take place the other way ; and I should not be much surprised before long to hear of meetings of the free blacks , copying the proceedings and ( mutatis
mutandis ) the language of the American whites , in some such style as this ;—* Whereas long experience has clearly demonstrated the utter incompatibility of the Negro and the European , and whereas the existence in the same state of two distinct races which refuse to combine so as to form one people , is highly inexpedient , Itesolvedy That immediate measures be adopted for transporting all the whites , with as little delay as possible , back to England . 'The argument is just as applicable to the whites in the West Indies as to the blacks in the United States , and it is nothiog but
Untitled Article
American Cohnitation Society . 159
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1833, page 159, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2610/page/15/
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