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written down with intricate but ineffaceable record, legible to candid human insight, in the respective qualities, strengths, necessities and capabilities of each of the two this, as I told the Hon. Hickory my Carolina correspondent, will be a long problem; only to be solved by continuous human endeavour, and earnest effort gradually perfecting itself as experience successively yields new light to it. This will be to find the right terms;' terms of a contract that will endure, and be sanctioned by Heaven, and obtain prosperity on Earth, between the two. A long problem, terribly neglected hitherto;—whence these West-Indian sorrows, and Exeter-Hall monstrosities, just now! But a problem which must be entered upon, and by degrees be completed. A problem which, I think, the English People also, if they mean to retain human Colonies, and not Black Irelands in addition to the White, cannot begin too soon. What are the true relations between Negro and White, their mutual duties under the sight of the Maker of them both; what human laws will assist both to comply more and more with these? The solution, only to be gained by earnest endeavour, and sincere reading of experience, such as have never yet been bestowed on it, is not yet here; the solution is perhaps still distant. But some approximation to it, various real approximations, could be made, and must be made this of declaring that Negro and White are unrelated, loose from one another, on a footing of perfect equality, and subject to no law but that of supply-and-demand according to the Dismal Science; this, which contradicts the palpablest facts, is clearly no solution, but a cutting of the knot asunder; and every hour we persist in this is leading us towards dissolution instead of solution!

What, then, is practically to be done by us poor English with our Demerara and other blacks? Well, in such a mess as we have made there, it is not easy saying what is first to be done! But all this of perfect equality, of cutting quite loose from one another; all this, with 'immigration loan,' 'happiness of black peasantry,' and the other melancholy stuff that has followed from it, will first of all require to be undone, and the ground cleared of it, by way of preliminary to 'doing' ! After that there may several things be possible.

Already one hears of Black Adscripti glebæ; which seems a promising arrangement, one of the first to suggest itself in

such a complicacy. It appears the Dutch Blacks, in Java, are already a kind of Adscripts, after the manner of the old European serfs; bound, by royal authority, to give so many days of work a year. Is not this something like a real approximation; the first step towards all manner of such? Wherever, in British territory, there exists a Black man, and needful work to the just extent is not to be got out of him, such a law, in defect of better, should be brought to bear upon said Black man! How many laws of like purport, conceivable some of them, might be brought to bear upon the Black man and the White, with all despatch by way of solution instead of dissolution to their complicated case just now! On the whole, it ought to be rendered possible, ought it not, for White men to live beside Black men, and in some just manner to command Black men, and produce West-Indian fruitfulness by means of them? WestIndian fruitfulness will need to be produced. If the English cannot find the method for that, they may rest assured there will another come (Brother Jonathan or still another) who can. He it is whom the gods will bid continue in the West Indies; bidding us ignominiously, "Depart, ye quack-ridden, incompetent!"—

One other remark, as to the present Trade in Slaves, and to our suppression of the same. If buying of Black war-captives in Africa, and bringing them over to the Sugar Islands for sale again be, as I think it is, a contradiction of the Laws of this Universe, let us heartily pray Heaven to end the practice; let us ourselves help Heaven to end it, wherever the opportunity is given. If it be the most flagrant and alarming contradiction to the said Laws which is now witnessed on this Earth; so flagrant and alarming that a just man cannot exist, and follow his affairs, in the same Planet with it; why, then indeed- But is it, quite certainly, such? Alas, look at that group of unsold, unbought, unmarketable Irish "free" citizens, dying there in the ditch, whither my Lord of Rackrent and the constitutional sheriffs have evicted them; or at those "divine missionaries," of the same free country, now traversing, with rags on back, and child on each arm, the principal thoroughfares of London, to tell men what "freedom" really is; —and admit that there may be doubts on that point! But if

it is, I say, the most alarming contradiction to the said Laws which is now witnessed on this earth; so flagrant a contradiction that a just man cannot exist, and follow his affairs, in the same Planet with it, then, sure enough, let us, in God's name, fling-aside all our affairs, and hasten out to put an end to it, as the first thing the Heavens want us to do. By all manner of means. This thing done, the Heavens will prosper all other things with us! Not a doubt of it,—provided your premiss be not doubtful.

But now, furthermore, give me leave to ask, Whether the way of doing it is this somewhat surprising one, of trying to blockade the continent of Africa itself, and to watch slave-ships along that extremely extensive and unwholesome coast? The enterprise is very gigantic; and proves hitherto as futile as any enterprise has lately done. Certain wise men once, before this, set about confining the cuckoo by a big circular wall; but they could not manage it !—Watch the coast of Africa? That is a very long Coast; good part of the Coast of the terraqueous Globe! And the living centres of this slave mischief, the live coals that produce all this world-wide smoke, it appears, lie simply in two points, Cuba and Brazil, which are perfectly accessible and manageable.

If the Laws of Heaven do authorise you to keep the whole world in a pother about this question; if you really can appeal to the Almighty God upon it, and set common interests, and terrestrial considerations, and common sense, at defiance in behalf of it, why, in Heaven's name, not go to Cuba and Brazil with a sufficiency of Seventy-fours; and signify to those nefarious countries : Nefarious countries, your procedure on the Negro Question is too bad; see, of all the solecisms now "submitted to on Earth, it is the most alarming and transcendent, and, in fact, is such that a just man cannot follow his "affairs any longer in the same Planet with it. You clearly "will not, you nefarious populations, for love or fear, watching "or entreaty, respect the rights of the Negro enough ;-where"fore we here, with our Seventy-fours, are come to be King "over you, and will on the spot henceforth see for ourselves "that you do it!"

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Why not, if Heaven do send us? The thing can be done; easily, if you are sure of that proviso. It can be done it is

the way to " suppress pears, the one way.

the Slave-trade;" and so far as yet ap

Most thinking people,—if hen-stealing prevail to a plainly unendurable extent, will you station police-officers at every hen-roost; and keep them watching and cruising incessantly to and fro over the Parish, in the unwholesome dark, at enormous expense, with almost no effect? Or will you not try rather to discover where the fox's den is, and kill the fox! Which of those two things will you do? Most thinking people, you know the fox and his den; there he is,-kill him, and discharge your cruisers and police-watchers !-[Laughter.]

O my friends, I feel there is an immense fund of Human Stupidity circulating among us, and much clogging our affairs for some time past! A certain man has called us, "of all peoples the wisest in action;" but he added, "the stupidest in speech :"-and it is a sore thing, in these constitutional times, times mainly of universal Parliamentary and other Eloquence, that the "speakers" have all first to emit, in such tumultuous volumes, their human stupor, as the indispensable preliminary, and everywhere we must first see that and its results out, before beginning any business.-(Explicit Ms.)

TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS AGO.1

DUELLING.

[1850.]

DUELLING, in Queen Elizabeth's reign, was very prevalent; nor has it abated in King James's. It is one of the sincerities of Human Life, which bursts through the thickest-quilted formulas; and in Norse-Pagan, in Christian, New-Christian, and all manner of ages, will, one way or the other, contrive to show itself.

A background of wrath, which can be stirred-up to the murderous infernal pitch, does lie in every man, in every creature; this is a fact which cannot be contradicted;—which indeed is but another phasis of the more general fact, that every one of us is a Self, that every one of us calls himself I How can you be a Self, and not have tendencies to self-defence! This background of wrath,-which surely ought to blaze-out as seldom as possible, and then as nobly as possible, -may be defined as no other than the general radical fire, in its least-elaborated shape, whereof Life itself is composed. Its least-elaborated shape, this flash of accursed murderous rage; -as the glance of mother's-love, and all intermediate warmths and energies and genialities, are the same element better elaborated. Certainly the elaboration is an immense matter,— indeed, is the whole matter! But the figure, moreover, under which your infernal element itself shall make its appearance, nobly or else ignobly, is very significant. From Indian Tomahawks, from Irish Shillelahs, from Arkansas Bowie-knives, up to a deliberate Norse Holmgang, to any civilised Wager of Battle, the distance is great.

1 Found recently in Leigh Hunt's Journal, Nos. 1, 3, 6 (Saturday 7th December 1850 et seqq.). Said there to be 'from a Waste-paper Bag' of mine. Apparently some fraction of a certain History (Failure of a History) of James I., of which I have indistinct recollections. (Note of 1857.)

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