You know very well dear E----, that in speaking of the free blacks of the
North I here state nothing but what is true and of daily experience. Only
last week I heard, in this very town of Philadelphia, of a family of
strict probity and honour, highly principled, intelligent, well-educated,
and accomplished, and (to speak the world's language) respectable in every
way--i.e. _rich_. Upon an English lady's stating it to be her intention to
visit these persons when she came to Philadelphia, she was told that if
she did nobody else would visit _her_; and she probably would excite a
malevolent feeling, which might find vent in some violent demonstration
against this family. All that I have now said of course bears only upon
the condition of the free coloured population of the North, with which I
am familiar enough to speak confidently of it. As for the slaves, and
their capacity for progress, I can say nothing, for I have never been
among them to judge what faculties their unhappy social position leaves to
them unimpaired. But it seems to me, that no experiment on a sufficiently
large scale can have been tried for a sufficient length of time to
determine the question of their incurable inferiority. Physiologists say
that three successive generations appear to be necessary to produce an
effectual change of constitution (bodily and mental), be it for health or
disease. There are positive physical defects which produce positive mental
ones; the diseases of the muscular and nervous systems descend from father
to son. Upon the agency of one corporal power how much that is not
corporal depends; from generation to generation internal disease and
external deformity, vices, virtues, talents, and deficiencies are
transmitted, and by the action of the same law it must be long indeed
before the offspring of slaves--creatures begotten of a race debased and
degraded to the lowest degree, themselves born in slavery, and whose
progenitors have eaten the bread and drawn the breath of slavery for
years--can be measured, with any show of justice, by even the least
favoured descendants of European nations, whose qualities have been for