But we are writing coolly, as if this were an open question whether
the four millions of blacks are to remain for many years to come
in this country or not. It is no open question. They are here, and
here they must remain for a period which no man is competent to
limit, even in his argument. They cannot, or to speak mildly, they
will not be transported across the sea or to any foreign land.
They may eventually, as we shall endeavor to suggest, go, but they
cannot be sent away. In this assertion, we leave the inclinations
and the will of the black man out of the question. There are reasons
which must operate on the side of the white to make it impossible.
The colored race is necessary, and will be so for a period indefinitely
long, to the southern country. It constitutes its labor; it is the
productive force of that land; it has been for the past two hundred
years. It is the foundation element of the whole social state. Now
by what power shall there be a speedy removal of the whole labor
of a country? How shall the entire producing element be suddenly
abstracted? Were that possible to be done, the whole state would
plunge at once into poverty and ruin. Once or twice the experiment
has been tried, in historic times, of banishing or destroying a
producing element of a state, and though done on a comparatively
small scale, the result are sufficiently marked to teach all after
time. Spain did it when she drove the Moors from her Castilian
lands. France did it when she murdered and banished the Huguenots,
and they both have scarcely, after two and three centuries, recovered
from the shock and the ruin.

But we need not spend our space in discussing the point. However any
one may deem the colonization of the whole colored race desirable,
still it will remain an impossibility; there are natural and
economic forces which would be omnipotent to prevent it. They are