The deplorable ignorance and want of industry at the South, together with the disrepute in which honest industry is held, cannot but exercise, in connection with other causes, a most unhappy influence on the morals of the inhabitants. You have among you between two and three millions of slaves, who are kept by law in brutal ignorance, and who, with few exceptions, are virtually heathens. [8]

You have also among you more than 200,000 free negroes, thus described by Mr. Clay:—"Contaminated themselves, they extend their vices to all around them." [9]

If evil communications corrupt good manners, the intimate intercourse of the whites with these people must be depraving: nor can the exercise of despotic power by the masters, their wives and children be otherwise than unfavorable to the benevolent affections.

It is with pain we are compelled to add, that the conduct and avowed sentiments of the Southern clergy in relation to Slavery, necessarily exert an unhappy influence. Most of the clergy are themselves slaveholders, and are thus personally interested in the system, and are consequently bold and active in justifying it from Scripture, representing it as an institution enjoying the divine sanction. An English author, in reference to these efforts of your clergy, forcibly remarks: "Whatever may have been the unutterable wickedness of slavery in the West Indies, there it never was baptized in the Redeemer's hallowed name, and its corruptions were not concealed in the garb of religion. That acmÉ of piratical turpitude was reserved for the professed disciples of Jesus in America." And well has John Quincy Adams said, "The spirit of slavery has acquired not only an overruling ascendency, but it has become at once intolerant, proscriptive, and sophistical. It has crept into the philosophical chairs of the schools. Its cloven hoof has ascended the pulpits of the churches—professors of colleges teach it as a lesson of morals—ministers of the Gospel seek and profess to find sanctions for it in the Word of God."

Your ministers live in the midst of slavery, and they know that the system on which they bestow their benedictions, is, in the language of Wilberforce, "a system of the grossest injustice, of the most heathenish irreligion and immorality; of the most unprecedented degradation and unrelenting cruelty." Surely, we have reason to fear that the denunciation of Scripture against false prophets of old, will be accomplished against the Southern clergy, "Because they ministered unto them before their idols, and caused the House of Israel to fall into iniquity, therefore have I lifted up mine hand against them, saith the Lord God, and they shall bear their iniquity."—Ezek. 44: 12.

Under such ministrations it cannot be expected that Christian zeal and benevolence will take deep root and bear very abundant fruit. This is a subject on which few statistics can be obtained. We have no means of ascertaining the number of churches and ministers throughout the United States of the various denominations. Some opinion, however, may be formed of the religious character of a people, by their efforts for the moral improvement of the community. In the United States there are numerous voluntary associations for religious and benevolent purposes, receiving large contributions and exercising a wide moral influence. Now, of all the large benevolent societies professing to promote the welfare of the whole country, and asking and receiving contributions from all parts of it, we recollect but one that had its origin in the slave region, and the business of which is transacted in it, and that is the American Colonization Society. Of the real object and practical tendency of this Society it is unnecessary to speak—you understand them.

In the 10th Report of the American Sunday School Union [p. 50] is a table showing the number of Sunday School scholars in each State for the year 1834. From this table we learn that

about twice as many as in the thirteen slave States!

And is it possible that the literary and religious destitution you are suffering, together with the vicious habits of your colored population, should have no effect on the moral character of the whites?

We entreat your patient and dispassionate attention to the remarks and facts we are about to submit to you on the next subject of inquiry.