or mixing socially in any manner with white men, or dressed as a man well to do in the world, or occupying any position, however humble, in which he was placed in authority over white persons. On board the river steamboats, the commonest and homeliest of working men has a right to dine, and does dine, at the public meals; but, for coloured passengers, there is always a separate table. At the great hotels there is, as with us, a servants' table, but the coloured servants are not allowed to dine in common with the white. At the inns, in the barbers' shops, on board the steamers, and in most hotels, the servants are more often than not coloured people. Anybody, I think, who has travelled in America, will agree with me in saying that they are the pleasantest servants in the country, and that he would always go by preference to a house where the attendants were negroes. But where there are black servants, you hardly ever find white ones also, except as overseers. White servants will not associate with black on terms of equality. I recollect a German servant-girl telling me that she had left a very good situation in New England, because she had been desired to take her meals with a coloured servant, and she "felt that that was wrong." I hardly ever remember seeing a black employed as shopman, or placed in any post of responsibility. As a rule, the blacks you meet in the Free States are shabbily, if not squalidly dressed; and, as far as I could learn, the instances

of black men having made money by trade in the North, are very few in number.

I remember one day in travelling through the State of Ohio (Ohio, let me add for the benefit of English critics, is a Free State), that I was seated by one of the shrewdest and kindliest old farmers it has been my lot to meet. He had been born and bred in Ohio State, and dilated to me as a stranger, with not unnatural pride, on the beauty and prosperity of that rich garden country "There is but one thing, sir," he ended by saying, "that we want here, and that is to get rid of the niggers." I was rather surprised at this illiberal expression of opinion; for my friend, though a staunch Union man, had been talking with unwonted good sense and moderation about the folly of adopting extreme measures of vengeance towards the South; and I questioned him about the reasons of his antipathy towards the coloured people. I was answered by the old story. The free blacks did not work, and preferred doing nothing. Half the thefts and crimes in the State were committed by free negroes. Not content with having schools of their own, they wanted to have their children admitted to the free white schools; and, for his own part, he shrewdly suspected that the schoolhouse of his town, Lebanon, which had just been mysteriously burnt down, had been set on fire by free negroes out of spite. But the great grievance seemed to his mind to be that, in defiance of the laws of Ohio, there had been recently

some few intermarriages between white men and black women. "It don't answer, sir," he concluded by saying; "it isn't right, you see, and it isn't meant to be."

These sentiments express, undoubtedly, the popular feeling of the Free States towards the free negro. Like most popular feelings, it has a basis of truth. In every Northern city, the poorest, the most thriftless, and perhaps the most troublesome part of the population, are the free negroes. Give a dog a bad name, and he will not only get hung, but he will generally deserve hanging. The free negro has not a fair chance throughout the North. The legislation of the country is as unfavourable to the status of free blacks, as the social sentiment of the people. It is a much-disputed point, what were the ideas of the authors of the American institution with regard to the negro. The most probable solution seems to me to be, that though, undoubtedly, they contemplated the possibility of the negroes becoming freemen, they never admitted the idea of their becoming citizens of the United States. There is no distinct statement in the Constitution as to what constitutes American citizenship; but you see clearly that the Indians, though born under the American Government, were never designed to become citizens, and, in like manner, the strong presumption is that the negroes were not either. Certainly, as a matter of fact, a free negro citizen does not enjoy the full rights of citizenship. No coloured man can hold any

Government appointment, however humble, under the United States. During the last session, a bill of Mr. Sumner's was passed through the Senate, allowing the Government to employ coloured men as mail-carriers ; but even in a Republican House of Representatives, the bill was rejected by a large majority. About State legislation, with regard to the free negro, there is no ambiguity whatever. In three States alone, Massachusetts, Maine, and New Hampshire, are coloured men allowed to vote on an equality with white citizens. In New York, where there is manhood suffrage as far as white men are concerned, a man of colour must possess a freehold estate of not less value than £50, clear of all debt, before he can exercise the right of voting. In no other State can a coloured citizen vote at all; and under no State government are black men practically allowed to hold office of any kind. The free schools of every State are closed to coloured children; and in the district of Washington, under the direct authority of the national government, free blacks were taxed till the other day to support the free schools for white children. In the Eastern States, intermarriage between blacks and whites is permitted by law, but in few, if any, of the other States. In several of the Western States, free negroes are forbidden to settle within the limits of the State; while in the border Slave States of the Union, proposals have been made recently to expel the free negro population altogether.

Under such conditions, it would be strange if the free negroes were, as a class, an industrious or a respectable part of the Northern population. That a proscribed pariah people, forbidden to mix on terms of equality with the ruling race, should not afford by their conduct some excuse for their treatment, would be an unexampled fact in the world's history.

As far as the North is concerned, the free negroes form too small a part of the population to be a source of real trouble. According to the census of 1850, in which the free coloured population was classified separately from the white, the whole number of free coloured persons in the then United States was, in round numbers, 435,000. Of these, only 198,000 were settled in the Free States. New Jersey and Pennsylvania, the great commercial and manufacturing States, had 127,000; Ohio and Indiana, the two frontier States of the North, 37,000. The New England States, the headquarters of the Abolitionists, held about 23,000; while the whole of the North-western States only contained 11,000 in all. As the white citizens of the Free States numbered 13,324,914, in 1850, the proportion of free men of colour would have been barely one-and-a-half per cent. No doubt, these numbers had increased actually during the ten years up to 1860; but the relative proportion of coloured men to white had decreased considerably. From these figures some very obvious conclusions may be drawn. From choice or