THE Author of the following discussion presents it to the Public with feelings of deep and solemn interest. However imperfectly his design may have been executed, the subject of his observations is of such momentous import as to arrest the attention of the most careless and indifferent. It embraces, in its various aspects, questions of the most profound and vital importance, affecting every one in all the different relations of life, and involving arguments and considerations that come home to the bosoms of all. He does not pretend to any thing very novel in his manner of treating the subject before him, as it has been, in a great measure, exhausted: But he hopes that many new and important facts, in relation to it, have been produced, which were not within the reach of ordinary industry, and for many of which he has been indebted to the kindness of some of the most intelligent members of the community. Several interesting public Documents, also, are, for the first time, published, which shed much light upon the Colonial History of the country, and present a faithful picture of the state of the Province at the different periods to which they respectively refer. He returns his sincere and unaffected thanks to those who have, incidentally, aided and assisted him in the collection of the materials necessary to have enabled him to proceed, and submits to the consideration of an enlightened

Public, the result of a laborious and painful investigation. The best of motives have actuated him, and his only object has been to combat errors wherever he has found them-to strangle the slanders that were wounding our reputation with a serpent tooth, and to place our character upon the elevated ground to which its honor, and patriotism proudly entitle it.

A REFUTATION,

&c.

THE NORTHERN and EASTERN Sections of our Empire, to whose early and active participation in the SLAVE TRADE is to be attributed, in a great measure, the extension, if not the introduction of our NEGRO SLAVERY, are continually reproaching the people of the SOUTH and WEST with the existence of an evil, the barbarity of which they, at the same time, magnify with all the malignity of the most pertinacious hostility. The peculiar moral and political condition of that class of our population, who are pictured by them as groaning under the oppression of the most odious and afflicting tyranny, appears to be as little understood as it has been frequently misrepresented. It would be a matter of some difficulty, perhaps, considering our relative situation as members of the same great Republican family, were we not fully acquainted with the motives of those who have so industriously propagated the calumnies to which we have referred, to assign any competent reason for the devotional fidelity with which they have carried on their work of

defamation and slander. But the curtain is with drawn, and the history of past events teaches us the philosophy of their conduct. The late discussions in Congress upon what has been popularly denominated the Missouri Question, have thrown so clear and distinct a light upon this subject, that no individual, who lays claim to a capacity of the most ordinary rectitude of observation, can mistake the true sources from which this current of feeling has proceeded. In the history of the agitation of that momentous question, involving, as it did, subjects of the most profound and afflictive concern, and which, but for the calm and temperate interposition of one of the most influential members on the floor of Congress, would have ended in shaking the UNION to its centre, we have abundant testimony of the hostile and unfriendly spirit with which the most vital interests of the people of the South and West were canvassed and discussed. Bound together as we are by one golden chain of affinity, and exhibiting to the eye of the civilized world the sublime and beautiful spectacle of an immense empire, composed of different sovereignties, revolving hitherto, in perfect harmony under the controling power of a confederated Republican form of Government, it is deeply to be lamented that so much bitterness of feeling should have been engendered by the intemperate zeal of a few, or the profligate ambition of any.

It must be conceded that the people of the South and West have certain established constitutional rights and privileges contradistinguished, by their peculiar situation, from those of the North and East, the surrender of which would be worse than the wildest insanity, and for the safe enjoyment of which they

!