Their politeness and liberality are perhaps, unequalled. Balls, at which the fair sex are never allowed to share any expence,--an Atheneum and a considerable museum, the benefits of which the stranger is invited to partake _gratis_,--may be mentioned as not being very customary in England. Tea-parties are a continual festival from the time you enter to the time of your departure, which however, are too much like our routs in England; and in time, I should fear would, as they have in England, become { 12} a substitute for hospitality. I have known collected at these parties from one to two hundred persons. Thus, my dear Sir, you see, instead of being in continual broils, and exposed to the affronts and insults of rude Americans, I have received nothing but civility and hospitality. It will hardly be credited when I assure you I have not yet met with a single annoyance in the whole of my journey from New York to Pittsburgh by land; nor from thence down the Ohio to Louisville,--a distance of six hundred miles by water, and five hundred miles by land: thus you see, my dear friend, I am in no danger at present, of being disgusted by American rudeness, irreligion, or fanaticism.
To your last question,--How can you reside in a state where personal slavery is in existence? I, with regret, reply, this is the spot which clouds the American sun of liberty; and I confess I know not which are most excited in me, the risible or the sorrowful feelings, when I hear a _Kentuckyan_ boasting, in lofty terms, of the liberty of his country, when that country is divided into two classes, and two classes only--the master and the slave! The term of _master_ implies the willing servitude of _free men_: the term _slave_, includes in it the admission { 13} of tyrants or tyranny; and a Kentuckyan has no more right to talk of freedom than the _legitimates_, whose determined purpose it is to blot liberty and happiness from the face of the earth. The one talks of liberty and social order, and it appears that by it is meant the increasing trappings of monarchy; the other does the same of liberty, and the rights of men.
The legitimates, who have high notions of regal authority, attempting to subjugate the minds of men, is perfectly consistent with their notions of power, their education and habits; but to hear the republicans of slave states point to the _Declaration of Rights_, who inform the coming traveller that they are now blazoned forth on satin and velvet;--an American republican pointing to the _Rights of Men_ with his left hand, while his right is obliged to hold the whip, and with watchful eye to subjugate the minds and bodies of a large share of the population of his state:--this, indeed is worthy the taunts and derision of kings. It is this that keeps the wealth of Europe from pouring its treasures into the fertile region of Kentucky, and the industry of thousands from approaching the state. It would be painful to relate all the horrors I have beheld in slavery under { 14} its mildest form. Whites full of whiskey, flogging their slaves for drinking even a single glass! Women, heavy with young, smarting under the angry blow, or the lash, and with babes at the breast, which one of our writers calls "_Nature's passport_ through the world," lacking food in the midst of abundance, and cloathing insufficient to satisfy the demands even of common decency. Avarice, which our Poet _Young_ calls "Earth's greatest blunder--Hell's loudest laugh;"--avarice, which seems to be the source of all this mischief, now comes to the relief of the ragged lingering wretch. If they are miserable, they must not die, for a mother and infant are worth from six hundred to a thousand dollars: but in a slave state, avarice has preserved life, clothed the wretched, and fed the hungry; it has fattened and made fine, the slave that he or she may fetch at the hammer, one or two hundred dollars more. "Lord, what is man!" Was it for this that your heroes fought, bled, and died? Was it for this, that the brave and virtuous Washington, to whom so many memorials in the way of oration and praise are delivered on each succeeding anniversary of his birth, spent his long and glorious course? Oh! youth of Kentucky, when you speak of his { 15} fame with the enthusiasm of a republican, speak of his humanity, read his will; see his ardent desire to let the captive go free: imitate his virtues, and fall not into the errors of tyrants, who suppose military glory to be the glory of a christian.