servants, or doomed to accept such menial employment as the whites decline. They have been, and are scattered over the commonwealth, one or more in over two-thirds of all the towns; they continue poor, with small means and opportunities for enjoying the social comforts and advantages which are so much at the command of the whites. Thus their condition is one of degradation and dependence, though their legal rights are the same as those of the whites, and renders existence less valuable, and impairs the duration of life itself. Most of the colored people in this commonwealth are a mixture of races, of Africans, Indians, and whites, in various degrees of purity, a circumstance regarded by physiologists as unfavorable to the increase of a healthy and hardy progeny, and predisposing them to an early maturity and an early decay of the physical and intellectual powers. It is said that a mulatto is seldom known to have survived 70 years in the West Indies, while pure blacks often live twice that age. It is remarked by those who have been conversant with the colored 2. We conclude, also, that the in- people who have been dependent on crease of the colored population is public charity for support,that a largnot likely hereafter to keep pace with er portion of the colored than of the that of the whites in this common-whites are, even in early life, subjects wealth. Past experience for 75 years of fatal disease, particularly of conindicates this. The proportion of the sumption. colored to the white population has been reduced during every period, and since 1765, in the State, from 2.17 to 1.18 per cent., and in Boston, from 5.77 to 2.66 per cent. The prejudices which are now felt in this commonwealth against the people of color, and the disadvantages under which they labor, unfavorable to their comfort, their increase, and their improvement, we can hardly expect will soon be removed. They are excluded from the more honorable and profitable employments, and are likely to continue so. Owing to their color and the prejudice against them, they can hardly be said to receive that sympathy in sickness or in sorrow, fresh from the heart of the whites, which the whites would feel for each other, in this free State, nor even so cordial a sympathy as would be shown for them in a slave State, owing to their different position in society. This want of true sympathy, and this sense of degradation, must operate on their sensibility, and unfavorably affect their physical, moral, and social condition, and shorten to them the duration of life. The number of colored children born during the year next preceding May 1, 1844, in 288 towns, whose whole population was 593,876, and whose colored population was 5,710 in 1840, was, according to the returns of the town clerks, only 47, or 1 to 121.48 colored persons, while the number of white children was (14,757-47-) 14,710, or 1 to 39.98 white persons. After making due allowances for the imperfections of these returns, we are fully of the opinion that these returns strongly indicate the great inferiority of the proportion of the births of colored children to that of the whites. We infer that there is to be expected but a small increase of the colored population in Massachusetts, from the large mortality among them, especially considering their degraded and dependent position among the predominant class of a different color. In Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York, according to the bills of mortality, the deaths have been. much more numerous among the free colored population than among the whites. The small increase of the colored people in Massachusetts necessarily arises from their insulated and degraded position among the predominant class, the whites. Various circumstances connected with this position operate to the disadvantage of this class in all their relations in life. The effect is fully accounted for without supposing, as some may, that the On the records of the superintendent of burials in Boston,250 deaths are designated as of colored persons during the 4 years from 1841 to 1844, averaging 62 persons per annum. All the deaths of colored persons are not thus designated. These deaths give the proportion of 1 death to 38.84, or 2.57 per cent., out of 2,427 colored persons. We believe, however, that their number could not have exceed-condition of the colored population ed 1,975. This would give the proportion of 1 to 31.60,or 3.16 per cent. Of these 250, the males were 116, and the females 134,in 4 years, averaging 19 males and 33 females per annum, and giving the proportion of 100 females to 86.56 males. This proportion is very different from what we should expect from the great predominance of the male sex, and may be accounted for by the supposition that some of the colored males are seafaring, and died abroad. Of these 250 deaths, 1 colored female died at the age of 101, and several colored persons at 80 and upwards. Some have concluded that the mortality of the colored people in Boston is as high as 1 to 15. The whole number of deaths in Boston, in 1844, exclusive of 187 stillborn, was 2,054, according to the abstract of the bill of mortality, or 1 to 51.13,in a population estimated at 105,000, in 1844. Of these 2,054 deaths, 900 were of Catholics, mostly whites, in a population estimated at 24,000, or 1 in 26.67, and there will remain 1,154 deaths of the whites and blacks, in a population of 81,000, or 1 to 70.21. Of these 1,154 deaths, 62 are the reported average of the blacks for the 4 years, estimated at 2,427, giving a proportion of 1 to 38.84, or 2.57 per cent.; and there will remain 1,091 deaths of the Protestant whites, estimated at 79,087, giving the proportion of 1 to 71.99, or 1.38 per cent., which is a little more than half the mortality of the blacks. would be better in a state of slavery. Whatever might be their condition in a state of slavery, there does not seem to be any more right to reduce to slavery a body of human beings on account of their dark color, than on account of their white color. But at present, the current of public sentiment having its source in Revelation, and in the inspirations of the human mind, is now circulating throughout all the civilized nations of the earth, opposing and washing away the inhuman and barbarous relics of slavery among men, and is not likely to be spent till it has completed its work. The increase of the people of color has very obviously been sustained in Massachusetts by emigrants from abroad; and without such aid it has been doubted whether there would have been any increase whatever. It is clear that their number can hardly be sustained by the natural increase of those now in the commonwealth alone, considering their insulated and degraded position among the whites. The mixed race of which they are now, and have been for 50 years mostly composed, are a feeble race; and a further mixture with the whites will, from time to time, cause a portion of them to be undistinguishable in the community from the whites themselves; so that the tendency seems to be ultimately to extinguish them as a distinct race, as has been the case with the more numerous, and, in many respects, more hardy tribes of Indians in this com now nearly extinct as a race, have received no accessions from that source since our first knowledge of them, though their blood, with scarcely distinguishable traces, still flows in the veins of some of our citi monwealth, who have been displaced by the European emigrants. Many instances of similar displacement are to be found in history. The blacks,, thus far, have been aided in retaining their numbers by means of emigration from abroad; while the Indians, TABLE III-Exhibiting the census of the free colored persons in Massachusetts, in 1830, by counties. MALES. " zens. FEMALES. TABLE IV—Exhibiting the census of the free colored persons in Massa chusetts, in 1840, by counties. 10 3,360 809 965 816 661 394 4 1,294 91 92 306 6 4,654 900 1,057 868 771 1 1,013 1,883 52 67 53 43 35 33 23 15 33 31 9 13 136 105 73 22 20 21 51 28 1 280 254 517 10 347 34 191 507 991 100 169 463 928 217 411 90 168 21 48 147 279 |