EMANCIPATION IN KENTUCKY.

F. DOUGLASS, ESQ.: DEAR SIR:—I notice in your paper of last week that you say, "rumor informs us that a considerable number of slaveholders in Kentucky propose that a Convention be held at Frankfort, to adopt some plan for the abolition of slavery throughout the State." This, though proceeding only from "Madam Rumor," I must regard as an earnest of "the good time coming."

Let men, even slaveholders, but go into a business examination of the effects of emancipation upon their temporal interests alone, and they will soon perceive that in the continuance of the slave system the odds will be fearfully against them.

Who that has sailed down the Ohio has not noticed the remarkable contrast between the shores of the free and the slave States—the one exhibiting the activity and energy of a young giant, while the other for the most part is either stationary or presents a manifest tendency toward, or an already visible aspect of decay.

As slaveholders in general would probably seek for or demand remuneration for their slaves, in case of their emancipation, and northern people are many of them indisposed to make up a fund for such a purpose, it is a question extremely difficult of solution, how universal emancipation can be secured; and those who have taken this view of the subject have folded their arms in despair, and have said, "nothing can be done."

Should the Convention before mentioned really be held at Frankfort, I shall hope that there may be present, as delegates or speakers, not a few of those noble spirits who are prepared to advocate emancipation on , but also those who have studied systematically the loss and gain and comparative advantages of free and of slave labor, and of the relative value of slave lands and of free lands.

In arguing a great moral question like this, it seems almost like profanity to go into the dollar and cent view of the case; but it will, I think, be found that any such investigation will help to remove obstacles hitherto supposed to be insurmountable in the way of universal emancipation.

For instance, I most fully believe it can be demonstrated to the minds of intelligent slaveholders, that immediately after emancipation has taken place, their plantations will have an intrinsic value that shall be four-fold more than they previously had, and that, too, when the value of their slaves had been included with them.

Then again, emancipation would at once start up and give energy to the emigration of northern and western farmers, and the better class of emigrants from abroad, which, within five years, would lead to an almost incalculable rise in their lands, so that the wealth of the owners of plantation lands would flow in upon them like the waters of a mighty river. .

Some one may here ask, what then shall be done with the emancipated bond-men? My answer is, help them to elevate themselves by the dignity of free labor, and the practical benefits of a thorough and christian education, the reflex effect of which would be to bring back very large, it may be cent-per-cent, returns to their benefactors.

If any one doubts the accuracy of these calculations, of the probable increase in the value of lands, by their transition from slave to free labor, let him just institute inquiries as to the relative value of lands in Missouri and in Kansas at the present time, or of Virginia and Massachusetts, the two oldest States in the Union, and I think that with at least the question would be effectually settled.

WHITING.

BOSTON, Oct. 1, 1855.