They could not transact business--form credits and agencies, and receive the confidence of the commercial public--like free men.

Strange or not, their fate was inseparably linked with that of the bondman, their interests were considered as involved with his.

However honest they might be, it was not safe to trust them; and any attempt to rise above a clerkship, to become the employer instead of the employed, was regarded as a kind of insurrection, and strongly disapproved and opposed.

Since emancipation, they have been unshackling them selves from white domination in matters of trade; extending their connections, and becoming every day more and more independent.

They have formed credits with commercial houses abroad, and now import directly for themselves, at wholesale prices, what they were formerly obliged to receive from white importers, or rather speculators, at such prices as they, in their tender mercies, saw fit to impose.
Trade is now equalizing itself among all classes.