It is further to be remarked, that all these rights suppose corresponding duties, and where there is an incompetence for the duty, the claim to exercise the right ceases. No man can justly claim the exercise of any right to the injury of the community of which he is a member. It is because females and minors are judged (though for different reasons), incompetent to the proper discharge of the duties of citizenship, that they are deprived of the right of suffrage. It is on the same principle that a large portion of the inhabitants of France and England are deprived of the same privilege. As it is acknowledged that the slaves may be justly deprived of political rights, on the ground of their incompetency to exercise them without injury to the community, it must be admitted, by parity of reason, that they may be justly deprived of personal freedom, if incompetent to exercise it with safety to society. If this be so, then slavery is a question of circumstances, and not a malum in se. It must be borne in mind that the object of these remarks is not to prove that the American, the British, or the Russian form of society, is expedient or otherwise; much less to show that the slaves in this country are actually unfit for freedom, but simply to prove that the mere fact that slaveholding interferes with natural rights, is not enough to justify the conclusion that it is necessarily and universally sinful.

Another very common and plausible argument on this subject is, that a man can not be made a matter of property. He can not be degraded into a brute or chattel, without the grossest violation of duty and propriety; and that as slavery confers this right of property in human beings, it must, from its very nature, be a crime. We acknowledge the correctness of the principle on which this argument is founded, but deny that it is applicable to the case in hand. We admit that it is not only an enormity, but an impossibility, that a man should be made a thing, as distinguished from a rational and moral being. It is not within the compass of human law to alter the nature of God's creatures. A man must be regarded and treated as a rational being, even in his greatest degradation. That he is, in some countries and under some institutions, deprived of many of the rights and privileges of such a being, does not alter his nature. He must be viewed as a man under the most atrocious system of slavery that ever existed. Men do not arraign and try on evidence, and punish on conviction, either things or brutes. Yet slaves are under a regular system of laws which, however unjust they may be, recognize their character as accountable beings. When it is inferred from the fact that the slave is called the property of his master, that he is thereby degraded from his rank as a human being, the argument rests on the vagueness of the term property. Property is the right of possession and use, and must of necessity vary according to the nature of the objects to which it attaches. A man has property in his wife, in his children, in his domestic animals, in his fields and in his forests. That is, he has the right to the possession and use of these several objects, according to their nature. He has no more right to use a brute as a log of wood, in virtue of the right of property, than he has to use a man as a brute. There are general principles of rectitude, obligatory on all men, which require them to treat all the creatures of God according to the nature which he has given them. The man who should burn his horse because he was his property, would find no justification in that plea, either before God or man. When, therefore, it is said that one man is the property of another, it can only mean that the one has a right to use the other as a man, but not as a brute, or as a thing. He has no right to treat him as he may lawfully treat his ox, or a tree. He can convert his person to no use to which a human being may not, by the laws of God and nature, be properly applied. When this idea of property comes to be analyzed, it is found to be nothing more than a claim of service either for life or for a term of years. This claim is transferable, and is of the nature of property, and is consequently liable for the debts of the owner, and subject to his disposal by will or otherwise. It is probable that the slave is called the property of his master in the statute books, for the same reason that children are called the servants of the parents, or that wives are said to be the same person with their husbands, and to have no separate existence of their own. These are mere technicalities, designed to facilitate certain legal processes. Calling a child a servant, does not alter his relation to his father; and a wife is still a woman, though the courts may rule her out of existence. In like manner, where the law declares, that a slave shall be deemed and adjudged to be a chattel personal in the hands of his master, it does not alter his nature, nor does it confer on the master any right to use him in a manner inconsistent with that nature. As there are certain moral principles which direct how brutes are to be used by those to whom they belong, so there are fixed principles which determine how a man may be used. These legal enactments, therefore, are not intended to legislate away the nature of the slave, as a human being; they serve to facilitate the transfer of the master's claim of service, and to render that claim the more readily liable for his debts. The transfer of authority and claim of service from one master to another, is, in principle, analagous to transfer of subjects from one sovereign to another. This is a matter of frequent occurrence. By the treaty of Vienna, for example, a large part of the inhabitants of central Europe changed masters. Nearly half of Saxony was transferred to Prussia; Belgium was annexed to Holland. In like manner, Louisiana was transferred from France to the United States. In none of these cases were the people consulted. Yet in all, a claim of service more or less extended, was made over from one power to another. There was a change of masters. The mere transferable character of the master's claim to the slave, does not convert the latter into a thing, or degrade him from his rank as a human being. Nor does the fact that he is bound to serve for life, produce this effect. It is only property in his time for life, instead of for a term of years. The nature of the relation is not determined by the period of its continuance.

It has, however, been argued that the slave is the property of his master, not only in the sense admitted above, but in the sense assumed in the objection, because his children are under the same obligation of service as the parent. The hereditary character of slavery, however, does not arise out of the idea of the slave as a chattel or thing, a mere matter of property, it depends on the organization of society. In England one man is born a peer, another a commoner; in Russia one man is born a noble, another a serf; here, one is born a free citizen, another a disfranchised outcast (the free colored man), and a third a slave. These forms of society, as before remarked, are not necessarily, or in themselves, either just or unjust; but become the one or the other, according to circumstances. Under a state of things in which the best interests of the community would be promoted by the British or Russian organization, they would be just and acceptable to God; but under circumstances in which they would be injurious, they would be unjust. It is absolutely necessary, however, to discriminate between an organization essentially vicious, and one which, being in itself indifferent, may be right or wrong, according to circumstances. On the same principle, therefore, that a human being in England is deprived, by the mere accident of birth, of the right of suffrage, and in Russia has the small portion of liberty which belongs to a commoner, or the still smaller belonging to a serf, in this country one class is by birth invested with all the rights of citizenship, another (females) is deprived all political and many personal rights, and a third of even their personal liberty. Whether this organization be right or wrong, is not now the question. We are simply showing that the fact that the children of slaves become by birth slaves, is not to be referred to the idea of the master's property in the body and soul of the parent, but results from the form of society, and is analagous to other social institutions, as far as the principle is concerned, that children take the rank, or the political or social condition of the parent.

We prefer being chargeable with the sin of wearisome repetition, to leaving any room for the misapprehension of our meaning. We, therefore, again remark that we are discussing the mere abstract morality of these forms of social organization, and not their expediency. We have in view the vindication of the character of the inspired writings and inspired men from the charge of having overlooked the blackest of human crimes, and of having recognized the worst of human beings as Christians. We say, therefore, that an institution which deprives a certain portion of the community of their personal liberty, places them under obligation of service to another portion, is no more necessarily sinful than one which invests an individual with despotic power (such as Mr. Birney would consent to hold); or than one which limits the right of government to a small portion of the people, or restricts it to the male part of the community. However inexpedient, under certain circumstances, any one of these arrangements may be, they are not necessarily immoral, nor do they become such, from the fact that the accident of birth determines the relation in which one part of the community is to stand to the other. In ancient Egypt, as in modern India, birth decided the position and profession of every individual. One was born a priest, another a merchant, another a laborer, another a soldier. As there must always be these classes, it is no more necessarily immoral, to have them all determined by hereditary descent, than it was among the Israelites to have all the officers of religion from generation to generation thus determined; or that birth should determine the individual who is to fill a throne, or occupy a seat in parliament.

Again, Dr. Wayland argues, if the right to hold slaves be conceded, "there is of course conceded all other rights necessary to insure its possession. Hence, inasmuch as the slave can be held in this condition only while he remains in the lowest state of mental imbecility, it supposes the master to have the right to control his intellectual development just as far as may be necessary to secure entire subjection."[270] He reasons in the same way, to show that the religious knowledge and even eternal happiness of the slave are as a matter of right conceded to the power of the master, if the right of slaveholding is admitted. The utmost force that can be allowed to this argument is, that the right to hold slaves includes the right to exercise all proper means to insure its possession. It is in this respect on a par with all other rights of the same kind. The right of parents to the service of their children, of husbands to the obedience of their wives, of masters over their apprentices, of creditors over their debtors, of rulers over their subjects, all suppose the right to adopt proper means for their secure enjoyment. They, however, give no sanction to the employment of any and every means which cruelty, suspicion, or jealousy may choose to deem necessary, nor of any which would be productive of greater general evil than the forfeiture of the rights themselves. According to the ancient law even among the Jews, the power of life and death was granted to the parent; we concede only the power of correction. The old law gave the same power to the husband over the wife. The Roman law confided the person and even life of the debtor to the mercy of the creditor. According to the reasoning of Dr. Wayland, all these laws must be sanctioned if the rights which they were deemed necessary to secure, are acknowledged. It is clear, however, that the most unrighteous means may be adopted to secure a proper end, under the plea of necessity. The justice of the plea must be made out on its own grounds, and can not be assumed on the mere admission of the propriety of the end aimed at. Whether the slaves of this country may be safely admitted to the enjoyments of personal liberty, is a matter of dispute; but that they could not, consistently with the public welfare, be intrusted with the exercise of political power, is in on all hands admitted. It is, then, the acknowledged right of the state to govern them by laws in the formation of which they have no voice. But it is the universal plea of the depositaries of irresponsible power, sustained too by almost universal experience, that men can be brought to submit to political despotism only by being kept in ignorance and poverty. Dr. Wayland, then, if he concedes the right of the state to legislate for the slaves, must, according to his own reasoning, acknowledge the right to adopt all the means necessary for the security of this irresponsible power, and of consequence, that the state has the right to keep the blacks in the lowest state of degradation. If he denies the validity of this argument in favor of political despotism, he must renounce his own against the lawfulness of domestic slavery. Dr. Wayland himself would admit the right of the Emperor of Russia to exercise a degree of power over his present half civilized subjects, which could not be maintained over an enlightened people, though he would be loth to acknowledge his right to adopt all the means necessary to keep them in their present condition. The acknowledgment, therefore, of the right to hold slaves, does not involve the acknowledgment of the right to adopt measures adapted and intended to perpetuate their present mental and physical degradation.

We have entered much more at length into the abstract argument on this subject than we intended. It was our purpose to confine our remarks to the scriptural view of the question. But the consideration of the objections derived from the general principles of morals, rendered it necessary to enlarge our plan. As it appears to us too clear to admit of either denial or doubt, that the Scriptures do sanction slaveholding; that under the old dispensation it was expressly permitted by divine command, and under the New Testament is nowhere forbidden or denounced, but on the contrary, acknowledged to be consistent with the Christian character and profession (that is, consistent with justice, mercy, holiness, love to God and love to man), to declare it to be a heinous crime, is a direct impeachment of the word of God. We, therefore, felt it incumbent upon us to prove, that the sacred Scriptures are not in conflict with the first principles of morals; that what they sanction is not the blackest and basest of all offenses in the sight of God. To do this, it was necessary to show what slavery is, to distinguish between the relation itself, and the various cruel or unjust laws which may be made either to bring men into it, or to secure its continuance; to show that it no more follows from the admission that the Scriptures sanction the right of slaveholding, that it, therefore, sanctions all the oppressive slave laws of any community, than it follows from the admission of the propriety of parental, conjugal, or political relations, that it sanctions all the conflicting codes by which these relations have at different periods and in different countries been regulated.

We have had another motive in the preparation of this article. The assumption that slaveholding is itself a crime, is not only an error, but it is an error fraught with evil consequences. It not merely brings its advocates into conflict with the Scriptures, but it does much to retard the progress of freedom; it embitters and divides the members of the community, and distracts the Christian church. Its operation in retarding the progress of freedom is obvious and manifold. In the first place, it directs the battery of the enemies of slavery to the wrong point. It might be easy for them to establish the injustice or cruelty of certain slave laws, where it is not in their power to establish the sinfulness of slavery itself.[271] They, therefore, waste their strength. Nor is this the least evil. They promote the cause of their opponents. If they do not discriminate between slaveholding and the slave laws, it gives the slaveholder not merely an excuse but an occasion and a reason for making no such distinction. He is thus led to feel the same conviction in the propriety of the one that he does in that of the other. His mind and conscience may be satisfied that the mere act of holding slaves is not a crime. This is the point, however, to which the abolitionist directs his attention. He examines their arguments, and becomes convinced of their inconclusiveness, and is not only thus rendered impervious to their attacks, but is exasperated by what he considers their unmerited abuse. In the mean time his attention is withdrawn from far more important points;—the manner in which he treats his slaves, and the laws enacted for the security of his possession. These are points on which his judgment might be much more readily convinced of error, and his conscience of sin.

In the second place, besides fortifying the position and strengthening the purpose of the slaveholder, the error in question divides and weakens the friends of freedom. To secure any valuable result by public sentiment, you must satisfy the public mind and rouse the public conscience. Their passions had better be allowed to rest in peace. As the anti-slavery societies declare it to be their object to convince their fellow-citizens that slaveholding is necessarily a heinous crime in the sight of God, we consider their attempt as desperate, so long as the Bible is regarded as the rule of right and wrong. They can hardly secure either the verdict of the public mind or of the public conscience in behalf of this proposition. Their success hitherto has not been very encouraging, and is certainly not very flattering, if Dr. Channing's account of the class of persons to whom they have principally addressed their arguments, is correct. The tendency of their exertions, be their success great or small, is not to unite, but to divide. They do not carry the judgment or conscience of the people with them. They form, therefore, a class by themselves. Thousands who earnestly desire to see the South convinced of the injustice and consequent impolicy of their slave laws, and under this conviction, of their own accord, adopting those principles which the Bible enjoins, and which tend to produce universal intelligence, virtue, liberty and equality, without violence and sudden change, and which thus secure private and public prosperity, stand aloof from the abolitionists, not merely because they disapprove of their spirit and mode of action, but because they do not admit their fundamental principle.

In the third place, the error in question prevents the adoption of the most effectual means of extinguishing slavery. These means are not the opinions or feelings of the non-slaveholding States, nor the denunciations of the holders of slaves, but the improvement, intellectual and moral, of the slaves themselves. Slavery has but two natural and peaceful modes of death. The one is the increase of the slave population until it reaches the point of being unproductive. When the number of slaves becomes so great that the master can not profitably employ them, he manumits them in self-defense. This point would probably have been reached long ago, in many of the Southern States, had not the boundless extent of the south-western section of the Union presented a constant demand for the surplus hands. Many planters in Virginia and Maryland, whose principles or feelings revolt at the idea of selling their slaves to the South, find that their servants are gradually reducing them to poverty, by consuming more than they produce. The number, however, of slaveholders who entertain these scruples is comparatively small. And as the demand for slave labor in the still unoccupied regions of the extreme south-west is so great, and is likely to be so long continued, it is hopeless to think of slavery dying out by becoming a public burden. The other natural and peaceful mode of extinction, is the gradual elevation of the slaves in knowledge, virtue, and property to the point at which it is no longer desirable or possible to keep them in bondage.[272] Their chains thus gradually relax, until they fall off entirely. It is in this way that Christianity has abolished both political and domestic bondage, whenever it has had free scope. It enjoins a fair compensation for labor; it insists on the moral and intellectual improvement of all classes of men; it condemns all infractions of marital or parental rights; in short, it requires not only that free scope should be allowed to human improvement, but that all suitable means should be employed for the attainment of that end. The feudal system, as before remarked, has, in a great measure, been thus outgrown in all the European states. The third estate, formerly hardly recognized as having an existence, is becoming the controlling power in most of those ancient communities. The gradual improvement of the people rendered it impossible, and undesirable to deprive them of their just share in the government. And it is precisely in those countries where this improvement is most advanced that the feudal institutions are the most completely obliterated, and the general prosperity the greatest. In like manner the gospel method of extinguishing slavery is by improving the condition of the slave. The grand question is, How is this to be done? The abolitionist answers, by immediate emancipation. Perhaps he is right, perhaps he is wrong; but whether right or wrong, it is not the practical question for the North. Among a community which have the power to emancipate, it would be perfectly proper to urge that measure on the ground of its being the best means of promoting the great object of the advancement of human happiness and virtue. But the error of the abolitionists is, that they urge this measure from the wrong quarter, and upon the wrong ground. They insist upon immediate abolition because slavery is a sin, and its extinction a duty. If, however, slaveholding is not in itself sinful, its abolition is not necessarily a duty. The question of duty depends upon the effects of the measure, about which men may honestly differ. Those who believe that it would advance the general good, are bound to promote it; while those who believe the reverse, are equally bound to resist it. The abolitionists, by insisting upon one means of improvement, and that on untenable ground, are most effectually working against the adoption of any other means, by destroying the disposition and power to employ them. It is in this way that the error to which we have referred throughout this article, is operating most disadvantageously for the cause of human liberty and happiness. The fact is, that the great duty of the South is not emancipation; but improvement.[273] The former is obligatory only as a means to an end, and, therefore, only under circumstances where it would promote that end. In like manner the great duty of despotic governments is not the immediate granting of free institutions, but the constant and assiduous cultivation of the best interests (knowledge, virtue, and happiness) of the people. Where free institutions would conduce to this object, they would be granted, and just so far and so fast as this becomes apparent.

Again, the opinion that slaveholding is itself a crime, must operate to produce the disunion of the States, and the division of all the ecclesiastical societies in this country. The feelings of the people may be excited violently for a time, but the transport soon passes away. But if the conscience is enlisted in the cause, and becomes the controlling principle, the alienation between the North and the South must become permanent. The opposition to Southern institutions will become calm, constant, and unappeasable. Just so far as this opinion operates, it will lead those who entertain it to submit to any sacrifices to carry it out, and give it effect. We shall become two nations in feeling, which must soon render us two nations in fact. With regard to the church, its operation will be more summary. If slaveholding is a heinous crime, slaveholders must be excluded from the church. Several of our judicatories have already taken this position. Should the General Assembly adopt it, the church is ipso facto, divided. If the opinion in question is correct, it must be maintained, whatever are the consequences. We are no advocates of expediency in morals. We have no more right to teach error in order to prevent evil, than we have a right to do evil to promote good. On the other hand, if the opinion is incorrect, its evil consequences render it a duty to prove and exhibit its unsoundness. It is under the deep impression that the primary assumption of the abolitionists is an error, that its adoption tends to the distraction of the country, and the division of the church; and that it will lead to the longer continuance and greater severity of slavery, that we have felt constrained to do what little we could towards its correction.

We have little apprehension that any one can so far mistake our object, or the purport of our remarks, as to suppose either that we regard slavery as a desirable institution, or that we approve of the slave laws of the Southern States. So far from this being the case, the extinction of slavery, and the amelioration of those laws are as sincerely desired by us, as by any of the abolitionists. The question is not about the continuance of slavery, and of the present system, but about the proper method of effecting the removal of the evil. We maintain, that it is not by denouncing slaveholding as a sin, or by universal agitation at the North, but by the improvement of the slaves. It no more follows that because the master has a right to hold slaves, he has a right to keep them in a state of degradation in order to perpetuate their bondage, than that the Emperor of Russia has a right to keep his subjects in ignorance and poverty, in order to secure the permanence and quiet possession of his power. We hold it to be the grand principle of the gospel, that every man is bound to promote the moral, intellectual, and physical improvement of his fellow men. Their civil or political relations are in themselves matters of indifference. Monarchy, aristocracy, democracy, domestic slavery, are right or wrong as they are, for the time being, conducive to this great end, or the reverse. They are not objects to which the improvement of society is to be sacrificed; nor are they strait-jackets to be placed upon the public body to prevent its free development. We think, therefore, that the true method for Christians to treat this subject, is to follow the example of Christ and his apostles in relation both to despotism and slavery. Let them enforce as moral duties the great principles of justice and mercy, and all the specific commands and precepts of the Scriptures. If any set of men have servants, bond or free, to whom they refuse a proper compensation for their labor, they violate a moral duty and an express command of Scripture. What that compensation should be, depends upon a variety of circumstances. In some cases the slaveholder would be glad to compound for the support of his slaves by giving the third or the half of the proceeds of his estate. Yet this at the North would be regarded as a full remuneration for the mere labor of production. Under other circumstances, however, a mere support, would be very inadequate compensation; and when inadequate, it is unjust. If the compensation be more than a support, the surplus is the property of the laborer, and can not morally, whatever the laws may be, be taken from him. The right to accumulate property is an incident to the right of reward for labor. And we believe there are few slaveholding countries in which the right is not practically acknowledged, since we hear so frequently of slaves purchasing their own freedom. It is very common for a certain moderate task[274] to be assigned as a day's work, which may be regarded as the compensation rendered by the slave for his support. The residue of the day is at his own disposal, and may be employed for his own profit. We are not now, however, concerned about details. The principle that "the laborer is worthy of his hire" and should enjoy it, is a plain principle of morals and command of the Bible, and can not be violated with impunity.

Again, if any man has servants or others whom he forbids to marry, or whom he separates after marriage, he breaks as clearly a revealed law as any written on the pages of inspiration, or on the human heart. If he interferes unnecessarily with the authority of parents over their children, he again brings himself into collision with his Maker. If any man has under his charge, children, apprentices, servants, or slaves, and does not teach them, or cause them to be taught, the will of God; if he deliberately opposes their intellectual, moral, or religious improvement, he makes himself a transgressor. That many of the laws of the slaveholding States are opposed to these simple principles of morals, we fully believe; and we do not doubt that they are sinful and ought to be rescinded. If it be asked what would be the consequence of thus acting on the principles of the gospel, of following the example and obeying the precepts of Christ? We answer, the gradual elevation of the slaves in intelligence, virtue, and wealth; the peaceable and speedy extinction of slavery; the improvement in general prosperity of all classes of society, and the consequent increase in the sum of human happiness and virtue. This has been the result of acting on these principles in all past ages; and just in proportion as they have been faithfully observed. The degradation of most eastern nations, and of Italy, Spain and Ireland, are not more striking examples of the consequences of their violation, than Scotland, England, and the non-slaveholding States are of the benefits, of their being even imperfectly obeyed. Men can not alter the laws of God. It would be as easy for them to arrest the action of the force of gravity, as to prevent the systematic violation of the principles of morals being productive of evil.

FOOTNOTES:

[260] See Cheever's "God against Slavery," and Wendell Phillips' Speech on Harper's Ferry, &c., &c.—ED.

[261] Their object, evidently, has been to prevent the free people of color from emigrating to Liberia, and to retain them in this country as a cat's paw to work out their own designs.—ED.

[262] But for this, a large proportion of our slaves, instead of being instructed orally, would have been taught to read the Scriptures for themselves.—ED.

[263] Paley's definition is still more simple, "I define," he says, "slavery to be an obligation to labor for the benefit of the master, without the contract or consent of the servant." Moral Philosophy, book iii, ch. 3.

[264] Address, etc., p. 20.

[265] Elements of Moral Science, p. 225.

[266] It need hardly be remarked, that the command to obey magistrates, as given in Rom. xiii: 1-3, is subject to the limitation stated above. They are to be obeyed as magistrates; precisely as parents are to be obeyed as parents, husbands as husbands. The command of obedience is expressed as generally, in the last two cases, as in the first. A magistrate beyond the limits of his lawful authority (whatever that may be), has, in virtue of this text, no more claim to obedience, than a parent who, on the strength of the passage "Children, obey your parents in all things," should command his son to obey him as a monarch or a pope.

[267] Quoted by Pres. Young, p. 45, of the Address, etc.

[268] On the manner in which slaves were acquired, compare Deut. xx: 14. xxi: 10, 11. Ex. xxii: 3. Neh. v: 4, 5. Gen. xiv: 14. xv: 3. xvii: 23. Num. xxxi: 18, 35. Deut. xxv: 44, 46.

As to the manner in which they were to be treated, see Lev. xxv: 39-53. Ex. xx: 10. xxii: 2-8. Deut. xxv: 4-6, etc. etc.

[269] "The word of Christ, (Matt. xix; 9), may be construed by an easy implication to prohibit polygamy: for if 'whoever putteth away his wife, and marrieth another committeth adultery' he who marrieth another without putting away the first, is no less guilty of adultery: because the adultery does not consist in the repudiation of the first wife, (for, however unjust and cruel that may be, it is not adultery), but in entering into a second marriage during the legal existence and obligation of the first. The several passages in St. Paul's writings, which speak of marriage, always suppose it to signify the union of one man with one woman."—PALEY'S Moral Phil., book iii, chap. 6.

[270] Elements of Moral Science, p. 221.

[271] Clarkson and Wilberforce were anxious, to have the slave trade speedily abolished, lest the force of their arguments should be weakened by its amelioration.—ED.

[272] If the negro is susceptible of this degree of improvement, he ought then to be free.—ED.

[273] Abolition has impeded this improvement.—ED.

[274] We heard the late Dr. Wisner, after his long visit to the South, say, that the usual task of a slave in South Carolina and Georgia, was about the third of a day's work for a Northern laborer.



THE

EDUCATION, LABOR, AND WEALTH OF THE SOUTH.

BY SAMUEL A. CARTWRIGHT, M.D.,

OF LOUISIANA.

NOTE.—This article of Dr. Cartwright's was designed by the Editor to follow "Cotton is King," but the copy was not received until the stereotyping had progressed nearly to completion.—PUBLISHER.

* * * * *

It has long been a favorite argument of the abolitionists to assert that slave labor is unproductive, that the prevalence of slavery tends to diminish not only the productions of a country, but also the value of the lands. On this ground, appeals are constantly made to the non-slaveholders of the South, to induce them to abolish slavery; assigning as a reason, that their lands would rise in value so as to more than compensate the loss of the slaves.

That we may be able to ascertain how much truth there is in this assertion, let us refer to figures and facts. The following deductions from the Report of the Auditor of Public Accounts of the State of Louisiana, speak in a language too plain to be misunderstood by any one, and prove conclusively, that, so far at least as the slave States are concerned, a dense slave population gives the highest value and greatest productiveness to every species of property. Similar deductions might he drawn from the Auditors' Reports of every slave State in the Union EDITOR.

1. Annual Report of the Auditor of Public Accounts of the State of Louisiana. Baton Rouge, 1859.

2. Annual Report of the Superintendent of Public Education. Baton Rouge, 1859.

3. Les Lois concernant, les Ecoles Publique dons l'Etat de la Louisiane, 1849.

4. Agricultural Productions of Louisiana. By Edward J. Forstal, New Orleans, 1845.

5. Address of the Commissioners for the Raising the Endowment of the University of the South. New Orleans, 1859.

IT is much easier to acquire knowledge from things cognizable to the senses than from books. American civilization is founded upon the laws of nature and upon moral virue. "Honesty is the best policy," says Washington, its founder. The laws of nature are discovered by observation and experience. A practical direction is given to them by that species of knowedge, which is derived from handling the objects of sense and working upon the materials the earth produces. Moral virtue puts a bridle on the evil passions of the heart, and, at the same time, infuses into it an invincible courage in demanding what is right. A knowledge of nature enables its possessor to bridle the natural forces of air, earth, fire, and water—to hold the reins and drive ahead. With its rail-roads and telegraphs, American civilization is waging war with time and space, and, by its moral power and Christian example, with sin and evil. With its labor-saving machiney, its thirty millions do more work for God and man than three hundred millions of such people as inhabit Asia, Africa, Central, and South America, and Mexico. Its thirty millions are equal to any hundred millions of most of the governments of Europe. It is far ahead of the most enlightened nations of Europe, because its people are in the possession of all the blessings and comforts that heaven, through nature's laws, accord to earth's inhabitants, while three-fourths of the two hundred and fifty millions of Europe are writhing in an artificially created purgatory—deprived of all the good things of earth. Whoever would catch up with the annals of American progress, fall into line with American policy, and get within the influence of the guiding spirit of American policy, must not depend upon libraries for information, or he will be left far behind the age in which he lives; must look to the statistics of the churches, to the reports of legislative and commercial bodies, and to the monthly reviews recording the principal transactions of the busy world around him. If he wants to keep pace with the exploits of mankind under European civilization, in cutting one another's throats, sacking cities, destroying commerce, and laying waste the smiling fields of agriculture, the daily press will give the required information; but he can not rely upon it for these statistical details and stubborn facts which tell what the Caucasian in America, aided by his black man, Friday, is doing for Christianity, for liberty, for civilization, and for the good of the world. Some of these details are regarded as too dry and uninteresting, and others too long for admission in the daily press. Much is written and said about the benefits of education. The rudiments are alike important in both kinds of civilization, American and European. But after acquiring the rudimentary knowledge, the paths of education in the two hemispheres diverge from each other at right angles. The further the American travels in the labyrinths of that system of education, so fashionable in Europe, purposely designed to bury active minds in the rubbish of past ages, or tangle them in metaphysical abstractions and hide from them the beauty of truth and the matter-of-fact world around them, the less he is qualified to appreciate the blessings and benefits of republican institutions, and the more apt he is to be found in opposition to American policy. By hard studies on subjects of no practical importance, physical or moral, the European system of education drives independence out of the mind, and virtue out of the heart, as a pre-requisite qualification for obedience to governments resting upon diplomacy, falsehood, artificial and unnatural distinctions among men. But in the United States, the various State governments being founded on moral truths and nature's laws, and not on the opinions of a privileged order, our system of education should be in harmony with our system of government; our youth should be taught to love virtue for virtue's sake; to study nature, bow to her truths, and to give all the homage that the crowned heads receive in Europe, to nature and to truth. Our government sets up no religious creed or standard of morals, but leaves every one perfectly free in religion and morals, to be governed by the Bible as he understands it, provided he does not trespass upon the rights of others. The principal books in our libraries give little or no aid in qualifying our youth for public office or to direct the legislation or policy of a government resting upon natural laws. The practical operation of our system is scarcely anywhere else recorded than in church history, gospel triumph, legislative reports, reviews, and pamphlets. There the facts may be found, but they are isolated and disconnected, teaching nothing; but could be made a most potent means, not only of instruction in the practical operation of our system of government, but of developing the human faculties, if introduced into our schools. They are full of objects for comparison. By comparison the mind is taught the difference between things; comparisons are at the bottom of all useful and practical knowledge. "They are suggestive," says Prof. Agassiz, "of further comparisons. When the objects of nature are the subjects of comparison, the mind is insensibly led to make new inquiries, is filled with delight at every step of progress it makes in nature's ever young and blooming fields, and study becomes a pleasure. No American knows what a good country he has got until he visits Europe and draws comparisons between the condition of the laboring classes there and those at home. Even in London, about half the people have neither church-room nor school-room."

The Annual Report of the Auditor of Public accounts of the State of Louisiana abounds with objects which have only to be compared in their various relations to one another to give the mind a clear perception of the operation and practical working of some of the most important natural laws and moral truths lying at the bottom of American civilization and progress. Without comparisons they are like hieroglyphical characters telling nothing. Comparisons will decipher them and make them speak a language full of instruction, which every one can understand.

The more thorough the education in European colleges, or in American schools on a similar model, the more there will be to unlearn before American institutions can be understood or their value appreciated, and the less will the American citizen be qualified to vote understandingly at the polls. The reason is, that the system of education which directs the policy of goverments founded upon artificial distinctions, is from necessity inimical to a government founded upon natural distinctions and moral truth. Education on the British model has set the North against the South, and has waylaid every step of American progress, from the acquisition of Louisiana to the last foot of land acquired from Mexico or the Indians, and it now stands across the path of the all-conquering march of American civilization into Cuba, Central America, and Mexico. The vicious system of education founded upon the European model has almost reconquered Massachusetts and several other Northern States, converting them, in many essential particulars, into British provinces. The people of the North are virtuous and democratic at heart; but they have been turned against their own country and the sentiments which experience teaches to be truths, the obvious benefits of negro slavery, for instance, by an education essentially monarchical. To sustain itself, American policy should have its own schools, to guide and direct it. Heretofore it has been guided and directed almost entirely by the light and knowledge derived from the great school of experience, in which the democratic masses are taught without the aid of other books than the Bible and hymn book. In that school they learned that the negro was not a white man with a black skin, but a different being, intended by nature to occupy a subordinate place in society; that school made known that the only place which nature has qualified him to fill was the place of a servant. That place was accordingly assigned him in the new order of civilization called American civilization, founded upon moral virtue and natural distinctions, and not upon artifice and fraud; upon nature's laws and God's truths, and not upon the fallacies of human reason, as that of Europe. They had not even the assistance of book education to tell them that the white man bore the name of Japheth in the Bible, and the negro that of Canaan; and that the negro's servile nature was expressed in his Hebrew name. American theologians had not paid sufficient attention to the Hebrew, and could not inform the American reader that both the Hebrew Bible and its Greek translation, called the Septuagint, plainly, and in direct terms, recognize two classes or races of mankind, one having a black skin, and the other being fair or white; and that, besides these two races, it recognizes a third race under the term Shem, a name which has no reference to color; but as the other two were plainly designated as whites and blacks, the inference is, that the third class was red or yellow, or of an intermediate color. In the Septuagint (the Bible which our Saviour quotes), AEthiop is the term used to designate the sons of Ham, a term synonymous with the Latin word niger, from which the Spanish word negro is derived. The Bible tells in unmistakable terms that Japheth, or the white race, was to be enlarged. The discovery of the western hemisphere opened a wide field for the enlargement of the white race, pent up for thousands of years in a little corner of the eastern hemisphere. The new hemisphere was found to be inhabited by nomads of the race of Shem, neither white nor black. The historical fact is, that the white race is every year enlarging itself by dispossessing the nomadic sons of Shem, found on the American continent, of their tents, and dwelling in them; and that the black race are its servants. Thus literally, in accordance with the prophecy, "Japheth will be enlarged, he shall dwell in the tents of Shem, and Canaan (the negro) shall be his servant." The prophecy is not fulfilled, but only in process of fulfillment. It clearly points to a new order of civilization, in a wider world for enlargement than the old, in which the black race was to serve the white. The will of God that such a new order of civilization should be established, in which the negro and white man should mutually aid each other, and supply each other's deficiencies, is not only revealed in Hebrew words, written thousands of years ago, but revealed also in the laws of nature, and revealed by Ethiop nowhere else but in our slaveholding States, stretching forth her arms to God. American civilization, founded upon revealed truth and nature's laws, puts the negro in his natural position, that of subordination to the white man.

The observation and experience of those who founded a government resting on the basis of moral truth and natural, instead of artificial distinctions, revealed to them the necessity of consigning to the negro an inferior position, in order to carry out that democratic principle which demands a place for every thing, and every thing in its place. What are called the free States have provided no place for the poor negro. He is an outcast and a wanderer, hurtful instead of helpful to society. Mexico, Central and South America, in catching at the shadow, lost the substance of republicanism. Republican government has utterly failed with them, because they fell into the error of supposing that all men of all races are naturally equal to one another. The white race in those countries, acting upon that error, emancipated the inferior negro race, and amalgamated with that and with the Indian race. This disregard of the distinctions made by nature, between the white, black, and Indian races, was fatal to American civilization in those countries.

Mr. Jefferson never meant to say that negroes were equal to white men; but that white men, whether born in England or America were equal to one another. Our fathers contended for their own equality among Englishmen, which not being granted to them, they declared their independence. But scarcely had their swords won that independence, when the governing classes of Great Britain began to teach the rising generation, through the medium of books, schools, and colleges, that the democratic doctrine, which declared all white men equal to one another, included negroes. Thus making the learned world believe that democracy and negro slavery are incompatible—that there can be no such thing as a democracy, or a government where the people rule, so long as black people are held in slavery. The schools not only taught the doctrine that negro slavery is anti-republican, but that it is a moral, social and political evil, and soon it was denounced from the pulpit as sin against God!

Under the influence of such an education, imported from Europe, the American people, even in the South, began to regard negro slavery as an evil—not from any thing they saw, but from what they had been taught. Thence all manner of experiments were made with the negro to make his condition better out of slavery than in it. All of which proving a failure, the South took issue with Old and New England on the question of negro slavery being an evil, social, political, or moral, and called for the proof. No proof could be given except that drawn from England, from hearsay evidence, and from theoretical teaching of that system of education designed to support European despotisms, and to destroy American republicanism. This has opened the eyes of the South to the necessity of establishing schools and colleges of its own to uphold American civilization. The address of the commissioners for the raising of the endowment of the University of the South commends it to the attention of the American people, not as a sectional or Southern university, but as an American university, to be the house and home of the spirit of American civilization—a dwelling-place not lighted with fox-fire tapers or artificial lights to disguise nature, as the institutions of learning in Europe are, but with the light inherent in nature's truths and in the revealed word of God, honestly translated and interpreted. Some schools to aid American civilization have already been established, but there is a sad outcry for the proper kind of school books; those of Old and New England being rotten to the core with abolitionism and with that false democracy which would make the rising generation believe that the heroes of the American Revolution fought for ruining the negro by giving him liberty, fought to annul God's decrees, which made him a servant of servants, instead of fighting for the principle asserting their own equality with the lords of England and the crowned heads of Europe. Fortunately the work before us, the Report of the Auditor of the Public Accounts of Louisiana, will answer very well to supply the want of a proper kind of school book to indoctrinate beginners in the mysteries of the political institutions of their own country, and at the same time to discipline and expand their minds. It is only one of the numerous books of its class, which might be advantageously pressed into the service of the schools for a similar purpose. The statistics of the United States Census, and De Bow's Industrial Resources, and the Minutes of the Progress of the American Churches, would prove a very good beginning of a high school and college library. Comparisons being the basis of all useful and practical knowledge, in the works just referred to, and in the auditor's report and others of its class, will be found ample materials for comparison. Comparison will infuse a soul into the dry bones of the facts and figures of our religious and political institutions, and make them declare the hidden truths of nature which lie at the bottom of American republicanism, Christianity, prosperity, and progress. The task of comparing will be highly instructive to the youthful mind, and at the same time agreeable and interesting. As an example, here is the way a beginning is recommended, for a comparison in secular affairs.

LESSON NO. 1.—Let Lesson No. 1 consist in comparing the counties (or parishes, as they are called in Louisiana) having the largest white population and the fewest negroes, with those counties having the heaviest negro population and the fewest white people.

There are five parishes, or counties, found in the report of the auditor of public accounts, in which the white population exceeds the negro slaves three to one. Let these parishes be compared with five others in which the slave population exceeds the white seven to one.

Table I, represents the first class of parishes, and Table II, the second. Thus:

TABLE I.

Total acres of /——————-Population———————- land owned. Whites. Slaves. Free Negroes. Calcasieu, 35,486 2,367 947 280 Livingston, 60,885 3,998 1,297 7 Sabine, 85,446[275] 3,585 1,409 —- Vermillion, 73,654 3,260 1,378 19 Winn, 43,406 4,314 1,007 38 ———- ——— ——— —- 298,877 17,524 6,038 343 17,524 ——— Total whites and slaves, 23,562 343 ——— Aggregate population, 23,905

TABLE II.

Total acres of /——————-Population———————- land owned. Whites. Slaves. Free Negroes. Carroll, 246,582 2,409 9,529 —- Concordia, 318,395 1,384 11,908 11 Madison, 304,494 1,293 9,863 —- Tensas, 323,797 1,255 13,285 328 W. Feliciana, 230,966 1,985 10,450 68 ————- ——— ——— —- 1,224,234 8,326 55,035 407 8,326 ——— Total whites and slaves, 63,361 407 ——— Aggregate population, 63,768

It will be seen from the above, that the white population of the parishes in table I exceeds the slaves nearly three to one; while, in the parishes in table II, the slaves exceed the whites nearly seven to one.

If the land were divided equally among the aggregate population, each inhabitant of the parishes in table I would have 12 acres, and each inhabitant of the parishes in table II would have 22 acres. Here lesson 1 ends, by proving that there is not as great a demand for land, by nearly one half, where the population consists of one white man and seven negroes. By referring to a map of Louisiana, it will be seen that the territorial extent of the parishes in table I is much greater than those in table II. Hence it is not for the want of territory, that a population consisting of three whites to one negro, owns less land by nearly one half, than a population consisting of seven negroes to one white man.

LESSON NO. 2.—Lesson No. I requires the value of the land per acre, in tables I and II, to be ascertained and compared, with a view of solving the important problem: "Which gives the most value to land, a dense white population with a few negroes, or a dense slave population with a few white people?"

By referring to the report of the auditor of accounts of Louisiana, it will be seen that the assessed value of the lands of the parishes in table I amounts to $1,642,073, or $5 49 per acre; while that of table II amounts to $23,446,654, or $16 46 per acre. A population consisting of seven negro slaves to one white man, makes land three times as valuable as a population of three white men to one negro. The comparison drawn in this lesson, puts a soul in the dry bones of the facts and figures contained in the report of the auditor of public accounts, and makes them tell what it is which gives value to Southern land.

LESSON NO. 3.—Let this lesson be devoted to drawing comparisons to ascertain: "Which pays the most taxes to the State, five parishes containing 17,524 whites with a few negroes, or five parishes containing less than half the whites (8,326) with a great many negroes?" By referring to the report of the auditor it will be seen, that the 17,524 whites of the five parishes in table I pay the State only $25,487,93, or less than $1 50 each, while the 8,326 whites in the five parishes in table II pay the State $169,900 per annum, or upward of $20 each. The aggregate population of the parishes in table I pay only $1 06 each, while the aggregate population of the parishes in table II pay $2 66 each. Every three whites and twenty negroes pay the State $61 18. By making a calculation it will appear that it will require forty-three whites and fifteen negroes of the parishes in table I, to pay the State as much as three whites and twenty negroes pay in the parishes in table II.

COROLLARY.—Three white men with twenty negroes, financially considered, are worth as much to the State as forty-three white men with fifteen negroes.

This strange truth meets a steady explanation in the fact found in Lesson No. 2, that in those parishes where every three white inhabitants own twenty negroes, the land is more than three times as valuable as in the parishes, where every forty-three of the white population possess only fifteen negroes.

LESSON NO. 4.—In the last lesson the truth was brought out that forty-three white men and fifteen negroes are worth no more to the State, financially considered, than three white men and twenty negroes. Let this lesson examine the question: "Whether forty-three white men in command of fifteen negroes are worth AS MUCH to the State, agriculturally and commercially considered, as three white men in command of twenty negroes?" This is a bold question and requires some calculations. In making the calculations to base the comparisons upon, sugar will be estimated at $60 per hogshead; molasses at $7 per barrel; corn at $1 per bushel, and cotton at $40 dollars per bale. At these rates the value of the agricultural productions in the five parishes, where the white population is nearly three times as great as the negro, amounts to $446,550, in a population of 17,524 whites, 6,038 negro slaves, and 343 free negroes—the aggregate population 23,905, which gives to each inhabitant $18 68.

The value of the agricultural productions in the five parishes, viz: Carroll, Concordia, Madison, Tensas, and West Feliciana, where the negro slaves are nearly seven times as numerous as the white population, amounts to $8,854,770. In other words, 55,035 negroes under the command of 8,326 whites, in an aggregate population of 63,768 (407 being added for free negroes), produced $8,854,770 worth of agricultural products in one year, estimating cotton at $40 per bale, sugar $60 per hogshead, and corn at $1 a bushel; this amount divided by the aggregate population gives each individual, black and white, old and young, $138 87. Three whites in command of twenty negroes produce $3,194 worth of agricultral products. This lesson was to solve the question whether forty-three white men in command of fifteen negroes are worth as much to the State, agriculturally and commercially considered, as three white men in command of twenty negroes? It has been proved that in those five parishes where the whites nearly treble the negroes, each inhabitant only produces $18 68. This would give to forty-three white and fifteen negroes only $1,081 70 as their share of the value of the agricultural productions—whereas, the share of three whites and twenty negroes, in those parishes where the negro population is nearly seven to one of the white, has been ascertained to be $3,194. The student of political economy is now prepared to solve another question: "What number of inhabitants are required in those parishes where labor is isolated or disassociated, to produce as much as three white and twenty negroes produce in those parishes where labor is associated? The answer is 171; viz: 113 whites and 58 negroes. The question is proved to be correctly solved by multiplying 171 by $18.68 which gives $1,394 25, the exact amount and a quarter over, that twenty negroes and three whites produce in those parishes where labor is associated, or where the slave population is nearly seven times more numerous than the white.

LESSON NO. 5.—Let two more lots of parishes be compared; one in which the white population is not quite double that of the negro slaves, and the other in which the negro slaves are not quite double the number of the whites.

TABLE III.

Parishes where whites exceed negroes less than two to one.

Whites. Slaves. Free negroes. Val. ag. prod.' 58.

Caldwell, 2,607 1,830 8 $121,920 St. Tammany, 2,588 1,945 — 67,170 Union, 7,191 4,154 5 691,641 Washington, 2,910 1,551 10 47,532 Jackson, 5,220 3,803 1 702,742 ——— ——— — ————— 20,516 13,283 24 $1,631,005

Dividing the total value of the agricultural products by the aggregate population, gives $48 22 to each individual, as the average in five parishes, where the negro slaves are somewhat more than half the whole population. This is a considerable improvement on the five parishes in table I, where the whites exceed the negroes nearly three to one, the average to each inhabitant being only $18 68, instead of $48 22.

TABLE IV.

Parishes where negroes exceed whites less than two to one.

Whites. Slaves. Free negroes. Val. ag. prod. '58.

Claiborne, 4,618 7,003 58 $857,675 De Soto, 4,459 7,301 29 739,945 Morehouse, 3,620 5,468 14 785,370 Nachitoches, 5,987 7,939 775 1,120,718 Caddo, 4,073 5,978 44 1,056,130 Bossier, 3,646 7,195 11 1,155,010 ——— ——— —- ————- 26,403 40,784 931 5,674,848

The total value of the agricultural productions, divided by the aggregate population, 68,168, gives to each inhabitant $83 25. In table II the aggregate population was 63,768, nearly seven negroes to one white man; the value of the agricultural products divided, gave each $138 07, instead of $83 25. The parishes of table II, with an aggregate population of 63,768, seven sixths of whom were slaves, produced $8,854,770 worth of agricultural products; whereas, the parishes of table IV, containing a population of 68,168, the slaves being less than double the number of whites, produced three millions less of agricultural products than a smaller aggregate population produced in those parishes where the negroes outnumbered the whites nearly seven to one.

The report of the auditor of public accounts for the year 1859, does not contain the necessary data for making comparisons in the parishes on the lower stem of the Mississippi river, by reason of crevasses and other disastrous causes. The valuable pamphlet of Edward J. Forstale, on the agricultural products of Louisiana, will supply that deficiency, though of a much older date. It appears from Mr. Forstale, that, so far back as 1844, "on well conducted estates, the average value of sugar and molasses, per slave, was $237 50, estimating sugar at 4 cents, and molasses at 15 cents," while the general average in the sugar district, per slave, was, in the year 1844, only $150 31, from which he deducted $75 for expenses. By examining his Monograph, it will be seen that the great bulk of the sugar and molasses was produced in those parishes having the heaviest negro population in proportion to the white. Thus, St. Martin's, with a total population more than three times as large as St. Charles, and with a negro population more than twice as numerous, produced, in 1844, only 5,000 hogsheads, while St. Charles produced upward of 12,000. The white population of St. Charles is only 883, while that of the slaves is 3,769. The white population of St. Martin is 6,400, and the negro population 8,200. Assumption and Ascension are adjoining parishes. Assumption contains more than three thousand whites, and three hundred slaves over and above the population of Ascension. It has more land than Ascension, yet it pays $2,200 less taxes on lands than Ascension, and its gross taxes are $1,500 less than Ascension. The value of its agricultural products is likewise less.

These lessons by comparison might be indefinitely extended, by dropping the report of the auditor of public accounts of Louisiana, and taking up the statistics of the churches, and the last United States census. The statistics of the American churches prove that the slaveholding States contain more Christian communicants, in proportion to the population, including black and white, than the non-slaveholding—South Carolina more than Massachusetts, Virginia more than Pennsylvania, Kentucky more than Ohio. The report proves that in the cotton and sugar region, the white people who have few or no negroes, are poor and helpless, but when supplied with seven times their own number of negroes, they are the richest and most powerful agricultural people on the earth. The census will prove that the landed property of those who are thus supplied with from three to seven times their own number of negroes, if sold at its assessed value, and the proceeds of sales divided equally among all the inhabitants, black and white, each individual would have a larger sum than any Pennsylvanian, New Yorker, or New Englander, would have, if the land in the richest counties were sold at its assessed value, and the proceeds of sales divided equally among the inhabitants of the said county. For instance, if the land in some of the richest counties of Pennsylvania, say Adams, Berks, Centre, Chester, and Washington, were all sold, and the proceeds divided among the inhabitants, each individual would have only about half as much as each negro and white man would have, if the lands of Carroll, Madison, Concordia, and Tensas, where the negroes outnumber the whites seven to one, were all sold, and the proceeds equally divided among blacks and whites.

Comparisons, instituted upon the data furnished by the United States census, will show that what Virginia wants is more negroes, and what Pennsylvania wants is more white laborers. In some counties in Pennsylvania, Cambria and Carbon for instance, the land, if sold and proceeds divided, would not give each inhabitant $75 a piece, the most of the land being uncultivated for want of laborers. Ohio, Wyoming, and Nicholas counties, in Virginia, with an aggregate population exceeding thirty thousand, have only 222 negro slaves. The land, if sold and divided, would not give each inhabitant one hundred dollars. In Accomac, Albemarle, York, Prince Edward, and Prince George, the negro population is about equal to the white. The land, if sold and equally divided, would give each individual from $150 to $220, which is nearly as much as the inhabitants of the best counties of Pennsylvania would have from the proceeds of sales of these lands. Land, per acre, is cheaper in Virginia than in Pennsylvania, because much the largest portion of the Virginia lands are unimproved for the want of laborers, while the largest portion of the Pennsylvania lands are under cultivation. The cotton States and Louisiana are sucking the life-blood out of Virginia by draining that noble old State of her agricultural laborers. The high price of negroes is ruining Virginia. In Sussex, Southampton, Northampton, and many other counties, which send most negroes to the cotton States, the inhabitants have lost more in the fall in the price of their land, than they have gained in the high price they got for their negroes. The land, if sold and divided, would give each individual only fifty-seven dollars, less than three dollars an acre. Oxford is Great Britain's eye, or rather the telescope which is used to see afar off, to direct British policy. Mr. Jefferson saw the importance of a university of the first class, to be used as a telescope to look into the distance, to direct Virginia, or what ought to be the same thing, American policy, as Oxford directs British policy. Hence he devoted the latter years of his life to establishing an institution for that very purpose.

Long before the West India emancipation act was passed, it was known by the learned graduates and fellows of Oxford, that negroes would not work as free laborers; and that their emancipation would ruin the British West Indies. British policy, however, to build up India, imperatively demanded the sacrifice to be made, as Russian policy demanded the sacrifice of Moscow. The African race furnished the only laborers, who could compete with the Mongolian race in producing the rich products of tropical agriculture. Great Britain had a hundred and fifty millions of the bronze and yellow-skin Asiatics under her command, and only wanted the black-skin Africans out of the way, to monopolize tropical agriculture. To carry out the British policy of becoming, not only mistress of the seas, but mistress of the boundless wealth of tropical and tropicoid climates, the learned graduates of Oxford and Cambridge raised a hue and cry against the inhumanity of the middle passage. So little truth was there in it, that when the committee of the United States Senate, appointed to consider the causes of the mortality prevailing on emigrant ships from Europe to this country, and the means for the better protection of the health of the passengers, did me the honor in 1854 to request my views on the subject, I replied (see "Report of the Select Committee of U. S. Senate on the Sickness and Mortality on Emigrant Ships," pages 119-144—Washington, 1854), recommending certain rules to be adopted to preserve the health and ameliorate the condition of emigrants on shipboard, which appeared to me to be the best. But, subsequently, a little volume fell into my hands containing the rules of the African slave-traders, half a century ago, which were so much better than those I had recommended, I called the attention of the chairman of the Senate's committee, the Hon. Hamilton Fish, to them, advising him by all means to adopt the African slave-traders' rules, if he had any regard for the health and comfort of the European emigrants. In the latter part of the last century no one pretended, as now, that the negro lost any thing by exchanging slavery in Africa for the more benign system of slavery in America. But it was the imaginary sufferings on the middle passage, which brought humanity with her eyes shut to lend to British policy a helping hand to close Africa and prevent her sable sons from exchanging their barbarous masters for civilized ones. America consented to that policy. The Southern tobacco-planters, believing they had as many negroes as the cultivation of tobacco required, had petitioned the king before the Revolution, to close the African slave trade. He did not do it. After the Revolution it was not only closed, but declared to be piracy, by the federal government. The policy which closed it may have been good policy or bad at that time. It soon gave the non-slaveholding States the ascendency in the Union. The question, whether they shall retain that ascendency, will depend very much upon whether they continue to abuse the power they acquired over the South by cutting off the supply of Southern laborers. Having ascertained that the negro would not work as a free man, the next move of British policy was, to set those free who were already in America. All parties in England, some by one artifice and some by another, were ultimately led to promote the British policy of negro abolitionism. From England it was brought over to the United States, took root and grew so rapidly as soon to become a most disturbing element in both church and state. We had no colleges at the North, and scarcely any churches which knew the advantages humanity and Christianity derived from the mutual aid the black and white races afford each other. The most of them are and were virtually European colleges located in America. This has enabled those learned men in Great Britain, who guide and direct British policy, to make a nose of wax of the great body of the educated classes in the United States. The prominence given to the Latin language, to the neglect of the Greek and Hebrew, in our schools and colleges, has greatly tended to fill the heads of the students with monarchical ideas, and to prevent them from understanding and appreciating the institutions of their own country. The study of Homer and the Greek classics favors genuine republicanism, by fostering a high-toned moral virtue, and by creating a love for nature and for political institutions founded upon her laws; while the study of Virgil, and other Latin text-books, used in our schools and colleges, has a strong tendency to lead to a sickly sentimental admiration for nominal instead of real freedom, and for governments founded upon usurpations and artificial distinctions, as that of the Caesars was, and as that of Great Britain is. There is as much difference between Homer and Virgil as between nature and art. The Latin, being a derivative language, and of very little use, would long since have been banished from the schools, but for the aid monarchy derives from its binding men of letters, as Virgil bound the Muses, to the footstool of thrones, to flatter the frail humanity thereon with the incense of divine honors. Homer's Muses, like true Americans, pay no higher honors to the diadem on the king's head than to the gaudy plumage of the peacock's tail. Young America would derive great advantages from an intimate acquaintance with Homer. He wrote in a language which gives to all the arts and sciences their technical terms. Hence, the previous study of the Greek makes the acquaintance of the various sciences comparatively easy to the learner. The Greek and Hebrew being original languages, can be acquired in much less time than the Latin, which is a derivative language. It is to be hoped that the great University of the South, about to be established on the cool and salubrious plateau of the Cumberland Mountains, if it does not banish Latin, will at least give a greater degree of prominence to the Greek and Hebrew, the two languages in which the Scriptures were originally written. By comparing "The Annual Report of the Superintendent of Public Education, 1859, with "Les Lois concernant les Ecoles Publique dans l'Etat de la Louisiane, 1849," it will be perceived, that the New England system of public education is not adapted to Louisiana and the South. The laws are excellent, if the system itself was in conformity to the spirit of our political institutions. After ten years' trial, we learn from the Report of the Superintendent, that they can not be carried out, as no laws can be, which are theoretical, burdensome, troublesome, expensive, and void of practical benefits. If a law were passed by the State of Louisiana appropriating three hundred thousand dollars per annum to furnishing every family with a loaf of bread every day, it could not be executed. More than half the families would not accept the bread. The Report of the Superintendent of Public Education proves that more than half the families in Louisiana will not accept of the mental food the State offers to their children. Some parishes will not receive any of it. Tensas, for instance, which is taxed $16,000 for the support of public schools, has "not a single public school," says the Report, "in it, yet nearly every planter has a school in his own house." The truth is, that government does more harm than good by interfering with the domestic concerns of our people. If let alone, they would not need governmental aid in furnishing food for either the body or the mind. The South would have been far ahead in education, manufactures, and internal improvements, if the federal government had not interfered, to shut out the only kind of laborers who can labor in the cane and cotton field and live. The system of public education, all admit, has failed in the country, but, it is asserted, has succeeded very well in New Orleans. If the tree be judged by its fruits it is poisonous instead of salutary, to republican institutions, in our great cities. If the boys whom it has taught to read novels, had been put to trades, they could not have been driven away from the polls after they had grown to be men. There has been virtually no election in New Orleans, and in many of our large cities, for the last five or six years; whether from fear or indifference, it proves that the system of education is defective. America wants a University to raise the standard of morals, manners, and learning, so high, that every individual will be as secure from personal violence at the sacred ballot-box, as at the church altar. America wants schools to raise the standard of moral virtue so high, that every American citizen, naturalized or native, may confidently rely upon government putting forth its whole power to protect him in all the rights and privileges of an American citizen, both at home and abroad.

FOOTNOTE:

[275] Report of 1857, for the land in this parish.



CONCLUDING REMARKS.

BY THE EDITOR.

HAVING thus finished our labors, and embodied in this work a range of discussion on slavery, occupying the whole ground, we have a word to say to those who are engaged in fomenting these mad schemes of the abolitionists. We ask you candidly and dispassionately to compare the spirit, tone, and style of argument in the work before you, with the writings and speeches of the anti-slavery propagandists, such as Cheever, Channing, Wendell Phillips, and Sherman's protege. In unsparing and vituperative denunciation they certainly excel; but are they not filled with the most gross exaggerations and misrepresentations, not to say willful falsehoods. Nowhere do you find that Christian candor and fairness of argument, that should characterize the search after truth, but in their stead only positive assertions, and inflammatory appeals to the most vindictive passions of human nature.

In this crusade of the North against the South, there is a most unwarrantable and impertinent interference with the concerns of others, that ought to be most sternly rebuked; and it is one of the encouraging signs of the times, that the Southern people are at last roused from their inaction, and are vigorously engaged in adopting means of self-protection. Many, however, in the North are engaged in this crusade in order to divert attention from their own plague-spot—AGRARIANISM. We all recollect the Patroon of Albany and the Van Rensellaer mobs,—the Fourerism and Socialism of the free States, and the ever-active antagonism of labor and capital. They are like the fleeing burglar, who, more loudly than his pursuers, cries stop thief! For the time perhaps they have succeeded in hounding on the rabble in full cry after the South, and in diverting attention from themselves. But how will they fare in the end? It is said of a certain animal, that when once it has tasted human blood it never relinquishes the chase; so when the mob shall have tasted the sweets of plunder and rapine in their raids upon the South, will they spare the hoarded millions of the money-princes and nabobs of the North? Are there not thousands of needy and thriftless adventurers, or of starving and vicious poor, in the free States and cities of the North, who look with ill-concealed envy, or with gloating rapacity, on the prosperity and wealth of the aristocrats, as they term them, of the spindle and loom, and of the counting-house? Ye capitalists, ye merchant princes, ye master manufacturers, you may excite to frenzy your Jacobin clubs, you may demoralize their minds of all ideas of right and wrong, but remember! the gullotine is suspended over your own necks!! The agrarian doctrines will ere long be applied to yourselves, for with whatsoever measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again.

Ye who profess to be the ministers of the Prince of peace, yet are engaged in preaching Sharp's rifles, or Brown's pikes; who teach that murder is no crime, if committed by a slave upon his best friend, his master; that midnight incendiarism is meritorious; that the breach of every command in the decalogue is commendable, if perpetrated under the guise of abolition philanthropy; who claim to possess a "higher law" than the law of God; in fine, who preach every thing except Jesus Christ, and him crucified; how shall you escape the sentence of holy writ: "If any man shall add unto these things, God shall add unto him all the plagues that are written in this book; and if any man shall take away from the words of the book of this prophecy, God shall take away his part out of the book of life, and out of the holy city, and from the things which are written in this book."

Ye politicians, who, for the sake of place, power, and the spoils of office, are engaged in alienating the feelings of both sections of our Union; in producing division in our national councils; whose course is fast bringing about the dissolution of our Union; to whose skirts will cling the blood of the martyrs of liberty, so vainly shed?

Ye people of the North, our brothers by blood, by political associations, by a community of interest; why will ye be led away by a cruel and misguided philanthropy, or by designing demagogues? why will ye strive to inflict the most irreparable injury upon the objects of your misplaced sympathy? reduce to ruins this fair fabric of liberty, and this happy land to desolation? Your own leaders acknowledge that, hitherto, your agitation, far from bettering the condition of the slaves, has only made it worse; and in some respects this is true. So long as you confine yourselves to making or hearing abolition speeches, or forming among yourselves anti-slavery societies; so long as you confine the agitation to yourselves, you neither injure nor benefit the slaves; your exuberant philanthropy escapes through the safety-valve in the shape of gas. But when you attempt to circulate among them incendiary documents, intended to render them unhappy, and discontented with their lot, it becomes our duty to protect them against your machinations. This is the sole reason why most, if not all the slave States, have forbidden the slaves to be taught to read. But for your interference, most of our slaves would now have been able to read the word of God for themselves, instead of being dependent, as they now are, on that oral instruction, which is now so generally afforded them. When emissaries come among them, to give them oral instruction different from that contained in the word of God, instead of abridging the privileges of the slave, we deal directly with the emissary, and justly, too; for we are acting not only in self-defense, but we are guarding this dependent race, committed by God to our care, from those malign influences which would work evil, not only to us, but to themselves, also. Could you succeed in your efforts—which you will find to be impossible—as the red republicans did in St. Domingo, or as the English abolitionists did in Jamaica and Barbadoes, so far from having bettered the condition of the blacks, you would have inflicted on them an irreparable injury. But of this you will soon have an opportunity of satisfying yourselves. We have among us a few hundred thousand of this race, who have been emancipated through a mistaken philanthropy, and who, though not injurious, are almost useless to us; these we have concluded to colonize among you, that your lecturers, while lauding the black man as being far superior to the white race, may never be in want of a specimen of the genuine article, to point to, as a proof of the truth of their arguments. Some of the slave States—and most, if not all of them, will pursue the same policy—have already passed laws for the removal of the free blacks from their borders, but allowing them the option of remaining, by choosing their masters, and returning to a state of servitude; and strange as you may think it, many have already done so, in preference to going among their friends, the abolitionists. This is done, not so much because we wish to be rid of this heterogeneous element of our population, for at worst, they are, with us, only a kind of harmless dead weight, but because we wish to send them North as missionaries, to convert the abolitionists and free soilers. If we may judge from the census and votes in the different counties in Ohio, the experiment will be entirely successful, as those counties having the largest black population, voted, in 1859, against the anti-slavery ticket; whilst those which voted for it, possess but a meagre black population. Is this because an intimate acquaintance with the negro, convinces the community that freedom is not the normal or proper condition for him; or is it because he prefers to reside amongst those who make least pretensions of friendship for him? The anti-slavery men may take either horn of the dilemma.