spent beyond her borders. This great stream of taxation continually bears the wealth of the South far away on its waves, and small indeed is the portion which ever returns in refreshing clouds to replenish its sources. Turn it back to its natural channel, and the South will be relieved of 15 millions of taxes-to be left where they can be most wisely expended, in the hands of the payers; and the other 11 millions will furnish salaries to her people and encouragement to her labor. Restore to her the use of the 130 or 140 millions a year of her produce for the foreign trade, and all her ports will throng with business. Norfolk and Charleston and Savannah, so long pointed at by the North as a proof of the pretended evils of slavery, will be crowded with shipping, and their warehouses crammed with merchandise."

"The real triumph of the South," says a journal which sees neither advantage nor honor in the Federal Union, "consists in a dissolution of the Union." Such are the authorities upon which the work under consideration bases these grave charges of sectional opinion.

One of the most common arts of those who want the courage to meet an adversary consists in attributing to him opinions which he has never uttered, and proceeding to triumph over a position which has never been defended.

We are compelled to deny at the threshold that these propositions embody the opinions of the South, according to any exposition either legislative or primary. If such had been its opinions they would have been avowed, and maintained to the desired consummation. The South would not have left the declaration of its position to anonymous pamphlets, however able, nor local editorials howsoever sincere. We will give an extract from history almost contemporaneous. It will require no voucher, for it is fresh in the memory of all. There arose in 1850 a violent contest in the South upon the question whether the Union ought to be dissolved or endured. Upon that question was arrayed a conflict of the most exciting and momentous character, for it was a contest

of brethren interested in the same inheritance and committed to the same destiny. The argument quoted as the present opinion of the South was put in during that contest. It had the weight due to its ability and to its facts. The question was settled by acquiescence in the compromise of 1850. There has since been an universal amnesty. The South is calm and united, and so sincere has been the determination to abide by that Compromise as "a settlement in substance," that several of the most prominent advocates of extreme action at that time are now the trusted representatives of the Federal Government in stations of high administrative and diplomatic trust. The tardy act of justice rendered by the North in expunging the black lines of sectional humiliation which excluded the Southern access to a common domain, and the signal rebuke which the organized enemies of the South have more recently received, tend still more to reconcile the South to its political connection; and these measures, if confirmed in good faith, will restore the relations which originally existed between the two sections.

But the taunt of some individual is cited which imputes to the North "a base cupidity, a servile truckling and subserviency," and it is charged with a mercenary meanness in submitting to a connection with a people who despise it. "What," exclaims this insidious enemy of sectional friendship-"shall we say of the sons of the North, always ready to knock themselves down to the highest bidder to Northern men with Southern principles? Can we say of them other than that their course has been generally marked by cupidity, truckling and subserviency to the South ?"

The conduct of the slanderer who puts words into the mouth of one person which he has never spoken, and taunts another with indignities which have never been offered, is visited by society with unanimous execration. What other penalty can be expected by an author who bases a national argument upon the expressions of individual prejudice, and would combine in his view the envious malignity of the fanatic with the honest indignation of insulted sectional

ism? Such is the quo animo with which the author asserts that,

The Federal Government has been administered for the exclusive benefit of the South.

sustain this proposition It is that the acquisition

The specific proof adduced to would be very conclusive, if true. of Federal territory has been exclusively on Southern account. To render this wrong more aggravated, we are told that it has been accompanied by a total change in the original policy of the government; for that, whereas the Government once favored universal emancipation, it has been now converted "to the propagandism and expansion of slavery.”

That public policy once tended in almost all the States to emancipation, is without question. Slavery was once considered a profitable investment in human labor. It terminated in certain States, because it was no longer thought to be so. For this reason, it receded from Massachusetts to Maryland. Commencing in interest, it has been combined with certain political and social considerations. It will terminate in the same considerations. Not otherwise. The change of policy may then be explained without imputing to those who introduced slavery, motives more mercenary than those which actuated those who abolished it.

The African slave was originally employed in the rudest labor. He was fitted for nothing else-nor was there any thing else for him to do in the Northern States, for as yet manufacturing and mining were unknown. The free labor of these States was then sufficient for the purposes of agriculture, and men could not afford to support laborers who aided to consume the products of the common toil, and thus threw the owner out of employment. The New England farmer could not then keep a Caliban to split logs, bear burdens, and sleep in stupid inactivity when unemployed. Under these considerations slave labor was too costly for the agricultural productions of the North. It was a bad investment. The slaves were, therefore, either set free, or sold South, where their labor was more valuable. Northern emancipation was then the

retrenchment of an unprofitable expense, or the modification of an injudicious investment. It was not the acknowledgment or expiation of a moral wrong.

Under the same reasoning it was even proposed to abolish slavery in the staple growing States of Maryland and Virginia. There was at that time no other industrial labor for slaves except the production of provisions and the single staple tobacco. The helpless members of the slave family consumed almost all that the able-bodied could make upon the impoverished lands of the Atlantic coast; the staple which they produced scarcely quit the cost of its production and sale in a foreign market. The average price of tobacco and slaves, was little more than one-fourth of their present value. The wisdom of the Federal Government had not bestowed upon us then new territory, adapted to culture, nor had steam given us access to that which we already possessed. The Abbe Raynal,* writing about the United Colonies, demonstrated that they could support but ten millions of people, and founded his argument upon the exhaustion of staple culture, and the incapacity of their lands for agricultural restoration. The letters of General Washington will prove the unproductive nature of slave labor; and his repeated propositions to liberate his negroes, were based on no acknowledgment that he had done wrong to keep them in bondage, but in a general belief of the unprofitable character of their labor as well as the injury which it was believed they inflicted upon the industrial habits of the people. Such were also the arguments upon which Mr. Jefferson advocated emancipation, they were but a repetition of the same reasons which had influenced the Northern States, and they were reiterated by the advocates of emancipation of a later day. But the argument having been submitted to the people of Virginia, they decided against emancipation, and the wisdom of their decision has been strengthened with the developed difficulties of a free negro population, and the offensive interference of those who,

• Raynal's Indies.

having disposed of their own interest, proposed to compel others to follow their example. In this connection we will give at once an historical fact, and an unanswerable argument upon the question of policy. Mr. Jefferson, one of the wisest and most original reformers that ever lived, proposed the following schedule of constitutional amendments for Virginia :*

1. Freedom of religious worship.

2. Extension of the right of suffrage, and the choice of officers by popular election.

3. The repeal of the law of primogeniture.

4. The establishment of a system of State education. 5. The emancipation of the slaves.

Every one of these measures except the last has been carried out almost in the terms dictated by that great statesman. Had he lived to see the impulse given to industrial pursuits in Virginia, had he seen her improved agriculture, her growing manufactures, her opening mines, her spreading commerce, had he seen the drain of emigration staunched, and the steady accession from other States, had he seen the lands of Virginia quadrupled in value, her people contented and employed, her schools well attended, her colleges crowded with students, and her university sending to the halls of Legislation and the arena of active life, men competent to compete with any rivals, he would have seen the cause of temperance, and the habits of industry held in honor, racers and gamesters despised, and professional politicians derided.

Had he seen the slave partake of the elevation of increased value, and improved intelligence, the trusted manager repairing the ravages which his own ancestor had caused,— the skillful foreman in the forge or factory, receiving a fair proportion of his own wages in those things which he would have been compelled, if free, to have purchased with them -raised from the degradation of compulsory labor, and taught to work for a common maintenance, with a common interest had Mr. Jefferson, and those who reasoned with

Notes on Virginia, 1787.