The ratio of increase of population, especially in this country, is one of the surest tests of public prosperity. Let us then again listen to the impartial testimony of the late census. From this we learn that the increase of population in the free States from 1830 to 1840, was at the rate of 38 per cent., while the increase of the free population in the slave States was only 23 per cent. Why this difference of 15 in the two ratios? No other cause can be assigned than slavery, which drives from

The maxim that "Knowledge is power," has ever more or less influenced the conduct of aristocracies. Education elevates the inferior classes of society, teaches them their rights, and points out the means of enforcing them. Of course, it tends to diminish the influence of wealth, birth, and rank. In 1671, Sir William Berkley, then Governor of Virginia, in his answer to the inquiries of the Committee of the Colonies, remarked, "I thank God that there are no free schools nor printing presses, and I

In a community so unenlightened as yours, it is a matter of course, that the arts and sciences must languish, and the industry and enterprise of the country be oppressed by a general torpor. Hence multitudes will be without regular and profitable employment, and be condemned to poverty and numberless privations. The very advertisements in your newspapers show that, for a vast proportion of the comforts and conveniences of life, you are dependent on Northern manufacturers and mechanics. You both

Whenever the great mass of the laboring population of a country are reduced to beasts of burden, and toil under the lash, "bodily labor," as Chancellor Harper expresses it, must be disreputable, from the mere influence of association. Hence you know white laborers at the South are styled "mean whites." At the North, on the contrary, labor is regarded as the proper and commendable means of acquiring wealth; and our most influential men would in no degree suffer in public estimation, for holding t

The deplorable ignorance and want of industry at the South, together with the disrepute in which honest industry is held, cannot but exercise, in connection with other causes, a most unhappy influence on the morals of the inhabitants. You have among you between two and three millions of slaves, who are kept by law in brutal ignorance, and who, with few exceptions, are virtually heathens. [8] [8] "From long continued and close observation, we believe that their (the slaves') moral and religious c

Christianity, by controlling the malignant passions of our nature, and exciting its benevolent affections, gives a sacredness to the rights of others, and especially does it guard human life. But where her blessed influence is withdrawn, or greatly impaired, the passions resume their sway, and violence and cruelty become the characteristics of every community in which the civil authority is too feeble to afford protection. No society is free from vices and crime, and we well know that human depr

We have already seen that one of the blessings which the slaveholders attribute to their favorite institution, is exemption from popular tumults, and from encroachments by the democracy upon the rights of property. Their argument is, that political power in the hands of the poor and laboring classes is always attended with danger, and that this danger is averted when these classes are kept in bondage. With these gentlemen, life and liberty seem to be accounted as the small dust of the balance, w

Governor McDuffie, in his speech of 1834 to the South Carolina Legislature, characterized the Federal Constitution as "that miserable mockery of blurred, and obliterated, and tattered parchment." Judging from their conduct, the slaveholders, while fully concurring with the Governor in his contempt for the national parchment, have quite as little respect for their own State Constitution and Laws. The "tattered parchment" of which Mr. McDuffie speaks, declares that "the citizens of each State shal

The whole nation witnessed the late successful efforts of the slaveholders in Congress, by their various gag resolutions, and through the aid of recreant Northern politicians, to destroy all freedom of debate adverse to "the peculiar institution." They were themselves ready to dwell, in debate, on the charms of human bondage; but when a member took the other side of the question, then, indeed, he was out of order, the constitution was outraged, and the Union endangered. We all know the violent t

The Constitutions of all the slave States guarantee, in the most solemn and explicit terms, the Liberty of the Press; but it is well understood that there is one exception to its otherwise unbounded license—Property in human flesh is too sacred to be assailed by the press. The attributes of the Deity may be discussed, but not the rights of the master. The characters of public, and even of private men, may be vilified at pleasure, provided no reproach is flung upon the slaveholder . Every abuse i

A distinguished foreigner, after travelling in the Southern States, remarked that the very aspect of the country bore testimony to the temerity of the nullifiers, who, defenceless and exposed as they are, could not dare to hazard a civil war; and surely no people in the world have more cause to shrink from an appeal to arms. We find at the South no one element of military strength. Slavery, as we have seen, checks the progress of population, of the arts, of enterprise, and of industry. But above

If, fellow-citizens, with all the natural and political advantages we have enumerated, your progress is still downward, and has been so, compared with the other sections of the country, since the first organization of the Government, what are the anticipations of the distant future, which sober reflection authorizes you to form? The causes which now retard the increase of your population must continue to operate, so long as slavery lasts. Emigrants from the North, and from foreign countries, wil