quences that we are able to make, with due distrust of ourselves, we impartially, and in good faith, decide for that which appears likely to produce the greatest good, we are free from moral guilt. And I would impress most earnestly, that with our imperfect and limited faculties, and short-sighted as we are to the future, we can rarely, very rarely indeed, be justified in producing considerable present evil or suffering, in the expectation of remote future good-if indeed this can ever be justified.

In considering this subject, I shall not regard it in the first instance in reference to the present position of the slaveholding States, or the difficulties which lie in the way of their emancipating their slaves, but as a naked, abstract questionwhether it is better that the institution of praedial and domestic Slavery should, or should not, exist in civilized society. And though some of my remarks may seem to have such a tendency, let me not be understood as taking upon myself to determine that it is better that it should exist. God forbid that the responsibility of deciding such a question should ever be thrown on me or my countrymen. But this I will say, and not without confidence, that it is in the power of no human intellect to establish the contrary proposition—that it is better it should not exist. This is probably known but to one being, and concealed from human sagacity.

There have existed in various ages, and we now see existing in the world, people in every stage of civilization, from the most barbarous to the most refined. Man, as I have said, is not born to civilization. He is born rude and ignorant. But it will be, I suppose, admitted that it is the design of his Creator that he should attain to civilization: that religion should be known, that the comforts and elegancies of life. should be enjoyed, that letters and arts should be cultivated; in short, that there should be the greatest possible develop

ment of moral and intellectual excellence. It can hardly be necessary to say any thing of those who have extolled the superior virtues and enjoyments of savage life a life of physical wants and sufferings, of continual insecurity, of furious passions and depraved vices. Those who have praised savage life, are those who have known nothing of it, or who have become savages themselves. But as I have said, so far as reason or universal experience instruct us, the institution of Slavery is an essential process in emerging from savage life.. It must then produce good, and promote the designs of the Creator.

I add further, that Slavery anticipates the benefits of civilization, and retards the evils of civilization. The former part of this proposition has been so fully established by a writer of great power of thought-though I fear his practical conclusions will be found of little value-that it is hardly necessary to urge it.* Property-the accumulation of capital, as it is commonly called-is the first element of civilization. But to accumulate, or to use capital to any considerable extent, the combination of labor is necessary. In early stages of society, when people are thinly scattered over an extensive territory, the labor necessary to extensive works cannot be commanded. Men are independent of each other. Having the command of abundance of land, no one will submit to be employed in the service of his neighbor. No one, therefore, · can employ more capital than he can use with his own hands, or those of his family, nor have an income much beyond the necessaries of life. There can, therefore, be little leisure

* The author of “ England and America." We do, however, most indignantly repudiate his conclusion, that we are bound to submit to a tariff of protection, as an expedient for retaining our slaves, "the force of the whole Union being required to preserve Slavery, to keep down the slaves."

for intellectual pursuits, or means of acquiring the comforts or elegancies of life. It is hardly necessary to say, however, that if a man has the command of slaves, he may combine labor, and use capital to any required extent, and therefore accumulate wealth He shows that no colonies have been successfully planted without some sort of Slavery. So we find the fact to be. It is only in the slaveholding States of our Confederacy, that wealth can be acquired by agriculture-which is the general employment of our whole country. Among us, we know that there is no one, however humble his beginning, who, with persevering industry, intelligence, and orderly and virtuous habits, may not attain to considerable opulence. So far as wealth has been accumulated in the States which do not possess slaves, it has been in cities by the pursuits of commerce, or lately, by manufactures. But the products of slave labor furnish more than two-thirds of the materials of our foreign commerce, which the industry of those States is employed in transporting and exchanging; and among the slaveholding States is to be found the great market for all the productions of their industry, of whatever kind. The prosperity of those States, therefore, and the civilization of their cities, have been for the most part created by the existence of Slavery. Even in the cities, but for a class of population, which our institutions have marked as servile, it would be. scarcely possible to preserve the ordinary habitudes of civilized life, by commanding the necessary menial and domestic service.

Every stage of human society, from the most barbarous to the most refined, has its own peculiar evils to mark it as the condition of mortality; and perhaps there is none but omnipotence who can say in which the scale of good or evil most preponderates. We need say nothing of the evils of savage life. There is a state of society elevated somewhat above it,

which is to be found in some of the more thinly peopled portions of our own country-the rudest agricultural statewhich is thus characterized by the author to whom I have referred: "The American of the back_woods has often been described to the English as grossly ignorant, dirty, unsocial, delighting in rum and tobacco, attached to nothing but his rifle, adventurous, restless, more than half savage. Deprived of social enjoyments or excitements, he has recourse to those of savage life, and becomes (for in this respect the Americans degenerate) unfit for society." This is no very inviting picture, which, though exaggerated, we know not to be without likeness. The evils of such a state, I suppose, will hardly be thought compensated by unbounded freedom, perfect equality, and ample means of subsistence.

But let us take another stage in the progress-which to many will appear to offer all that is desirable in existence, and realize another Utopia. Let us suppose a state of society in which all shall have property, and there shall be no great inequality of property-in which society shall be so much condensed as to afford the means of social intercourse, without being crowded, so as to create difficulty in obtaining the means of subsistence-in which every family that chooses may have as much land as will employ its own hands, while others may employ their industry in forming such products as it may be desirable to exchange with them. Schools are generally established, and the rudiments of education universally diffused. Religion is taught, and every village has its church, neat, though humble, lifting its spire to heaven. Here is a situation apparently the most favorable to happiness. I say apparently, for the greatest source of human misery is not in external circumstances, but in men themselves—in their depraved inclinations, their wayward passions and perverse wills. Here is room for all the petty competition, the

envy, hatred, malice and dissimulation, that torture the heart in what may be supposed the most sophisticated states of society; and though less marked and offensive, there may be much of the licentiousness.

But apart from this, in such a condition of society, if there is little suffering, there is little high enjoyment. The even flow of life forbids. the high excitement which is necessary for it. If there is little vice, there is little place for the eminent virtues, which employ themselves in controlling the disorders and remedying the evils of society, which, like war and revolution, call forth the highest powers of man, whether for good or for evil. If there is little misery, there is little room for benevolence. Useful public institutions we may suppose to be created, but not such as are merely ornamental. Elegant arts can be little cultivated, for there are no means to reward the artists; nor the higher literature, for no one will have leisure or means to cultivate it for its own sake. Those who acquire what may be called liberal education, will do so in order to employ it as the means of their own subsistence or advancement in a profession, and literature itself will partake of the sordidness of trade. In short, it is plain that in such such a state of society, the moral and intellectual faculties cannot be cultivated to their highest perfection.

But whether that which I have described be the most desirable state of society or no, it is certain that it cannot continue. Mutation and progress is the condition of human affairs. Though retarded for a time by extraneous or accidental circumstances, the wheel must roll on. The tendency of population is to become crowded, increasing the difficulty of obtaining subsistence. There will be some without any property except the capacity for labor. This they must sell to those who have the means of employing them, thereby swelling the amount of their capital, and increasing inequality. The

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