operative we are disposed to consider the most productive laborer in the world, and the Irish laborer, in his immediate neighborhood, is not more than equal to the southern slavethe Spanish and even Italian laborers are inferior. Now, how are we to account for this great difference? It will be found mainly to depend upon the operation of two great principles, and secondarily upon attendant circumstances. These two principles are the desire to accumulate and better our condition, and a desire to indulge in idleness and inactivity.

We have already seen that the principle of idleness triumphed over the desire for accumulation among the savages of North and South America, among the African nations, among the blacks of St. Domingo, &c., and nothing but the strong arm of authority could overcome its operation. In southern countries idleness is very apt to predominate, even under the most favorable circumstances, over the desire to accumulate, and slave labor, consequently, in such countries, is most productive. Again, staple growing States are coeteris paribus, more favorable to slave labor than manufacturing States. Slaves in such countries may be worked by bodies under the eye of a superintendent, and made to perform more labor than freemen. There is no instance of the successful cultivation of the sugar cane by free labor. St. Domingo, once the greatest sugar growing island in the world, makes now scarcely enough for her own supply. We very much doubt even whether slave labor be not best for all southern agricultural countries. Humboldt, in his New Spain, says he doubts whether there be a plant on the globe so productive as the banana, and yet these banana districts, strange to tell, are the poorest and most miserable in all South America, because the people only labor a little to support themselves, and spend the rest of their time in idleness. There is no doubt but slave labor would be the most productive kind in these dis

tricts. We doubt whether the extreme south of the United States, and the West India Islands, would ever have been cultivated to the same degree of perfection as now, by any other than slave labor. The history of colonization furnishes no example whatever, of the transplantation of whites to very warm or tropical latitudes without signal deterioration of character, attended with an unconquerable aversion to labor. And it would seem, that nothing but slavery can remedy this otherwise inevitable tendency. The fact, that to the North, negro slavery has every where disappeared, whilst to the South it has maintained its ground triumphantly against free labor, is of itself conclusive of the superior productiveness of slave labor in southern latitudes. We believe that Virginia and Maryland are too far North for slave labor, but all the States to the South of these are, perhaps, better adapted to slave labor than free.

But it is said, with the increasing density of population, free labor becomes cheaper than slave, and finally extinguishes it, as has actually happened in the west of Europe; this, we are ready to admit, but think it was owing to a change in the tillage, and rise of manufactures and commerce, to which free labor alone is adapted. As a proof of this, we can cite the populous empire of China, and the Eastern nations, generally, where slave labor has stood its ground against free labor, although the population is denser, and the proportional means of subsistence more scanty than any where else on the face of the globe. How is this to be accounted for, let us ask? Does it not prove, that under some circumstances, slave labor is as productive as free? We would as soon look to China to test this principle, as any other nation on earth. The slave districts in China, according to the report of travellers, are determined by latitude and agricultural products. The wheat growing districts have no slaves, but the rice, cotton, and sugar

growing districts, situated in warm climates, have all of them slaves, affording a perfect exemplification of the remarks above made. Again, looking to the nations of antiquity, if the Scriptural accounts are to be relied on, the number of inhabitants of Palestine must have been more than 6,000,000; at which rate, Palestine was at least, when taking into consideration her limited territory, five times as populous as England.* Now, we know the tribes of Judah and Israel both used slave labor, and it must have been exceedingly productive; for, we find the two Kings of Judah and Israel bringing into the field no less than 1,200,000 chosen men;† and Jehosaphat, the son of Asa, had an army consisting of 1,160,000 and what a † prodigious force must he have commanded, had he been sovereign of all the tribes. Nothing but the most productive. labor could ever have supported the immense armies which were then led into the field.

Wallace thinks that ancient Egypt must have been thrice as populous as England; and yet so valuable was slave labor, that ten of the most dreadful plagues that ever affected mankind, could not dispose the selfish heart of Pharoah to part with his Israelitish slaves; and when he lost them, Egypt sunk, never to rise to her pristine grandeur again. Ancient Italy, too, not to mention Greece, was exceedingly populous, and perhaps Rome was a larger city than any of modern times; and yet slave labor supported these dense populations, and even rooted out free labor. All these examples prove sufficiently, that under certain circumstances, slave is as productive, and even more productive, than free labor.

But the Southern States, and particularly Virginia, have been compared with the non-slaveholding States, and pronounc

* See Wallace on the Numbers of Mankind, p. 52, Edin. edition. † 2d. Chron. xiii. 3.

2d. Chron. xvii.

ed far behind them in the general increase of wealth and population; and this, it is said, is a decisive proof of the inferiority of slave labor in this country. We are sorry that we have not space for a thorough investigation of this assertion, but we have no doubt of its fallacy. Look to the progress of the colonies before the establishment of the Federal Government, and you find that the slaveholding were the most prosperous and the most wealthy. The North dreaded the formation of the confederated government, precisely because of its poverty. This is an historical fact. It stood to the South, as Scotland did to England at the period of the Union; and feared lest the South, by its superior wealth, supported by this very slave labor, all of a sudden, has become so unproductive, should abstract the little wealth which it possessed. Again, look to the exports at the present time of the whole confederacy, and what do we see? Why, that one-third of the States, and those slaveholding, too, furnish two-thirds of the whole exports! But although this is now the case, we are still not prosperous. Let us ask, then, two simple questions: 1st. How came the South, for two hundred years, to prosper with her slave labor, if so very unproductive and ruinous? And 2dly. How does it happen, that her exports are so great, even now, and that her prosperity is, nevertheless, on the decline? Painful as the accusation may be to the heart of the true patriot, we are forced to assert, that the unequal operation of the Federal Government has principally achieved. it. The North has found that it could not compete with the South in agriculture, and has had recourse to the system on duties, for the purpose of raising up the business of manufacThis is a business in which the slave labor cannot compete with northern, and in order to carry this system through, a coalition has been formed with the West, by which a large portion of the Federal funds are to be spent in that quarter

tures.

for internal improvements. These duties act as a discouragement to southern industry, which furnishes the exports by which the imports are purchased, and a bounty to northern labor, and the partial disbursements of the funds, increase the pressure on the South to a still greater degree. It is not slave labor, then, which has produced our depression, but it is the action of the Federal Government which is ruining slave labor.

There is, at this moment, an exemplification of the destructive influence of government agency in the West Indies. The British West India Islands are now in a more depressed condition than any others, and both the Edinburgh and London Quarterly Reviews charge their depression upon the regulations, taxing sugar, coffee, &c., and preventing them, at the same time, from purchasing bread stuffs, &c., from the United States, which can be furnished by them cheaper than from any other quarter. Some of the philanthropists of Great Britain cry out it is slavery which has done it, and the slaves must be liberated; but they are at once refuted by the fact, that never has an island flourished more rapidly than Cuba, in their immediate neighborhood. And Cuba flourishes because she enjoys free trade, and has procured, of late, plenty of slaves. It is curious that the population of this island has, for the last thirty years, kept pace with that of Pennsylvania, one of the most flourishing of the States of the confederacy, and her wealth has increased in a still greater ratio.* Look again to Brazil, perhaps at this moment the most prosperous state of South America, and we find her slaves three times more numerous than the freemen. Mr. Brougham, in his Colonial Policy, says that Cayenne never flourished as long as she was scantily supplied with slaves, but her prosperity commenced the moment she was supplied with an abundance of

* See some interesting statistics concerning this island in Mr. Poinsett's Notes on Mexico.