Page:An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans.djvu/138

124 in the House, and the same number of Electors for the choice of President and Vice President. She has nearly double the number of both."

What would the South have? They took the management at the very threshold of our government, and, excepting the rigidly just administration of Washington, they have kept it ever since. They claimed slave representation, and obtained it. For their convenience the revenues were raised by imposts instead of direct taxes, and thus they give little or nothing in exchange for their excessive representation. They have increased the slave States, till they have twentyfive votes in Congress—They have laid the embargo, and declared war—They have controlled the expenditures of the nation—They have acquired Louisiana and Florida for an eternal slave market, and perchance for the manufactory of more slave States—They have given five presidents out of seven to the United States—And in their attack upon manufactures, they have gained Mr Clay's concession bill. "But all this availeth not, so long as Mordecai the Jew sitteth in the king's gate." The free States must be kept down. But change their policy as they will, free States cannot be kept down. There is but one way to ruin them; and that is to make them slave States. If the South with all her power and skill cannot manage herself into prosperity, it is because the difficulty lies at her own doors, and she will not remove it. At one time her deserted villages were attributed to the undue patronage bestowed upon settlers on the public lands; at another, the tariff is the cause of her desolation. Slavery, the real root of the evil, is carefully kept out of sight, as a "delicate subject," which must not be alluded to. It is a singular fact in the present age of the world, that delicate and indelicate subjects mean precisely the same thing.

If any proof were wanted, that slavery is the cause of all this discord, it is furnished by Eastern and Western Virginia. They belong to the same State, and are protected by the same laws; but in the former, the slave-holding interest is very strong—while in the latter, it is scarcely anything. The result is, warfare, and continual complaints, and threats of separation. There are