Page:An Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans Called Africans.djvu/98

84 the road. I have seen two oxen and two slaves pretty fully employed in getting along a single hogshead; and some of these come from a great distance inland."

The inhabitants of free States are often told that they cannot argue fairly upon the subject of slavery because they know nothing about its actual operation; and any expression of their opinions and feelings with regard to the system, is attributed to ignorant enthusiasm, fanatical benevolence, or a wicked intention to do mischief.

But Mr Clay, Mr Brodnax, and Mr Faulkner, belong to slave holding States; and the two former, if I mistake not, are slave owners. They surely are qualified to judge of the system; and I might fill ten pages with other quotations from Southern writers and speakers, who acknowledge that slavery is a great evil. There are zealous partisans indeed, who defend the system strenuously, and some of them very eloquently. Thus, Mr Hayne, in his reply to Mr Webster, denied that the South suffered in consequence of slavery; he maintained that the slave holding States were prosperous, and the principal cause of all the prosperity in the Union. He laughed at the idea of any danger, however distant, from an overgrown slave population, and supported the position by the fact that slaves had always been kept in entire subjection in the British West Indies, where the white population is less than ten per cent of the whole. But the distinguished gentleman from South Carolina did not mention that the peace establishment of the British West Indies costs England two million pounds annually! Yet such is the fact. This system is so closely entwined with the apparent interests and convenience of individuals, that it will never want for able defenders, so long as it exists. But I believe I do not misrepresent the truth, when I say the prevailing opinion at the South is, that it would have been much better for those States, and for the country in general, if slavery had never been introduced.

Miss Martineau, in her most admirable little book on Demerara, says: "Labor is the product of mind as much as of body; and to secure that product, we must sway the mind by the natural means—by motives.