Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/327

Rh property real and personal in the State of Virginia, including slaves, is $430,701,882; of New York $1,080,000,000, without estimating the value of the men who own it, Virginia has got 472,528 slaves. I will estimate them at less than the market value—at 1400 each; they come to $189,000,000. I subtract the value of the working people of Virginia, and she is worth not quite $242,000,000, Now, the State of New York might buy up all the property of Virginia, including the slaves, and still have $649,000,000 left; might buy up all the real and personal property of Virginia, except the working men, and have $838,000,000 left. The North appropriates the rivers, the mines, the harbours, the forests, fire and water—the South kidnaps men. Behold the commercial result.

Virginia is a great State—very great! You do not know how great she is. I will read it to you presently. Things are great and small by comparison. I am quoting again from the Richmond Examiner (March 24, 1854). "Virginia in this confederacy is the impersonation of the well-born, well-educated, well-bred aristocrat" [well born while the children of Jefferson and the only children of Madison are a "connecting link between the human and brute creation;" well educated, with twenty-one per cent, of her white adults unable to read the vote they cast against the unalienable rights of man; well bred, when her great product for exportation is—the children of her own loins! Slavery is a "patriarchal institution;" the democratic Abrahams of Virginia do not offer up their Isaacs to the Lord; that would be a "sacrifice," they only sell them. So]; "she looks down from her elevated pedestal upon her parvenu, ignorant, mendacious Yankee vilifiers, as coldly and calmly as a marble statue; occasionally she condescends to recognize the existence of her adversaries at the very moment when she crushes them. But she does it without anger, and with no more hatred of them than the gardener feels towards the insects which he finds it necessary occasionally to destroy." "She feels that she is the sword and buckler of the South—that it is her influence which has so frequently defeated and driven back in dismay the Abolition party when flushed by temporary victory. Brave, calm, and determined, wise in times of excitement, always true to the slave power, never rash or indiscreet, the waves