Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/56

44 These are an important element in the power and wealth of a nation. While South Carolina has taken men from Africa, and made slaves, New England has taken possession of the winds, of the waters; she has kidnapped the Merrimack, the Connecticut, the Androscoggin, the Kennebeck, the Penobscot, and a hundred smaller streams. She has caught the lakes of New Hampshire, and holds them in thrall. She has seized fire and water, joined them with an iron yoke, and made an army of slaves, powerful, but pliant. Consider the machinery moved by such agents in New England, New York, Pennsylvania; compare that with the human machines of the South, and which is the better drudge? The "Patriarchal Institution of slavery" and the economic institution of machinery stand side by side,—this representing the nineteenth century before Christ, and that the nineteenth century after Christ. They run for the same goal, though slavery started first and had the smoother road. It is safe to say, that the machinery of the free States has greater productive ability than the 3,000,000 bondmen of the South. While slavery continues, the machinery will not appear. Steam-engines and slaves come of a different stock.

The foreign trade of the South consists mainly in the export of the productions of the farm and the forest; the domestic trade, in collecting those staples and distributing the articles to be consumed at home. Much of the domestic trade is in the hands of Northern men—though mainly "with Southern principles." The foreign trade is almost wholly in the hands of foreigners, or men from the North, and is conducted by their ships. In the South, little is demanded for home consumption; so the great staples of Southern production find their market chiefly in the North, or in foreign ports. The shipping is mainly owned by the North. Of the Atlantic States seven have no slaves: Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, and New Jersey; in 1846, they, with Pennsylvania, had 2,160,501 tons of shipping. In all the slaves States which lie on the seaboard, there are owned but 401,583 tons of shipping. In 1846, the young State of Ohio, two thousand miles from the sea, had 39,917 tons; the State of South Carolina, 32,588. Even Virginia, full of bays and harbours, had but 53,441 tons. The single