Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker Slavery volume 5 .djvu/86

74 is $14,000,000. Of tMs about $12,750,000 was actually paid into the treasury of the United States, though part in a depreciated currency. Of that the South, paid for her slaves, if the computation be correct, only $1,256,553.

In 1837 the surplus revenue of the Union, amounting to $37,468,859 97, was distributed among the several States in proportion to their electoral votes. By the census of 1830, the North had 7.008,451 free persons, and the South but 3,823,289. The free States received $21,410,777 12, and the slave States $16,058,082 85. Each freeman of the North received but $3 05, while each freeman of the South received $4 20 in that division.

At that time the South had one hundred and twenty-six electoral votes, of which twenty-five were on account of her slave-representation. She therefore received by that arrangement $3,186,127 50 on account of the representation of her slaves. From that if we deduct the $1,256,553 paid by her as direct taxes on her slaves, there is left $1,929,574 50, as the bonus which the South has received from the treasury of the nation on account of the representation of slaves—Southern property represented in Congress. To this we must add $57,556, which the South received in 1842 from the sale of public land on account of her slaves, the sum is $1,987,130 50. Mr Pinckney was right when he said the terms were not bad for the South.

Slavery diverts the freeman from industry, from science, from letters and the elegant Arts. It has been said to qualify him for politics. As political matters have been managed in the United States in this century, the remark seems justified by the facts. Elections are not accidents. Of the eight presidents elected in the nineteenth century, six were born in the South—children of the slave States. No northern man has ever twice been elected to the highest office, of the nation. A similar result appears in the appointment of important officers by the President himself. From 1789 to 1845, one hundred and seventy appointments were made of ministers and charges to foreign powers; of these, seventy-eight were filled from the North, ninety-two from the South. Of the seventy-four ministers plenipotentiary sent to Europe before 1846, forty-three were from the slave States. There have been fifteen judges of the supreme court from the North; eighteen from the South.