Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/188

Rh is poorer for Slavery. It is a bad tool to work with. The educated freemen is the best working power in the world.

Compare the North with the South, and see what a difference in riches, comfort, education. See the superiority of the North. But the South started with every advantage of nature—soil, climate, everything. To make the case plainer, let me take two great States, Virginia and New York. Compare them together. In geographical position Virginia has every advantage over New York. Almost everything that will grow in the Union will grow somewhere in Virginia, save sugar. The largest ships can sail up the Potomac a hundred miles, as far as Alexandria. The Rappahannock, York, James, are all navigable rivers. The Ohio flanks Virginia more than three hundred miles. There is sixty miles of navigation on the Kanawha. New York has a single navigable stream with not a hundred and fifty miles of navigation from Troy to the ocean. Virginia has the best harbour on the Atlantic coast, and several smaller ones. Your State has but a single maritime port. Virginia abounds in water-power for mills. I stood once on the steps of the capital at Washington, and within six miles of me, under my eyes, there was a water-power greater than that which turns the mills of Lawrence, Lowell, and Manchester, all put together. In 1836 it did not turn a wheel; now, I am told, it drives a grist mill. No State is so rich in water-power. The Alleghanies are a great water-shed, and at the eaves the streams rush forward as if impatient to turn mills. New York has got very little water-power of this sort. Virginia is full of minerals—coal, iron, lead, copper, salt. Her agricultural resources are immense. What timber clothes her mountains! what a soil for Lidian corn, wheat, tobacco, rice! even cotton grows in the southern part. Washington said the central counties of Virginia were the best land in the United States. Daniel Webster, reporting to Virginians of his European tour, said he saw no lands in Europe so good as the valley of the Shenandoah. Virginia is rich in mountain pastures favourable to sheep and horned cattle. Nature gives Virginia everything that can be asked of nature. What a position for agriculture, manufactures, mining,