Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/281

268 2. Next, there will be no miscellaneous mechanical industry, as in New England and all the free States. Agriculture will be the chief business, almost the only business; and that will be confined to the great staples—corn, wheat, rice, tobacco, cotton ; the aim will be only to produce the raw material. Agriculture will be poor, land will be low in price, and continually getting run out by unskilful culture. The slave's foot burns the soil and spoils the land; that is the master's fault. Twenty years hence, land will not be worth $16 an acre, as in sterile New Hampshire, but $4, as in fertile Georgia. There will be no rapid development of wealth ; and, as the Northern man values riches, I think he should look to this, and see that the land is not taken from under his foot, and the power of creating wealth from his head and hand. 3. Then there will be no good and abundant roads, as in New England, but only a few, as in Carolina and Virginia, and those miserably poor. In Kansas, twenty years hence, there will not be 1964 miles of railroad, as in Illinois, but 231 miles, as in Missouri.

4. There will be no abundance of beneficent free schools, as in New England, but a few, and of the worst sort: Education will be the monopoly of the rich, who will not get much thereof. Laws will forbid the education of the slave, and discourage the culture of the mass of the people.

5. There will be no Lyceums, no courses of lectures; but, in their place, there will be horse-races, occasionally the lynching of an Abolitionist, or the burning of a black man at a slow fire! Yet, now and then, a Northern man will be invited thither by the slave-holders; some unapostolical fisherman will take the majestic memory of Washington, disembowel it of all its most generous humanity, skilfully arrange it as bait; and then, with bob and sinker, hook and fine, this "political Micawber," " looking for something to turn up," will go angling along the shore, praying for at least a presidential bite, and possibly obtain a conventional nibble.

6. There will be no "libraries other than private," with their one hundred and eight thousand volumes, as in Michigan ; only four hundred and twenty volumes, as in