Page:The Collected Works of Theodore Parker volume 6.djvu/48

Rh at $400 apiece, they come to $1,280,164,800; deduct this from the gross sum, and there remains $1,476,246,754 as the worth of all the material property of all the persons in the fifteen slave States; while the inhabitants of the free States have material property amounting to $3,186,683,924.

The different effects of democracy and despotism appear in the higher forms of industry—the inventions which perform the work of human hands. From 1790 to 1849, there were 16,514 patents granted for inventions made in the free States, and only 2,202 in the slave States. I omit patents granted to citizens of the district of Columbia, and to foreigners. In 1851, 64 patents were granted to citizens of the slave States ; 656 to those of the free States. Besides, many of the Southern patents are granted to men born and bred at the North. It is not too much to say, that the machinery of Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts, driven by water and steam, earns every year more than all the 3,000,000 slaves of the entire South. Even Chancellor Harper confesses that "free labour is cheaper than the labour of slaves." The South kidnaps men, breeds them as cattle, brands them as cattle, beats them as cattle, sells them as cattle—does not know "whether they have a soul or not;" declares them cursed by God, not fit for human sympathy, incapable of development, indifferent to liberty, to chastity, without natural affection ; breaks up their marriages, forbids them to be taught reading and writing—behold the practical results!

Look at the effect of these two institutions, the democratic and the despotic, on the intellectual education of the people, in the North and South.

In 1839, there were in the slave States, at schools and colleges, 301,172 pupils; in the free States, 2,212,444 pupils at school and college. New York sends, to school and college, more than twice as many young persons as all the slave States.

At that time there were in Connecticut 163,843 free persons over twenty years of age ; of these only 526 were unable to read and write. In South Carolina, there were 111,663 free persons over twenty, and of these 20,615 were reported as unable to write or read. The ignorant men of