as in the United States; but although we believe that they apply to the great majority of the slaves, there are exceptions. There arises in some an irrepressible desire for freedom, which nothing can restrain. It haunts them by night and by day. No hardship or danger will deter them from the effort to escape. There are also those in the Border States to whom a belief has been conveyed from without, that the whole system is unjust, and that they should strive as a duty to themselves to escape from it. The numbers of these classes are considerable absolutely, but relatively to the aggregate of four millions of people they are altogether inconsiderable. The vast majority, until stirred up by others, are contented with their lot, know no other, and have no desire to incur the anxiety of going out into the world to seek a better one. Indeed, apart from

other, and higher considerations, it is difficult to see what injury has been inflicted upon the negro by taking him from slavery to a savage in Africa, to place him under a civilised master in America. But there is no difficulty in tracing the injury inflicted by the system upon that master, upon the whole of the white population, or the sinister shadow which it casts over the face of society.

In the case of the negro a comparison may be fairly made. The works recently published on several portions of Africa, exhibiting the condition of the race where entirely free from the influence of the European, can leave no doubt on

K

the mind of any dispassionate reader, whether or not the change has been to his injury. But when the same test of comparison is applied to the white population, in contact with slavery, the result is very different. There is an absolute injury sustained by the whole white community, apparent to any observer, and the more striking when contrasted with its condition in the neighbouring free States. Where labour is allotted to the black, it soon comes to be held disreputable by the white man to place himself on the same level. But the great majority in number, in every community, will consist of those who have neither wealth nor slaves, and this important body, shut out from the path of ordinary industry, becomes a listless burden upon society instead of being its main support. The position of this large class in the Southern States is painful in the extreme. They are known by the appellation of "mean whites," a term applied by the negroes, who, as we have stated, associate respectability in the white man with the owning of slaves.

This class, which in other systems is the very backbone of the framework of society, is here disjointed and superfluous. The negro, admirably adapted for field labour in a semi-tropical climate, is altogether unsuited for factory work. In addition to this, and to effects of climate, the coal-fields, and other local advantages of the North, give to that section a superiority in manufacturing industry, with which it is impossible for the South

to contend. Thus, the working white class of the South is shut out from agriculture by the negro, and from manufactures by the North. There is no resting-place for the sole of its foot. The poor white is driven to a life of picking-up, and hanging about. In well-ordered societies, this middle class is the great source from which some pass out into labour, and others more gifted, or more energetic, rise to power. It is the body that feeds and supports life in the extremities. No society can be soundly organized in which the centre between the two extremes is in a state of chronic

debility. To confine industry to a particular channel, and fill that channel with foreign labour, must clearly enforce compulsory idleness throughout a large portion of the community; and that portion, of all others, which it is most essential to the welfare of society to maintain in vigorous health. It is this paralyzed state of the labouring white class in the South that has so impeded its growth, when compared with the progress of the North. There have been other causes, shortly to be considered, but this outweighs them all in its pernicious influence on the community.

In fact, slavery, like other wrongs, reacts on the wrong-doer. Taking the most temperate view of it, stripping away all exaggerations, it remains an evil in an economical sense, an outrage on humanity in a moral one. It is a gross anachronism, a thing of two thousand years ago— the brute force of dark ages obtruding into the

midst of the nineteenth century-a remnant of elder dispensations whose harsh spirit was lawin conflict with the genius of Christianity, whose mild spirit is love. No reasoning-no statistics— no profit-no philosophy-can reconcile us to what our instinct repels. After all the arguments have been poured into the ear-there is something in the heart that spurns them. We make no declaration that all men are born equal, but a conviction-innate-irresistible- tells us, with a voice none can stifle, that a man is a man, and not a chattel. Remove from slavery, as it is well to do, all romance and exaggeration—in order that we may deal with it wisely and calmly -it remains a foul blot, from which all must desire to purge the annals of the age.

We have already seen that the territorial extension of slavery is injurious to the material interests of the planter, and that the present struggle is not for the furtherance of slavery, (which was not threatened by the election of Mr. Lincoln,) but for the maintenance of the political position and independence of the South, overwhelmed by the growth of an antagonistic power. Nor is it difficult to offer evidence of this, which bears directly on the present inquiry. The slave-owner anxious for the continuance and safety of his system must desire, beyond all things, a guarantee of his property, the command of enormous force to crush out insurrection, and some means of recovering his slaves when attempting to escape. Now,

all of these he enjoys in the highest degree within the Union. The Constitution of the United States was framed by slave-owners, and is a slaveowning code. The whole might of the Union is at the command of the slave-owner to put down any insurrection. It was even forbidden that the slave-trade should be abolished in less than twenty years from its date. It gives political power to slavery, for in allotting the members of Congress to the population, it counts a slave as three-fifths of a man. It provides also, and is in this respect more cruel than the old Hebrew code, that the slave who has escaped on to the soil of freedom, shall be sent back into his bondage. There was a time when we, too, were slave-owners, but even in those days the soil of Britain was held sacred. It was an asylum of liberty, to which when any man had fled imploringly none should ask the colour of his skin. Slave under our laws-owned by our people-of great value to our tradestill, there was that in the genius of the race that gave a sanctity to the land,—the moment the foot of the slave trod upon the shore, his fetters fell back into the sea. There is no such asylum in the United States. The capital of the Union is a slave-owning city. The Federal Court decrees that slavery is a prison, whose walls are wide as the country. Upon the open seas, the slavetrader has but to wrap the stars and stripes around his traffic, and go unsearched. Nor in all that expanse of the North is there one altar to which