se that in the five slave States, a man might wear himself out in
travel, and never find one of these isms with an _organized_ existence.
To find a single individual, would be doing more than most men have
done, with whom I am acquainted. But how is it in New England? The soil
seems to suit them--they grow up like Jonah's gourd. Some are warring
with great zeal against the social, and some against the religious
institutions of society. Why is this? The institution of slavery has not
produced, at the North, the moral obliquity, out of which they grow--a
reverence for the Bible has not produced it. How is their existence,
then, to be accounted for at the North, under institutions, whose
tendency is supposed to be so favorable to moral and religious
prosperity? And how is their utter absence to be accounted for at the
South, where the institution of slavery is supposed to be so fatal to
morality, religion and virtue? I will leave it for others to explain
this fact. It is a mysterious fact, according to the modes of reasoning
at the North. It is assumed by the North, that slavery tends to produce
social, moral, and religious evils. This assumption is flatly
contradicted by the facts of the census. These facts can never be
explained by the _New England theory_. There was an _ancient theory_,
held by men who were righteous in their own eyes, that no good thing
could come out of Nazareth. By that theory Christ himself was condemned.
It is not wonderful, therefore, that his friends should share the same
fate.
The next disclosure of the census, which we will compare, are those
which relate to the social prosperity of a people. Are they wealthy? are
they healthy? are they in conditions to raise families, etc.?
These questions indicate the _elements_ which belong to the item now to
be examined. States are made up of families. Wealth is a blessing in
those States which have it so distributed, as to give the greatest
number of homes to the families which compose them. Wealth, so
distributed in States, as to diminish the number of homes, is a curse to
the families which compose them. Home is the nursery and shield of
virtue. No right-minded man or woman, who had the means, could ever
consent to have a family without a home; and no State should make wealth
her boast, whose families are extensively without homes.
New England has five hundred and eighteen thousand five hundred and
thirty-two families, and four hundred and forty-sev
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