t; and though this may
not be the effect in the instance of every individual, yet it will fix
the habits and character of the society, and prescribe everywhere, and
in every department, the highest possible standard of attainment.

But how is it that the existence of slavery, as with us, will retard the
evils of civilization? Very obviously. It is the intense competition of
civilized life, that gives rise to the excessive cheapness of labor, and
the excessive cheapness of labor is the cause of the evils in question.
Slave labor can never be so cheap as what is called free labor.
Political economists have established as the natural standard of wages
in a fully peopled country, the value of the laborer's existence. I
shall not stop to inquire into the precise truth of this proposition. It
certainly approximates the truth. Where competition is intense, men will
labor for a bare subsistence, and less than a competent subsistence. The
employer of free laborers obtains their services during the time of
their health and vigor, without the charge of rearing them from infancy,
or supporting them in sickness or old age. This charge is imposed on the
employer of slave labor, who, therefore, pays higher wages, and cuts off
the principal source of misery--the wants and sufferings of infancy,
sickness, and old age. Laborers too will be less skillful, and perform
less work--enhancing the price of that sort of labor. The poor laws of
England are an attempt--but an awkward and empirical attempt--to supply
the place of that which we should suppose the feelings of every human
heart would declare to be a natural obligation--that he who has received
the benefit of the laborer's services during his health and vigor,
should maintain him when he becomes unable to provide for his own
support. They answer their purpose, however, very imperfectly, and are
unjustly and unequally imposed. There is no attempt to apportion the
burden according to the benefit received--and perhaps there could be
none. This is one of the evils of their condition.

In periods of commercial revulsion and distress, like the present, the
distress, in countries of free labor, falls principally on the laborers.
In those of slave labor, it falls almost exclusively on the employer. In
the former, when a business becomes unprofitable, the employer dismisses
his laborers or lowers their wages. But with us, it is the very period
at which we are least able to dismiss our laborers;