and if we would not
suffer a further loss, we can not reduce their wages. To receive the
benefit of the services of which they are capable, we must provide for
maintaining their health and vigor. In point of fact, we know that this
is accounted among the necessary expenses of management. If the income
of every planter of the Southern States were permanently reduced
one-half, or even much more than that, it would not take one jot from
the support and comforts of the slaves. And this can never be materially
altered, until they shall become so unprofitable that slavery must be of
necessity abandoned. It is probable that the accumulation of individual
wealth will never be carried to quite so great an extent in a
slaveholding country, as in one of free labor; but a consequence will
be, that there will be less inequality and less suffering.

_Servitude_ is the condition of civilization. It was decreed, when the
command was given, "be fruitful, and multiply and replenish the earth,
and subdue it," and when it was added, "in the sweat of thy face shalt
thou eat bread." And what human being shall arrogate to himself the
authority to pronounce that our form of it is worse in itself, or more
displeasing to God, than that which exists elsewhere? Shall it be said
that the servitude of other countries grows out of the exigency of their
circumstances, and therefore society is not responsible for it? But if
we know that in the progress of things it is to come, would it not seem
the part of wisdom and foresight, to make provision for it, and thereby,
if we can, mitigate the severity of its evils? But the fact is not so.
Let any one who doubts, read the book to which I have several times
referred, and he may be satisfied that it was forced upon us by the
extremest exigency of circumstances, in a struggle for very existence.
Without it, it is doubtful whether a white man would be now existing on
this continent--certain, that if there were, they would be in a state of
the utmost destitution, weakness, and misery. It was forced on us by
necessity, and further fastened upon us by the superior authority of the
mother country. I, for one, neither deprecate nor resent the gift. Nor
did we institute slavery. The Africans brought to us had been, speaking
in the general, slaves in their own country, and only underwent a change
of masters. In the countries of Europe, and the States of our
Confederacy, in which slavery has ceased to exist, it was ab