a, and invade Rome herself? Would not the soil
be cultivated, and the wastes reclaimed? A late traveller[249] mentions
a canal, cut for miles through rock and mountain, for the purpose of
carrying off the waters of the lake of Celano, on which thirty thousand
Roman slaves were employed for eleven years, and which remains almost
perfect to the present day. This, the government of Naples was ten years
in repairing with an hundred workmen. The imperishable works of Rome
which remain to the present day were, for the most part, executed by
slaves. How different would be the condition of Naples, if for her
wretched lazzaroni were substituted negro slaves, employed in rendering
productive the plains whose fertility now serves only to infect the air!

To us, on whom this institution is fastened, and who could not shake it
off, even if we desired to do so, the great republics of antiquity offer
instruction of inestimable value. They teach us that slavery is
compatible with the freedom, stability, and long duration of civil
government, with denseness of population, great power, and the highest
civilization. And in what respect does this modern Europe, which claims
to give opinions to the world, so far excel them--notwithstanding the
immense advantages of the Christian religion and the discovery of the
art of printing? They are not more free, nor have performed more
glorious actions, nor displayed more exalted virtue. In the higher
departments of intellect--in all that relates to taste and
imagination--they will hardly venture to claim equality. Where they have
gone beyond them in the results of mechanical philosophy, or discoveries
which contribute to the wants and enjoyments of physical life, they have
done so by the help of means with which they were furnished by the
Grecian mind--the mother of civilization--and only pursued a little
further the tract which that had always pointed out. In the development
of intellectual power, they will hardly bear comparison. Those noble
republics in the pride of their strength and greatness, may have
anticipated for themselves--as some of their poets did for them--an
everlasting duration and predominance. But they could not have
anticipated, that when they had fallen under barbarous arms, that when
arts and civilization were lost, and the whole earth in darkness--the
first light should break from their tombs--that in a renewed world,
unconnected with them by ties of locality, language or desce