common ruin_. But have no other nations
failed to pay? When were the French Assignats redeemed? How much
interest did your National Bank pay on its immense circulation, from
1797 to 1821, during which period that circulation was inconvertible,
and for the time _repudiated_? How much of your national debt has been
incurred for money borrowed to meet the interest on it, thus avoiding
delinquency in detail, by insuring inevitable bankruptcy and repudiation
in the end? And what sort of operation was that by which your present
Ministry recently expunged a handsome amount of that debt, by
substituting, through a process just not compulsory, one species of
security for another? I am well aware that the faults of others do not
excuse our own, but when failings are charged to slavery, which are
shown to occur to equal extent where it does not exist, surely slavery
must be acquitted of the accusation.

It is roundly asserted, that we are not so well educated nor so
religious here as elsewhere. I will not go into tedious statistical
statements on these subjects. Nor have I, to tell the truth, much
confidence in the details of what are commonly set forth as statistics.
As to education, you will probably admit that slaveholders should have
more leisure for mental culture than most people. And I believe it is
charged against them, that they are peculiarly fond of power, and
ambitious of honors. If this be so, as all the power and honors of this
country are won mainly by intellectual superiority, it might be fairly
presumed, that slaveholders would not be neglectful of education. In
proof of the accuracy of this presumption, I point you to the facts,
that our Presidential chair has been occupied for forty-four out of
fifty-six years, by slaveholders; that another has been recently elected
to fill it for four more, over an opponent who was a slaveholder also;
and that in the Federal Offices and both Houses of Congress,
considerably more than a due proportion of those acknowledged to stand
in the first rank are from the South. In this arena, the intellects of
the free and slave States meet in full and fair competition. Nature
must have been unusually bountiful to us, or we have been at least
reasonably assiduous in the cultivation of such gifts as she has
bestowed--unless indeed you refer our superiority to moral qualities,
which I am sure _you_ will not. More wealthy we are not; nor would mere
wealth avail in such rivalry.

The piety