sically, than our slaves; to be elevated to the actual condition of
whom, would be to these, _your fellow-citizens_, a most glorious act of
_emancipation_. And I also affirm, that the poor and laboring classes of
our older free States would not be in a much more enviable condition,
but for our slavery. One of their own Senators has declared in the
United States Senate, "that the repeal of the Tariff would reduce New
England to a howling wilderness." And the American Tariff is neither
more or less than a system by which the slave States are plundered for
the benefit of those States which do not tolerate slavery.

To prove what I say of Great Britain to be true, I make the following
extracts from the Reports of Commissioners appointed by Parliament, and
published by order of the House of Commons. I can make but few and short
ones. But similar quotations might be made to any extent, and I defy you
to deny that these specimens exhibit the real condition of your
operatives in every branch of your industry. There is of course a
variety in their sufferings. But the same incredible amount of toil,
frightful destitution, and utter want of morals, characterize the lot of
every class of them.

_Collieries_--"I wish to call the attention of the Board to the pits
about Brampton. The seams are so thin that several of them have only two
feet headway to all the working. They are worked altogether by boys from
eight to twelve years of age, on all-fours, with a dog belt and chain.
The passages being neither ironed nor wooded, and often an inch or two
thick with mud. In Mr. Barnes' pit these poor boys have to drag the
barrows with one hundred weight of coal or slack sixty times a day sixty
yards, and the empty barrows back, without once straightening their
backs, unless they chose to stand under the shaft, and run the risk of
having their heads broken by a falling coal."--Report on Mines, 1842, p.
71. "In Shropshire the seams are no more than eighteen or twenty
inches."--Ibid, p. 67. "At the Booth pit," says Mr. Scriven, "I walked,
rode, and crept eighteen hundred yards to one of the nearest
faces."--Ibid. "Chokedamp, firedamp, wild fire, sulphur and water, at
all times menace instant death to the laborers in these mines." "Robert
North, aged 16: Went into the pit at seven years of age, to fill up
skips. I drew about twelve months. When I drew by the girdle and chain
my skin was broken, and the blood ran down. I durst not say any thing.