f mortality would
not have been wanting." The whites have labored in the Antilles; the
whites can labor, not only in all the slave States of the intermediate
region, but in Louisiana. Cotton is already produced in Texas, thanks to
its German settlers. The question is only, to go on in this way. Slavery
once abolished, the small proprietors, who at present carry all the
criminal extravagancies of the South further than any others, will be
compelled to set their hands to work. This will be an advantage both to
the country and themselves. Who will not pray for the coming of the time
when so considerable a part of the population will cease to possess
slaves which it is incapable of feeding, when it will be transformed
into the middle class, and thus escape the real servitude which
embitters it?

Moreover, let us not forget new cultures, that of the vine among others,
which are fitted to become introduced into these new countries, or to
develop there, and which lack nothing but liberty in order to flourish.
The arts and manufactures also have their place; independently of the
tillers of the soil, properly called, the Southern States will have need
of workmen in manufactories, and of managers of agricultural machines;
large plantations will often, become divided, as has happened in the
Antilles, and we shall witness the appearance of the small estate, that
essential basis of social order. There will be employment for all, and
the rich Southern cultures will be less neglected than before.

Whoever has descended the Ohio has involuntarily compared its two banks:
here, the State of Ohio, whose prosperity advances with rapid strides;
there, the State of Kentucky, no less favored by Nature, yet which
languishes as if abandoned. Why? Because slavery blights all that it
touches. Could not the whites of Kentucky and Virginia labor as well as
those of Ohio? The comparative poverty of these slave States reminds me
of the destitution of our colonies and those of England before
emancipation: mortgaged estates, plantations burdened with expenses, the
complete destruction of credit--such was their position. We must read
American statistics to form an idea of the truly unheard-of extent of
this fact--impoverishment by slavery. With a larger extent and much
richer lands, the slave States possess neither agricultural growth, nor
industrial growth, nor advance of population, which can be compared far
or near with that which is found in the fr