pposing
orders of society. On the one hand we see the capitalist owning the
labor of a thousand slaves, and on the other the laboring white unable,
under the destructive influence of a profitable monopoly, to make any
use of that labor which is his only property.

What influence, then, has the Cotton dynasty on that portion of the
master-class who are without capital? Its tendency has certainly
necessarily been to make their labor of little value; but they are still
citizens of a republic, free to come and go, and, in the eye of the law,
equal with the highest;--on them, in times of emergency, the government
must rest; their education and intelligence are its only sure
foundations. But, having made this class the vast majority of the
master-caste, what are the policy and tendency of the Cotton dynasty
as touching them? The story is almost too old to bear even the
shortest repetition. Philosophically, it is a logical necessity
of the Cotton dynasty that it should be opposed to universal
intelligence;--economically, it renders universal intelligence an
impossibility. That slavery is in itself a positive good to society is
a fundamental doctrine of the Cotton dynasty, and a proposition
not necessary to be combated here; but, unfortunately, universal
intelligence renders free discussion a necessity, and experience tells
us that the suppression of free discussion is necessary to the existence
of slavery. We are but living history over again. The same causes have
often existed before, and they have drawn after them the necessary
effects. Other peoples, at other times, as well as our Southern brethren
at present, have felt, that the suppression of general discussion was
necessary to the preservation of a prized and peculiar institution.
Spain, Italy, Germany, France, the Netherlands, England, and Scotland
have all, at different times, experienced the forced suppression of
some one branch of political or religious thought. Their histories have
recorded the effect of that suppression; and the rule to be deduced
therefrom is simply this: If the people among whom such suppression is
attempted are ignorant, and are kept so as part of a system, the attempt
may be successful, though in its results working destruction to
the community;--if, however, they are intelligent, and the system
incautiously admits into itself any plan of education, the attempt
at suppression will be abandoned, as the result either of policy or
violence. In th