es, running through all history,
point the same moral. This last result of the Cotton dynasty may come at
any moment after the time shall once have arrived when, throughout any
great tract of country, the suppressing force shall temporarily, with
all the advantages of mastership, including intelligence and weapons, be
unequal to coping with the force suppressed. That time may still be far
off. Whether it be or not depends upon questions of government and
the events of the chapter of accidents. If the Union should now be
dissolved, and civil convulsions should follow, it may soon be upon us.
But the superimposed force is yet too great under any circumstances, and
the convulsion would probably be but temporary. At present, too, the
value of the slave insures him tolerable treatment; but, as numbers
increase, this value must diminish. Southern statesmen now assert that
in thirty years there will be twelve million slaves in the South; and
then, with increased numbers, why should not the philosophy of the
sugar-plantation prevail, and it become part of the economy of the
Cotton creed, that it is cheaper to work slaves to death and purchase
fresh ones than to preserve their usefulness by moderate employment?
Then the value of the slave will no longer protect him, and then the
end will be nigh. Is this thirty or fifty years off? Perhaps not for
a century hence will the policy of King Cotton work its legitimate
results, and the volcano at length come to its head and defy all
compression.

In one of the stories of the "Arabian Nights" we are told of an Afrite
confined by King Solomon in a brazen vessel; and the Sultana tells
us, that, during the first century of his confinement, he said in his
heart,--"I will enrich whosoever will liberate me"; but no one liberated
him. In the second century he said,--"Whosoever will liberate me, I will
open to him the treasures of the earth"; but no one liberated him. And
four centuries more passed, and he said,--"Whosoever shall liberate me,
I will fulfil for him three wishes"; but still no one liberated him.
Then despair at his long bondage took possession of his soul, and, in
the eighth century, he swore,--"Whosoever shall liberate me, him will
I surely slay!" Let the Southern statesmen look to it well that the
breaking of the seal which confines our Afrite be not deferred till long
bondage has turned his heart, like the heart of the Spirit in the fable,
into gall and wormwood; lest, if the