mine, we do not say Virginia, but simply
that lower county of Delaware which has adhered somewhat to the old
Southern slave system, in contradistinction to its two sisters, he might
have distinctly ascertained if the exhaustion of soil by slave labor be
a fallacy. Again, if the profits of slavery be only for the master, it
may be true that the same process which enriches him impoverishes the
country at large; and this is really the case through all the South.
Free labor shuns slave society: a few Northern men may here and there
live in the South, but as a rule the negro makes the poor white meaner
than himself. It is true that free white labor in new lands is very
exhaustive--but in time it takes them up again and restores them: this
the negro never does, and never can do.

The tendencies of slavery to render the white man insolent, arrogant,
and oligarchical, are well pointed out by Professor Cairnes, and with
them the evil tendencies of slave societies. It makes bad white men, and
intolerable political neighbors. In the ancient world, slaves were
constantly being educated, freed, and made equal to their masters; but
in the confederacy, everything is done to crush them lower and lower;
and in these facts lie _perdu_ the future further degradation of every
poor white in the South, the constant increase of power and capital in
the hands of a few, and the diminution in number even of these few.

The fact that Virginians breed slaves expressly for sale is well exposed
in this book. Our author is kind enough to believe that they never raise
a single negro for the _express purpose_ of selling him or her; but we,
who live nearer the 'sacred soil,' know better. It is not many days
since a farmer in our present immediate vicinity, on the Southern
Pennsylvania line, found himself obliged to dismiss a fine six-foot
negro runaway from Virginia, whom he had hired, on account of the entire
inability of the contraband to do the simplest farm tasks. 'What _is_
the reason you can't stand work?' inquired the amazed farmer. 'Why,
mass', to tell de trufe, I wasn't brought up to wuck (work), but to
_sell_. If I'd been wucked too hard, it ud a spiled my looks fo' de
markit.' Professor Cairnes may accept the sorrowful assurances of more
than one person, who has been taken frequently enough into the councils
of 'the enemy' in bygone times (_crede experto Ruperto_), that slaves
_are_ begotten, born, bred, and raised for the Southern market--as