m our labors."

The next passages were from a speech of Mr. Custis, as follows:

"Sir, the prosperity and aggrandizement of a State is to be seen in its
increase of inhabitants, and consequent progress in industry and wealth.
Of the vast tide of emigration, which now rushes like a cataract to the
West, not even a trickling rill wends its feeble course to the Ancient
Dominion.--Of the multitude of foreigners who daily seek an asylum and
a home, in the empire of Liberty, how many turn their steps toward the
regions of the slave? None. No not one. There is a malaria in the
atmosphere of those regions, which the new comer shuns, as being
deleterious to his views and habits. See the wide-spreading ruin which
the avarice of our ancestral government has produced in the South, as
witnessed in a sparse population of freemen, deserted habitations,
fields without culture, and, strange to tell, even the wolf, which,
driven back long since by the approach of man, now returns, after the
lapse of an hundred years, to howl o'er the desolations of slavery.

"Where, I ask, is the good ship Virginia, in the array of the national
fleet? Drifting down the line, sir,--third, soon to be fourth. Where
next?--following in the wake of those she formerly led in the van: her
flag still flying at the main, the flag of her ancient glory; but
her timbers are decaying, her rigging wants setting up anew, and her
helmsman is old and weatherbeaten. But let her undergo an overhaul, let
the parts decayed by slavery be removed, and good sound materials put in
their stead, then manned by a gallant crew, my life on it, the old thing
will once more brace upon a wind, aye, and show her stern to those who
have almost run her hull under.

"Let me say, sir, in this legislative hall, where words of eloquence
have so often "charmed the listening ear," that the glorious time is
coming when the wretched children of Africa shall establish on her
shores a nation of Christians and freemen. It has been said that this
Society was an invasion of the rights of the slaveholders. Sir, if
it is an invasion, it comes not from without. It is an irruption of
liberality, and threatens only that freemen will overrun our Southern
country--that the soil will be fertilized by the sweat of freemen alone,
and that what are now deserts will flourish and blossom under the
influence of enterprise and industry. Such will be the happy results
of this Society.

"Let the philanthropist loo