his sustenance. You can easily see that, let
the colored people come to be a hireling class, and their interests and
those of their masters are disjoined. There would be conflicts and
oppressions among themselves; they would fall into a degraded, serf-like
condition; but now each of them partakes of his master's interests, and
rises with him. I am not here pleading for slavery in the abstract, but,
the blacks being on the soil, it is far better for them to be owned than
to be free. Why are the Southwestern States, one after another, passing
laws, or framing their constitutions, to shut out from their borders
free negroes,--people in the very condition into which you would reduce
by wholesale all the blacks in the South? I pray you look and see that
you are an abstractionist, setting what you deem a theoretical wrong
against a practical good, and under the circumstances, a real mercy."

"But," said Mr. North, "slavery impoverishes the soil, makes the whites
shun labor, feeling it to be degrading, and it keeps the white children
from industrial pursuits, and"--

"Please stop," said I, "my dear Sir, and think of what you are saying,
and be not carried away by that popular flood of cant phrases. Now you
know that God has given our Southern friends a south country, nearer
than ours to the tropics. Out-of-door labor there is injurious to the
white people, as you know. They are not to be blamed for this. God has
not given them strength to endure exposure to the sun. Had they a
northern climate, in which the labor required by the mechanic arts could
be performed with safety and comfort, do you not suppose that they
would have the same aptitude and relish as we for handicraft? Their
children cannot be brought up to manual labor to the extent that ours
are, because the God of heaven has ordained their lot in a land less
favorable than ours to toil. His providence, making use of the sins of
men, has placed the blacks here; you and the rest of the world, who
depend upon their cotton, are willing enough to use it in its countless
forms, while you reproach your Maker, as I think, for having caused it
to be raised as he has seen fit to do."

"But Oh," said Mr. North, "free labor is more profitable than slave
labor. You well know how it affects the soil, and that the great price
of slaves will in time make the system oppressive to the masters,
especially if they are all as considerate as you say they are about
selling."

"The good