attempt to lead
_us_ to believe, that the ethics of those men "without fear and without
reproach" had no sounder foundation than this: that while slaves were
few and cotton scarce, slavery might be a wrong, but with four million
slaves and four million two hundred thousand bales of cotton, it
becomes just, humane, moral?--that while negroes and cotton fill one
side of the scales, Christian truth must kick the beam on the other, and
slavery thus becomes a great "humanitarian fact?"

The right and wrong of the thing, about which there has been so much
discussion, is now easily solved. The gentleman has found an infallible
rule; it is simply to make a chemical analysis of your soil; if it will
produce cotton, you can purchase slaves and work them without violating
the laws of God or man.

We may also infer, or be induced to believe, from the honorable
gentleman's speech, that if nothing is raised but indigo and rice, the
propriety and morality of holding men in bondage is doubtful. Not such,
sir, were the "_speculations_" of the fathers of the Republic.

Lucid as is the gentleman's speech in general, there is a want of
clearness in the last point I have cited; but this is owing entirely to
the materials used in the demonstration--rice and indigo will not do;
nothing will serve but cotton; cotton ever, cotton only.

If slave labor, then, is profitable, slaveholding is equitable. Thus it
is decided, that whatever is profitable is also equitable: justice and
injustice are mere matters of profit and loss; the morality or
immorality of slavery a mere question of soil and climate.

The great authorities cited as to the evil effects of slavery on the
white race, should satisfy the most incredulous. But, says the learned
gentleman from Alabama, there were few slaves at that time, and scarce a
pound of cotton for exportation. Let us, then, pass from that period, to
one when the few slaves had become millions, and the bales of cotton
exported were estimated in like manner. In 1832, Thomas Marshall, of
Virginia, said of slavery:

"It is ruinous to the whites; retards improvement; roots out an
industrious population; banishes the yeomanry of the country; deprives
the spinner, the weaver, the smith, the shoemaker, the carpenter, of
employment and support. Labor of every species is disreputable, because
performed mostly by slaves; the general aspect of the country marks the
curse of a wasteful, idle, reckless population, who have