INFLUENCE OF CLIMATE. 413 



natural in its development as the growth of sugar cane in Louisiana 

 or barley in New York. Could our country have been blessed with 

 a legislation founded upon a knowledge of the influence of these 

 laws of nature, the sad culmination of these antagonisms would 

 have been averted, and American history would not have made so- 

 fearfully true the saying of Quetelet, that " Society prepares the 

 crime, the culprit only executes it." While therefore the fickle 

 and changeful climate of the north, with its consequent diversified 

 employments for man, was deepening and intensifying the ideas 

 under whose impetus northern immigration was at first commenced, 

 the genial and uniform climate of the south, aided by the almost 

 universal attention of her people to the cultivation of cotton — and 

 by compulsory labor — was working out a far different type of 

 humanity. We would not- forget that the zone in which our south- 

 ern States fall, is favorable to the development of the highest 

 intellectual qualities of man. Every race that has figured upon it 

 for the past three thousand years attests the truth of this state- 

 ment. On the eastern continent, it has produced the most eminent 

 writers upon law, mathematics, theology, and astronomy. Among 

 soldiers it produced Hannibal, and Carthage alone could dispute 

 with Eome the empire of the world. But when we seek for the 

 moral qualities this zone has developed in man, our task is not 

 attended with results as pleasant. If we are warranted in our 

 conclusion, that with a change in the physical constitution of man 

 there come coincidently a corresponding modification of his intel- 

 lectual organization, analogy, not less than a long catalogue of 

 facts, would lead us to expect, also, like changes in his moral 

 qualities. In this zone society has always resolved itself into two 

 classes ; one has sought to command, the other has been obliged 

 to obey. Hence the latter have never had " any rights whicli the 

 former was bound to respect." It has manifested but little regard 

 for the sacredness of human life. Here war has exhibited its most 

 pitiless and revolting aspect. In the old Carthagenian contests, 

 40,000 captives were massacred in a single day. In our own times, 

 in the same country, fugitive enemies have been sufibcated by fires 

 at the mouths of caves whither they had fled for safety. Sad, but 

 truthful antetypes of scenes lately enacted' within our own borders! 

 This dwai'fing and blunting of the higher moral qualities, has rested 

 like a deep shadow upon southern character, as knowji in our own 

 land. ' Tl\p only moral laws in which our representative man of this 

 type believes, are such as support the vagaries of his own brain. 



