366 AND UPON OUR OWN WORKMEN. 



question in the United States, can scarcely fail to affect 

 in a marked manner the future comfort and condition of 

 our home manufacturing population. If the labour of 

 coloured slaves, so employed, really prove cheaper than 

 that of free white men, then either our manufactures 

 must decline and decrease, or the condition and emolu 

 ments of our workmen must be gradually reduced to the 

 level of those of the slave operatives of the American 

 factories. The possibility of such a result is melancholy 

 and disheartening, at a time when so many are anxious 

 rather to improve and elevate than further to depress 

 our labouring people. 



But we have, as an encouragement, the assertion made 

 by many, that free labour, even in equal circumstances, 

 is cheaper than slave labour. How much more ought it 

 to be so, when the free labourers are white men of 

 English blood, enlightened by some measure of education, 

 and assisted by all the aids of a constantly advancing 

 mechanical skill ? Though our home property may not 

 ameliorate the condition of the unhappy chattels who are 

 destined to labour in the factories of the southern States, 

 we may, nevertheless, still hope that their condition, 

 whatever it be, will not materially depress that of 

 any class of labourers in our own more favoured coun- 

 try. 



In any event, whether they do or do not come into 

 direct competition with our home labourers, it cannot be a 

 matter of indifference to us, either on the score of interest 

 or of humanity, that the actual condition of the slave 

 population of the United States should be sustained and 

 ameliorated, rather than still further or for a longer 

 period depressed ; and if the maintaining of the ex 

 isting Union will promote that end, we ought to wish and 

 work for its maintenance. It is true that, supposing the 

 Union indefinitely perpetuated, the additional encourage 

 ments to slavery presented by the sugar-traffic and by the 



