DR. spofford's address. 17 



While New England retains habits of industry, she will pros- 

 per under any system of policy which the general government 

 can constitutionally pursue. And though a vacillating policy, 

 and frequent and sudden changes, may embarrass and perplex 

 our commerce and manufactures, yet even that can only diminish 

 the profits of the people, but reaches not the deep laid founda- 

 tions of New England prosperity. 



While on the other hand our southern brethren may threaten 

 or nullify — change the tariff or perpetrate a revolution, — they 

 will still find they have not reached the cause of their depression. 

 The absence of voluntary vigorous industry is the real cause of 

 the evils of which they complain. A white population ashamed 

 to be " seen with implements of labor in their hands," and a 

 black population doing as little labor as possible, is enough to 

 "nullify" the prosperity of any country. Perhaps some may 

 imagine that it were easy to grow rich where men possess slaves 

 who labor without wages. But let such remember that these 

 slaves are also men, who must eat or they cannot work — that 

 they must be maintained, the old and the young, — the sick, the 

 " lame, and the lazy," with the taskmasters necessary to make 

 them labor at all, before any surplus can arise to support the 

 luxury of the landlord. Now put a hundred of these laborers, 

 as they would rise, from infancy to age, under the care of some 

 hireling taskmaster, while the owner of the whole concern is ab- 

 sent at a horse race, or a barbacue, and what is his chance of 

 a clear profit, for the support of a princely retinue ? 



Take even a hundred poor people of New England : let the 

 maintenance of them and their children be made sure, thus re- 

 moving all the stimulus of liberty and property on the one 

 hand, and all fear of poverty and want on the other, and who of 

 you would become bound for their maintenance for all the sur- 

 plus of their labor? You woidd much sooner hire the laborers, 

 pay them their wages, and dismiss them to their own cares, when 

 the labor was done. 



You will therefore see that slavtiry lays the axe at the root of 

 the tree of industry, and that indolence saps the foundation of 

 public or private prosperity. Whatever removes the stimulus to 



