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the population -which wc now do, without resorting to any more 

 wild lands. There is a constantly increasing value in the lands 

 of the free States ; in the slave States the soil is rapidly and 

 surel}' deteriorating, for there is no longer any doubt in the minds 

 of poUtical economists, that slave labor is one of the worst evils 

 which we have to contend with. We may look at the question in 

 its humanitarian aspects, our hearts maybe melted to pity or throb 

 with indignation at the cruelty and outrages of this barbarous 

 system, and yet, coupled Avith it in all its relations, is the indus- 

 trial question, " Is slave labor profitable ? " 



That is the South-side view of the subject. No respectable 

 man at the North would dare to maintain the affirmative proposi- 

 tion ; for every public man in the free States, who has undertaken 

 to justify the system, has sooner or later fallen a victim to the 

 indignation of the people. It has been Avell and truly said, that 

 the shores of our Atlantic coast are strown with wrecks of those 

 fallen statesmen, who have associated their fortunes with this great 

 national evil. 



There is great significance in one fact connected with the slave 

 States. The census tables show that the slave States have sent 

 nearly six times as many of their population into the free territo- 

 ries, as the free States have sent into the slave territory. Mary- 

 land, with a Avhite population of 418,000, has sent more than half 

 as many persons into the free territories as all the free States 

 together, with a total white population of 13,300,000, have sent 

 into the slave territories. 



The current of emigration is from the slave States towards free 

 territories ; it is in conformity to a resistless law of nature, and in 

 all probability, as the tide of emigration sweeps from the East 

 towards the West, through ages past, and will through ages to 

 come, bearing on its bosom the great Caucasian race through the 

 temperate zones, until they stand by untold millions on the shores 

 of the Pacific sea, so Avill that same Providence lead that other 

 race from the arid sands of Africa and the Southern States of our 

 Union, down the parallels of the tropics of the Americas, there to 

 work out their own " manifest destiny," in obedience to that 

 "• higher law " of the great God of the Nations. 



Agriculture is the important branch of our National Industry, 

 and hence we maintain its importance in its relations to the great 



