MK. BRAMAN's address. H 



which they were wrought into the expression of the brilliant 

 thoughts which conceived them, have reflected a lustre upon 

 this department of the genius of that marvellous people which 

 no length of years will efface. 



But their ill-fashioned and clumsy implements of agricul- 

 tural labor, as represented on ancient monuments, resemble the 

 rude products of barbarian skill. The most perfect form of 

 the plough does not admit of such efforts of genius, as carved 

 the statues of Minerva and Jupiter. But if some agricultural 

 Phidias had bestowed a small part of that skill and industry 

 on this most useful instrument which were devoted to those 

 unrivalled specimens of art. more beneficial service had been 

 rendered to Greece, than by all the beautiful monuments of 

 taste, that were ever chiselled from the quarry. The effects 

 of slavery on agriculture in the West Indies, and the slave- 

 holding states of this union, are too notorious to require any 

 particular detail. It was said nearly twenty years since by an 

 able English writer, that the lands of the islands had become 

 so completely exhausted, and worn out, that were it not for 

 the protection which the English tariff afforded the West In- 

 dia sugar, the planter would be obliged to abandon the culti- 

 vation of the article ; and that if slave trade had not been a- 

 bolished, and the old system had continued of killing slaves by 

 overwork, and replacing them by fresh importations from Africa, 

 the superior profit would not then have counterbalanced the loss 

 arising from the constantly deteriorating quality of the soil. 



And the agriculture of the older slaveholding states of this 

 union, is reaping the retributory effects of the pernicious system. 

 The fertility of the ground cries out from under the wither- 

 ing culture ; and if the progress of years should find that in- 

 stitution in unmitigated operation, the voice of accusa- 

 tion will cry out from the ground louder than that of the 

 blood of murdered Abel ; and time will have erected to it a 

 monument of desolation upon every hill and valley within its 

 borders. 



In 1831, when the subject of slavery was discussed in the 

 legislature of Virginia, it was publicly avowed that slavery 

 was ruining Virginia. It was declared by a public writer at 



