ADDRESS. XI 



degradation of the great body of the population, whether 

 white or black, whether free or enslaved. Slavery has 

 no doubt been the chief cause and the worst aggrava- 

 tion of this state of society; but even apart from 

 slavery, the ruin of these overgrown planters, and the 

 division of their estates among a tenfold or hundredfold 

 number of owners, would be a blessing to the land, 

 conducive to productiveness, intelligence, virtue, and 

 loyalty to republican ideas. We long hoped that this 

 truth would become evident to these proprietors them- 

 selves, who were so proud of their monopoly of all the 

 intelligence, and all the freedom, and all the noble- 

 ness of the land, as well as of all the land itself; and 

 that considerations of political economy, of justice, of 

 humanity, and of religion, would ultimately lead them 

 to adopt more reasonable, righteous, and republican 

 social institutions and forms of industry : but we were 

 mistaken. Providence has brought the matter to 

 another issue, and these overgrown aristocratic estates 

 must be carved into smaller republican farms by the 

 sharp sword of war. 



The nutritive productiveness of the earth is affected, 

 moreover, by the cultivation of unnutritious products. 

 I do not refer to products which, though they do not 

 furnish food for man yet minister to his wants and his 

 comfort, such as cotton, flax, and other articles which are 

 manufactured into clothing, and used in various other 

 ways conducive to human civilization and progress. 

 These are only in one degree less necessary than the 

 products which go directly to sustain the life of man. 

 I refer rather to those growths of the soil which are 

 cither absolutely pernicious, or at least useless, and to 



