"humanitarian fact." True then, it is true now; and must remain indisputable and eternal—a pillar of fire by night, a cloud by day, to guide and guard nations yet unborn in the path of honor, of safety, of moral and political grandeur.

But the learned gentleman does not pause upon these "speculations." He proceeds to tell us that circumstances are changed; that there was then little more than half a million slaves, and scarce a pound of cotton exported. Does the gentleman believe, or does he but attempt to lead us to believe, that the ethics of those men "without fear and without reproach" had no sounder foundation than this: that while slaves were few and cotton scarce, slavery might be a wrong, but with four million slaves and four million two hundred thousand bales of cotton, it becomes just, humane, moral?—that while negroes and cotton fill one side of the scales, Christian truth must kick the beam on the other, and slavery thus becomes a great "humanitarian fact?"

The right and wrong of the thing, about which there has been so much discussion, is now easily solved. The gentleman has found an infallible rule; it is simply to make a chemical analysis of your soil; if it will produce cotton, you can purchase slaves and work them without violating the laws of God or man.

We may also infer, or be induced to believe, from the honorable gentleman's speech, that if nothing is raised but indigo and rice, the propriety and morality of holding men in bondage is doubtful. Not such, sir, were the "speculations" of the fathers of the Republic.

Lucid as is the gentleman's speech in general, there is a want of clearness in the last point I have cited; but this is owing entirely to the materials used in the demonstration—rice and indigo will not do; nothing will serve but cotton; cotton ever, cotton only.

If slave labor, then, is profitable, slaveholding is equitable. Thus it is decided, that whatever is profitable is also equitable: justice and injustice are mere matters of profit and loss; the morality or immorality of slavery a mere question of soil and climate.

The great authorities cited as to the evil effects of slavery on the white race, should satisfy the most incredulous. But, says the learned gentleman from Alabama, there were few slaves at that time, and scarce a pound of cotton for exportation. Let us, then, pass from that period, to one when the few slaves had become millions, and the bales of cotton exported were estimated in like manner. In 1832, Thomas Marshall, of Virginia, said of slavery:

"It is ruinous to the whites; retards improvement; roots out an industrious population; banishes the yeomanry of the country; deprives the spinner, the weaver, the smith, the shoemaker, the carpenter, of employment and support. Labor of every species is disreputable, because performed mostly by slaves; the general aspect of the country marks the curse of a wasteful, idle, reckless population, who have no interest in the soil, and care not how much it is impoverished."

Mr. Berry, of Virginia, spoke thus:

"I believe that no cancer on the physical body was ever more certain, steady, and fatal, in its progress, than is the cancer of slavery on the political body of the State of Virginia. It is eating into her very vitals."

The records of Southern statesmanship, sir, abound in such and stronger expressions. Slavery had then existed in this country more than two hundred years, yet scarce a man could be then found so bold and so reckless as to proclaim it just and righteous, a humane, a Christian institution. Nearly the whole civilized world united in its condemnation; the ministers of our holy religion in the slave States declaimed against it; their solemn petitions ascended to the throne of God, that the country might be rid of these "bonds." But, slave labor has become profitable in some parts of the South; the mania for wealth has seized the slaveholder's avarice, has dried up the fountain of humanity. The lust of power and dominion deadens their consciences; a million bales of cotton can blind their eyes alike to the flames of perdition and the glories of Paradise. They make to themselves friends of the Mammon of unrighteousness; they become full, and deny their Maker, and say, who is the Lord! Concerning oppression, they speak loftily. But they are set in slippery places; they will be cast down unto destruction.

The gentleman from Mississippi [Mr. Lamar] said, a few days since:

"I tell you, Mr. Chairman, that God's sun does not shine upon a nobler, prouder, more prosperous, and elevated class of people, than the non-slaveholders of the South."

This, I think, will be news to many non-slaveholders in the gentleman's district. Thomas Jefferson tells us that man is an imitative animal; therefore, if the assertion of the gentleman from Mississippi be correct, we must wonder why slaveholders do not relieve themselves of their negroes, that they may become equally noble, proud, prosperous, and elevated, with the non-slaveholder. Who can compare with them on this side of Paradise? With them, the millennium can be no object of desire, since

Still there must be some malice in their hearts, for the honorable gentleman states that they (the non-slaveholders) hold slavery in the hollow of their hands; surely, were they benevolent, they would close their hands and crush out the "institution," that their slaveholding fellow-citizens might become as prosperous and as happy as themselves.

The assertion is frequently made, that white men cannot work in the hot latitudes of the South, and this is offered as a reason why there should be black slaves there. The gentleman knocks one of the strongest props from under the institution. He tells us white men work, and raise not only cotton, but corn and potatoes. He also informs us that after the cotton, corn, and potatoes, are raised, the strong, brave man drives the plow through the fallow ground. It will be seen that work during the summer has not produced the lassitude and enervation that it has been claimed is produced in white men by labor. We are still further informed, that the fallow ground turned up by the strong, brave man, discloses something more valuable than the gold of California—"'Tis the sparkles of liberty!" We have heard of the sparkles of liberty that are made manifest to the non-slaveholders of the South. The poor laboring man at Columbia, South Carolina, when streams of blood issued from the furrows plowed in his naked back by a cow-hide in the hands of a negro, saw some of the sparkles of liberty, when, bleeding, exhausted, besmeared with tar, and covered with feathers, he was thrust into the cars, and left to perish in the cold. He had, no doubt, a vivid idea of the liberty that is enjoyed by non-slaveholders in the South, when he remembered that these cruelties and barbarities were inflicted on him for expressing a rational and honest opinion relative to this "peculiar institution."

The statements, and doubtless convictions, of the honorable member from Mississippi, differ singularly from those of Senator Clay, of Alabama, who tells us that, in his State, "we may behold numerous fine houses, once the abode of intelligent freemen, now occupied by slaves, or else tenantless and dilapidated; that we may see fields, once fertile, covered with foxtail and broom-sedge—moss growing on the walls of once thrifty villages, and may find that 'one only master grasps the whole domain' which once furnished homes for a dozen white families."

Hear, also, Senator Hammond, of South Carolina, who says of the non-slaveholders of his State:

"They obtain a precarious subsistence by occasional jobs, by hunting, by fishing, by