and enjoyments of one man highly cultivated and of former part of this proposition has been so fully estabgreat sensibility, against those of many men of blunter|lished by a writer of great power of thought—though capacity for enjoyment or suffering? And if we could I fear his practical conclusions will be found of little determine with certainty in what utility consists, we are so short-sighted with respect to consequences-the remote results of our best considered actions, are so often wide of our anticipations, or contrary to them, that we should still be very much in the dark. But though we cannot arrive at absolute certainty with respect to the utility of actions, it is always fairly matter of argument. Though an imperfect standard, it is the best we have, and perhaps the Creator did not intend that we should arrive at perfect certainty with regard to the morality of many actions. If after the most careful examination of consequences that we are able to make, with due distrust of ourselves, we impartially and in good faith, decide for that which appears likely to produce the greatest good, we are free from moral guilt. And I would impress most earnestly, that with our imperfect and limited faculties, and short-sighted as we are to the future, we can rarely, very rarely indeed, be justified in producing considerable present evil or suffering, in the expectation of remote future good-if indeed this can ever be justified. In considering this subject, I shall not regard it in the first instance in reference to the present position of the slave holding states, or the difficulties which lie in the way of their emancipating their slaves, but as a naked, abstract question—whether it is better that the institution of praedial and domestic slavery should, or should not exist in civilized society. And though some of my remarks may seem to have such a tendency, let me not be understood as taking upon myself to determine that it is better that it should exist. God forbid that the responsibility of deciding such a question should ever be thrown on me or my countrymen. But this I will say, and not without confidence, that it is in the power of no human intellect to establish the contrary proposition-that it is better it should not exist. This is probably known but to one being, and concealed from human sagacity.

value that it is hardly necessary to urge it.* Property-the accumulation of capital, as it is commonly called, is the first element of civilization. But to accumulate, or to use capital to any considerable extent, the combination of labor is necessary. In early stages of society, when people are thinly scattered over an extensive territory, the labor necessary to extensive works, cannot be commanded. Men are independent of each other. Having the command of abundance of land, no one will submit to be employed in the service of his neighbor. No one, therefore, can employ more capital than he can use with his own hands, or those of his family, nor have an income much beyond the necessaries of life. There can, therefore, be little leisure for intellectual pursuits, or means of acquiring the comforts or elegancies of life. It is hardly necessary to say however, that if a man has the command of slaves, he may combine labor, and use capi. tal to any required extent, and therefore accumulate wealth. He shows that no colonies have been suecessfully planted without some sort of slavery. So we find the fact to be. It is only in the slave holding states of our confederacy, that wealth can be acquired by agriculture-which is the general employment of our whole country. Among us, we know that there is no one, however humble his beginning, who with per severing industry, intelligence, and orderly and vir tuous habits, may not attain to considerable opulence. So far as wealth has been accumulated in the states which do not possess slaves, it has been in cities by the pursuits of commerce, or lately, by manufactures. But the products of slave labor furnish more than twothirds of the materials of our foreign commerce, which the industry of those states is employed in transporting and exchanging; and among the slave holding states is to be found the great market for all the productions of their industry, of whatever kind. The prosperity of those states, therefore, and the civilization of their cities, have been for the most part created by the exist

population, which our institutions have marked as servile, it would be scarcely possible to preserve the ordinary habitudes of civilized life, by commanding the necessary menial and domestic service.

There have existed in various ages, and we now see existing in the world, people in every stage of civiliza-ence of slavery. Even in the cities, but for a class of tion, from the most barbarous to the most refined. Man, as I have said, is not born to civilization. He is born rude and ignorant. But it will be, I suppose, admitted that it is the design of his Creator that he should attain to civilization: That religion should be known, that the comforts and elegancies of life should be enjoyed, that letters and arts should be cultivated, in short, that there should be the greatest possible development of moral and intellectual excellence. It can hardly be necessary to say any thing of those who have extolled the superior virtues and enjoyments of savage life a life of physical wants and sufferings, of continual insecurity, of furious passions and depraved vices. Those who have praised savage life, are those who have known nothing of it, or who have become savages themselves. But as I have said, so far as reason or universal experience instruct us, the institution of slavery is an essential process in emerging from savage life. It must then produce good, and promote the designs of the Creator.

I add further, that slavery anticipates the benefits of civilization, and retards the evils of civilization. The

Every stage of human society, from the most barba rous to the most refined, has its own peculiar evils to mark it as the condition of mortality; and perhaps there is none but Omnipotence who can say in which the scale of good or evil most preponderates. We need say nothing of the evils of savage life. There is a state of society elevated somewhat above it, which is to be found in some of the more thinly peopled portions of our own country-the rudest agricultural statewhich is thus characterized by the author to whom I have referred. "The American of the back woods has often been described to the English as grossly ignorant, dirty, unsocial, delighting in rum and tobacco, attached to nothing but his rifle, adventurous, restless,

*The author of "England and America." We do, however, most indignantly repudiate his conclusion, that we are bound submit to a tariff of protection, as an expedient for retairing our slaves "the force of the whole union, being required to preserve slavery, to keep down the slaves,"

tence.

more than half savage. Deprived of social enjoyments | swelling the amount of their capital, and increasing or excitements, he has recourse to those of savage life, inequality. The process still goes on. The number and becomes (for in this respect the Americans degene- of laborers increases until there is a difficulty in obrate) unfit for society." This is no very inviting pic-taining employment. Then competition is established. ture, which though exaggerated, we know not to be The remuneration of the laborer becomes gradually without likeness. The evils of such a state, I suppose, less and less; a larger and larger proportion of the will hardly be thought compensated by unbounded product of his labor goes to swell the fortune of the freedom, perfect equality, and ample means of subsis- capitalist; inequality becomes still greater and more invidious, until the process ends in the establishment of such a state of things, as the same author describes as now existing in England. After a most imposing picture of her greatness and resources; of her superabounding capital, and all-pervading industry and enterprize; of her public institutions for purposes of art, learning and benevolence; her public improvements, by which intercourse is facilitated, and the convenience of man subserved; the conveniences and luxuries of life enjoyed by those who are in possession of fortune, or have profitable employments; of all, in short, that places her at the head of modern civilization, he proceeds to give the reverse of the picture. And here I shall use his own words. "The laboring class compose the bulk of the people; the great body of the people; the vast majority of the people-these are the terms by which English writers and speakers usually describe those whose only property is their labor."

But let us take another stage in the progress-which to many will appear to offer all that is desirable in existence, and realize another Utopia. Let us suppose a state of society in which all shall have property, and there shall be no great inequality of property-in which society shall be so much condensed as to afford the means of social intercourse, without being crowded, so as to create difficulty in obtaining the means of subsistence-in which every family that chooses may have as much land as will employ its own hands, while others may employ their industry in forming such products as it may be desirable to exchange with them. Schools are generally established, and the rudiments of education universally diffused. Religion is taught, and every village has its church, neat though humble, lifting its spire to Heaven. Here is a situation apparently the most favorable to happiness. I say apparently, for the greatest source of human misery is not in ex- "Of comprehensive words, the two most frequently ternal circumstances, but in men themselves—in their used in English politics, are distress and pauperism. depraved inclinations, their wayward passions and per- After these, of expressions applied to the state of the verse wills. Here is room for all the petty. competi- | poor, the most common are vice and misery, wretchedtion, the envy, hatred, malice and dissimulation, that | ness, sufferings, ignorance, degradation, discontent, detorture the heart in what may be supposed the most pravity, drunkenness, and the increase of crime; with sophisticated states of society; and though less marked many more of the like nature." and offensive, there may be much of the licentiousness. He goes on to give the details of this inequality and But apart from this, in such a condition of society, wretchedness, in terms calculated to sicken and appal if there is little suffering, there is little high enjoyment. one to whom the picture is new. That he has painted The even flow of life forbids the high excitement which strongly we may suppose; but there is ample corrobois necessary for it. If there is little vice, there is little rating testimony, if such were needed, that the repreplace for the eminent virtues, which employ themselves sentation is substantially just. Where so much misery in controlling the disorders and remedying the evils of exists, there must of course be much discontent, and society, which like war and revolution, call forth the many have been disposed to trace the sources of the highest powers of man, whether for good or for evil. former in vicious legislation, or the structure of governIf there is little misery, there is little room for benevo | ment; and the author gives the various schemes, somelence. Useful public institutions we may suppose to times contradictory, sometimes ludicrous, which probe created, but not such as are merely ornamental.jectors have devised as a remedy for all this evil to Elegant arts can be little cultivated, for there are no means to reward the artists nor the higher literature, for no one will have leisure or means to cultivate it for its own sake. Those who acquire what may be called liberal education, will do so in order to employ it as the means of their own subsistence or advancement in a profession, and literature itself will partake of the sordidness of trade. In short, it is plain that in such a state of society, the moral and intellectual faculties cannot be cultivated to their highest perfection.

But whether that which I have described be the most desirable state of society or no, it is certain that it cannot continue. Mutation and progress is the condition of human affairs. Though retarded for a time by extraneous or accidental circumstances, the wheel must roll on. The tendency of population is to become crowded, increasing the difficulty of obtaining subsistence. There will be some without any property except the capacity for labor. This they must sell to those who have the means of employing them, thereby

which flesh is heir. That ill judged legislation may have sometimes aggravated the general suffering, or that its extremity may be mitigated by the well directed efforts of the wise and virtuous, there can be no doubt. One purpose for which it has been permitted to exist is, that it may call forth such efforts, and awaken powers and virtues which would otherwise have slumbered for want of object. But remedy there is none, unless it be to abandon their civilization. This inequality, this vice, this misery, this slavery, is the price of England's civilization. They suffer the lot of humanity. But perhaps we may be permitted humbly to hope, that great, intense and widely spread as this misery undoubtedly is in reality, it may yet be less so than in appearance. We can estimate but very, very imperfectly the good and evil of individual condition, as of different states of society. Some unexpected solace arises to alleviate the severest calamity. Wonderful is the power of custom, in making the hardest condition tolerable; the most generally wretched life, has circum

poor laws of England are an attempt-but an awkward and empirical attempt to supply the place of that which we should suppose the feelings of every human heart would declare to be a natural obligation-that he who has received the benefit of the laborer's services during his health and vigor, should maintain him when he becomes unable to provide for his own support. They answer their purpose, however, very imperfectly, and are unjustly, and unequally imposed. There is no attempt to apportion the burden according to the benefit received-and perhaps there could be none. This is one of the evils of their condition.

stances of mitigation, and moments of vivid enjoyment, wants and sufferings of infancy, sickness, and old age. of which the more seemingly happy can scarcely con- Laborers too will be less skilful, and perform less ceive; though the lives of individuals be shortened, the work-enhancing the price of that sort of labor. The aggregate of existence is increased; even the various forms of death accelerated by want, familiarized to the contemplation, like death to the soldier on the field of battle, may become scarcely more formidable, than what we are accustomed to regard as nature's ordinary outlets of existence. If we could perfectly analyze the enjoyments and sufferings of the most happy, and the most miserable man, we should perhaps be startled to find the difference so much less than our previous impressions had led us to conceive. But it is not for us to assume the province of omniscience. The particu- | lar theory of the author quoted, seems to be founded on an assumption of this sort-that there is a certain stage in the progress, when there is a certain balance between the demand for labor, and the supply of it, which is more desirable than any other-when the territory is so thickly peopled that all cannot own land and cultivate the soil for themselves, but a portion will be compelled to sell their labor to others; still leaving, however, the wages of labor high, and the laborer independent. It is plain, however, that this would in like manner partake of the good and the evil of other states of society. There would be less of equality and less rudeness, than in the early stages; less civilization and less suffering, than in the latter.

In periods of commercial revulsion and distress, like the present, the distress, in countries of free labor, falls principally on the laborers. In those of slave labor, it falls almost exclusively on the employer. In the former, when a business becomes unprofitable, the employ. er dismisses his laborers or lowers their wages. But with us, it is the very period at which we are least able to dismiss our laborers; and if we would not suffer a fur. ther loss, we cannot reduce their wages. To receive the benefit of the services of which they are capable, we must provide for maintaining their health and vigor. In point of fact, we know that this is accounted among the necessary expenses of management. If the income of every planter of the southern states were permanent

would not take one jot from the support and comforts of the slaves. And this can never be materially altered, until they shall become so unprofitable that slave

that the accumulation of individual wealth will never be carried to quite so great an extent in a slave bolding country, as in one of free labor; but a consequence will be, that there will be less inequality and less suffering.

It is the competition for employment, which is the source of this misery of society, that gives rise to all ex-ly reduced one half, or even much more than that, it cellence in art and knowledge. When the demand for labor exceeds the supply, the services of the most ordinarily qualified laborer will be eagerly retained.. When the supply begins to exceed, and competition is estab-ry must be of necessity abandoned. It is probable lished, higher and higher qualifications will be required, until at length, when it becomes very intense, none but the most consummately skilful can be sure to be employed. Nothing but necessity can drive men to the exertions which are necessary so to qualify themselves. But it is not in arts, merely mechanical alone, that this superior excellence will be required. It will be extended to every intellectual employment; and though this may not be the effect in the instance of every individual, yet it will fix the habits and character of the society, and prescribe every where, and in every department, the highest possible standard of attainment.

But how is it that the existence of slavery as with us, will retard the evils of civilization? Very obviously. It is the intense competition of civilized life, that gives rise to the excessive cheapness of labor, and the excessive cheapness of labor, is the cause of the evils in question. Slave labor can never be so cheap as what is called free labor. Political economists have established as the natural standard of wages in a fully peopled country, the value of the laborer's subsistence. I shall not stop to inquire into the precise truth of this proposition. It certainly approximates the truth. Where competition is intense, men will labor for a bare subsistence, and less than a competent subsistence. The employer of free laborers obtains their services during the time of their health and vigor, without the charge of rearing them from infancy, or supporting them in sickness or old age. This charge is imposed on the employer of slave labor, who, therefore, pays higher wages, and cuts off the principal source of misery-the

Servitude is the condition of civilization. It was decreed, when the command was given, “be fruitful, and multiply and replenish the earth, and subdue it,” and when it was added, "in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." And what human being shall arrogate to himself the authority to pronounce that our form of it is worse in itself, or more displeasing to God than that which exists elsewhere? Shall it be said that the servitude of other countries grows out of the exigency of their circumstances, and therefore society is not respon of sible for it? But if we know that in the progress things it is to come, would it not seem the part of wis dom and foresight, to make provision for it, and thereby, if we can, mitigate the severity of its evils? But the fact is not so. Let any one who doubts, read the book to which I have several times referred, and he may be satisfied that it was forced upon us by the extremest exigency of circumstances, in a struggle for very existence. Without it, it is doubtful whether a white man would be now existing on this continent-certain, that if there were, they would be in a state of the utmost destitution, weakness and misery. It was forced on us by necessity, and further fastened upon us, by the superior authority of the mother country. I, for one, neither deprecate nor resent the gift. Nor did we institute slavery. The Africans brought to us had been, speak. ing in the general, slaves in their own country, and

only underwent a change of masters. In the countries | freeman. The change was made in subserviency to of Europe, and the states of our confederacy, in which the opinions and clamor of others, who were utterly inslavery has ceased to exist, it was abolished by positive competent to form an opinion on the subject; and a legislation. If the order of nature has been departed wise act is seldom the result of legislation in this spirit. from, and a forced and artificial state of things intro- From the fact which I have stated, it is plain that they duced, it has been, as the experience of all the world less need protection. Juries are, therefore, less willing declares, by them and not by us. to convict, and it may sometimes happen that the guilty will escape all punishment. Security is one of the compensations of their humble position. We challenge the comparison, that with us there have been fewer murders of slaves, than of parents, children, apprentices, and other murders, cruel and unnatural, in societies where slavery does not exist.

That there are great evils in a society where slavery exists, and that the institution is liable to great abuse, I have already said. To say otherwise, would be to say that they were not human. But the whole of human life is a system of evils and compensations. We have no reason to believe that the compensations with us are fewer, or smaller in proportion to the evils, than those of any other condition of society. Tell me of an evil or abuse; of an instance of cruelty, oppression, licentiousness, crime or suffering, and I will point out, and often in five-fold degree, an equivalent evil or abuse in countries where slavery does not exist.

But short of life or limb, various cruelties may be practised as the passions of the master may dictate. To this the same reply has been often given-that they are secured by the master's interest. If the state of slavery is to exist at all, the master must have, and ought to have, such power of punishment as will comLet us examine without blenching, the actual and al- pel them to perform the duties of their station. And is leged evils of slavery, and the array of horrors which not this for their advantage as well as his? No human many suppose to be its universal concomitants. It is being can be contented, who does not perform the dusaid that the slave is out of the protection of the law; ties of his station. Has the master any temptation to that if the law purports to protect him in life and limb, go beyond this? If he inflicts on him such punishment it is but imperfectly executed; that he is still subject to as wil! permanently impair his strength, he inflicts a excessive labor, degrading blows, or any other sort of loss on himself, and so if he requires of him excessive torture, which a master pampered and brutalized by labor. Compare the labor required of the slave, with the exercise of arbitrary power, may think proper to those of the free agricultural, or manufacturing laborer inflict; he is cut off from the opportunity of intellectual, in Europe, or even in the more thickly peopled portions moral, or religious improvement, and even positive of the non-slave holding states of our confederacyenactments are directed against his acquiring the rudi- though these last are no fair subjects of comparisonments of knowledge; he is cut off forever from the they enjoying, as I have said, in a great degree, the adhope of raising his condition in society, whatever may vantages of slavery along with those of an early and be his merit, talents, or virtues, and therefore deprived simple state of society. Read the English parliamenof the strongest incentive to useful and praiseworthy ex-tary reports, on the condition of the manufacturing opeertion; his physical degradation begets a corresponding ratives, and the children employed in factories. And moral degradation; he is without moral principle, and such is the impotence of man to remedy the evils which addicted to the lowest vices, particularly theft and the condition of his existence has imposed on him, that falsehood; if marriage be not disallowed, it is little bet- it is much to be doubted whether the attempts by legis ter than a state of concubinage, from which results gene-lation to improve their situation, will not aggravate its ral licentiousness, and the want of chastity among evils. They resort to this excessive labor as a choice females-this indeed is not protected by law, but is of evils. If so, the amount of their compensation will subject to the outrages of brutal lust; both sexes are be lessened also with the diminished labor; for this is a liable to have their dearest affections violated; to be matter which legislation cannot regulate. Is it the sold like brutes; husbands to be torn from wives, chil- part of benevolence then to cut them off even from this dren from parents;-this is the picture commonly pre- miserable liberty of choice? Yet would these evils exBented by the denouncers of slavery. ist in the same degree, if the laborers were the property It is a somewhat singular fact, that when there exist of the master-having a direct interest in preserving ed in our state no law for punishing the murder of a their lives, their health and strength? Who but a drislave, other than a pecuniary fine, there were, I will velling fanatic, has thought of the necessity of protectventure to say, at least ten murders of freemen, for one ing domestic animals from the cruelty of their owners? murder of a slave. Yet it is supposed they are less And yet are not great and wanton cruelties practised on protected, or less secure than their masters. Why, they these animals? Compare the whole of the cruelties inare protected by their very situation in society, and flicted on slaves throughout our southern country, with therefore less need the protection of law. With any those elsewhere, inflicted by ignorant and depraved porother person than their master, it is hardly possible for tions of the community, on those whom the relations of them to come into such sort of collision as usually gives society put into their power-of brutal husbands on their rise to furious and revengeful passions; they offer no wives; of brutal parents-subdued against the strongest temptation to the murderer for gain; against the mas- instincts of nature to that brutality by the extremity of ter himself, they have the security of his own interest, their misery-on their children; of brutal masters on and by his superintendence and authority, they are apprentices. And if it should be asked, are not similar protected from the revengeful passions of each other. I cruelties inflicted, and miseries endured in your society? am by no means sure that the cause of humanity has | I answer in no comparable degree. The class in quesbeen served by the change in jurisprudence, which has tion are placed under the control of others, who are inplaced their murder on the same footing with that of a terested to restrain their excesses of cruelty or rage. VOL. IV.-78

Wives are protected from their husbands, and children | taken to give any sanction to slavery as it exists in from their parents. And this is no inconsiderable com- America. Yet human nature is the same in all coun pensation of the evils of our system; and would so ap pear, if we could form any conception of the immense amount of misery which is elsewhere thus inflicted. The other class of society, more elevated in their position, are also (speaking of course in the general) more elevated in character, and more responsible to public opinion.

tries. There are very obvious reasons why in those countries there should be a nearer approach to equality in their manners. The master and slave are often of cognate races, and therefore tend more to assimilate. There is in fact less inequality in mind and character, where the master is but imperfectly civilized. Less labor is exacted, because the master has fewer motives to accumulate. But is it an injury to a human being, that regular, if not excessive labor should be required of him? The primeval curse, with the usual benignity of providential contrivance, has been turned into the solace of an existence that would be much more intolerable without it. If they labor less, they are much more subject to the outrages of capricious passion. If it were put to the choice of any human being, would he prefer to be the slave of a civilized man, or of a barbarian or semi-barbarian? But if the general tendency of the institution in those countries is to create kindly relations, can it be imagined why it should operate differently in this? It is true, as suggested by President Dew-with the exception of the ties of close consanguinity, it forms one of the most intimate relations of society. And it will be more and more so, the longer it continues to ex ist. The harshest features of slavery were created by those who were strangers to slavery-who supposed that it consisted in keeping savages in subjection by violence and terror. The severest laws to be found on our statute book, were enacted by such, and such are still found to be the severest masters. As society becomes settled, and the wandering habits of our countrymen altered, there will be a larger and larger proportion of those who were reared by the owner, or derived to him from his ancestors, and who therefore will be more and more intimately regarded, as forming a portion of his family.

But besides the interest of their master, there is another security against cruelty. The relation of master and slave, when there is no mischievous interference between them, is, as the experience of all the world declares, naturally one of kindness. As to the fact, we should be held interested witnesses, but we appeal to universal nature. Is it not natural that a man should be attatched to that which is his own, and which has contributed to his convenience, his enjoyment, or his vanity? This is felt even towards animals, and inanimate objects. How much more towards a being of superior intelligence and usefulness, who can appreciate our feelings towards him, and return them? Is it not natural that we should be interested in that which is dependant on us for protection and support? Do not men every where contract kind feelings towards their dependants? Is it not natural that men should be more attached to those whom they have long known-whom, perhaps, they have reared or been associated with from infancy-than to one with whom their connexion has been casual and temporary? What is there in our at mosphere or institutions, to produce a perversion of the general feelings of nature? To be sure, in this as in all other relations, there is frequent cause of offence or excitement on one side, for some omission of duty, on the other, on account of reproof or punishment inflicted. But this is common to the relation of parent and child; and I will venture to say that if punishment be justly inflicted-and there is no temptation to inflict it un- It is true that the slave is driven to labor by stripes; justly it is as little likely to occasion permanent es- and if the object of punishment be to produce obedience trangement or resentment as in that case. Slaves are or reformation, with the least permanent injury, it is perpetual children. It is not the common nature of the best method of punishment. But is it not intolera man, unless it be depraved by his own misery, to de- ble, that a being formed in the image of his Maker, light in witnessing pain. It is more grateful to behold should be degraded by blows? This is one of the per contented and cheerful beings, than sullen and wretched versions of mind and feeling, to which I shall have ones. That men are sometimes wayward, depraved occasion again to refer. Such punishment would be and brutal, we know. That atrocious and brutal cru- degrading to a freeman, who had the thoughts and as elties have been perpetrated on slaves, and on those who pirations of a freeman. In general it is not degrading were not slaves, by such wretches, we also know. But to a slave, nor is it felt to be so. The evil is the bodily that the institution of slavery has a natural tendency to pain. Is it degrading to a child? Or if in any particu form such a character, that such crimes are more com-lar instance it would be so felt, it is sure not to be inmon, or more aggravated than in other states of society, or produce among us less surprise and horror, we utterly deny, and challenge the comparison. Indeed I have little hesitation in saying, that if full evidence could be obtained, the comparison would result in our favor, and that the tendency of slavery is rather to hu

manize than to brutalize.

flicted-unless in those rare cases which constitute the startling and eccentric evils, from which no society is exempt, and against which no institutions of society can provide.

The slave is cut off from the means of intellectual, moral, and religious improvement, and in consequence his meral character becomes depraved, and he addicted to degrading The accounts of travellers in oriental countries, give vices. The slave receives such instruction as qualifies a very favorable representation of the kindly relations him to discharge the duties of his particular station. which exist between the master and slave; the latter The Creator did not intend that every individual human being often the friend, and sometimes the heir of the for- being should be highly cultivated, morally and intellec mer. Generally, however, especially if they be Eng-tually, for as we have seen, he has imposed conditions lish travellers--if they say any thing which may seem on society which would render this impossible. There to give a favorable complexion to slavery, they think it must be general mediocrity, or the highest cultivation necessary to enter their protest, that they shall not be must exist along with ignorance, vice, and degradation.