Entire Wealth of the Free States,. ..... $4, 02,172,108 Entire Wealth of the Slave States, including Slaves, 2,536,090,737 Balance in favor of the Free States,.. $1,166,081,371 What a towering monument to the beauty and glory of Free Labor! What irrefragable evidence of the unequaled efficacy and grandeur of free institutions! These figures are, indeed, too full of meaning to be passed by without comment. The two tables from which they are borrowed are at least a volume within themselves; and, after all the pains we have taken to compile them, we shall, perhaps, feel somewhat disappointed if the reader fails to avail him self of the important information they impart. Human life, in all ages, has been made up of a series of adventures and experiments, and even at this stage of the world's existence, we are almost as destitute of a perfect rule of action, secular or religious, as were the erratic cotemporaries of Noah. It is true, however, that we have made some progress in the right direction; and as it seems to be the tendency of the world to correct itself, we may suppose that future generations will be enabled, by intuition, to discriminate between the true and the false, the good and the bad, and that with the development of this faculty of the mind, error and discord will begin to wane, and finally cease to exist. Of all the experiments that have been tried by the people in America, slavery has proved the most fatal; and the sooner it is abolished the better it will be for us, for posterity, and for the world. One of the evils resulting from it, and that not the least, is apparent in the figures above. Indeed, the unprofitableness of slavery is a monstrous evil, when considered in all its bearings; it makes us poor; poverty makes us ignorant; ignorance makes us wretched; wretchedness makes us wicked, and wickedness leads to the devil! "Ignorance is the curse of God, Knowledge the wing wherewith we fly to heaven." Facts truly astounding are disclosed in the two last tables, and we could heartily wish that every intelligent American would commit them to memory. The total value of all the real and personal property of the free States, with an area of only 612,597 square miles, is one billion one hundred and sixty-six million eighty-one thousand three hundred and seventy-one dollars greater than the total value of all the real and personal property, including the price of 3,204,313 negroes, of the slave States, which have an area of 851,508 square miles! But extraordinary as this difference is in favor of the North, it is much less than the true amount. On the authority of Southrons themselves, it is demonstrable beyond the possibility of refu tation that the intrinsic value of all the property in the free States is more than three times greater than the intrinsic value of all the property in the slave States. James Madison, a Southern man, fourth President of the United States, a most correct thinker, and one of the greatest statesmen the country has produced, "thought it wrong to admit the idea that there could be property in man," and we indorse, to the fullest extent, this opinion of the profound editor of the Federalist. We shall not recoguize property in man; the slaves of the South are not worth a groat in any civilized community; no man of genuine decency and refinement would hold them as property on any terms; in the eyes of all enlightened nations and individuals, they are men, not merchandize. Southern pro-slavery politicians, some of whom have not hesitated to buy and sell their own sons and daughters, boast that the slaves of the South are worth sixteen hundred million of dollars, and we have seen the amount estimated as high as two thousand million. Mr. De Bow, the Southern superintendent of the seventh census, informs us that the value of all the property in the slave States, real and personal, including slaves, was, in 1850, only $2,936,090,737; while, according to the same authority, the value of all the real and personal property in the free States, genuine property, property that is everywhere recognized as property, was, at the same time, $4,102,172,108. Now all we have to do in order to ascertain the real value of all the property of the South, independent of negroes, whose value, if valuable at all, is of a local and precarious character, is to subtract from the sum total of Mr. De Bow's return of the entire wealth of the slave States the estimated value of the slaves themselves; and then, by deducting the difference from the intrinsic value of all the property in the free States, we shall have the exact amount of the overplus of wealth in the glorious land of free soil, free labor, free speech, free presses, and free schools. And now to the task. Entire Wealth of the Slave States, including Slaves $2,936,090,737 Estimated Value of the Slaves,. True Wealth of the Slave States,... 1,600,000,000 $1,336,090,737 True Wealth of the Free States, True Wealth of the Slave States,. $4,102,172,108 1,336,090,737 $2,766,081,371 Balance in favor of the Free States,.. There, friends of the South and of the North, you have the conclusion of the whole matter. Liberty and slavery arc before you; choose which you will have; as for us, in the memorable language of the immortal Henry, we say, give us liberty, or give us death !" In the great struggle for wealth that has been going on between the two rival systems of free and slave labor, the balance above exhibits the net profits of the former. The struggle on the one side has been calm, laudable, and eminently successful; on the other, it has been attended by tumult, unutterable cruelties and disgraceful failure. We have given the slave drivers every conceivable opportunity to vindicate their domestic policy, but for them to do it is a moral impossibility. Less than three-quarters of a century ago-say in 1789, for that was about the average time of the abolition of slavery in the Northern States-the South, with advantages in soil, climate, rivers, harbors, minerals, forests, and, indeed, almost every other natural resource, began an even race with the North in all the important pursuits of life; and now, in the brief space of scarce three score years and ten, we find her completely distanced, enervated, dejected and dishonored. Slave-drivers are the sole authors of her disgrace; as they have sown so let them reap. As we have seen above, a careful and correct inventory of all the real and personal property in the two grand divi sions of the country, discloses the astounding fact that, in 1850 the free States were worth precisely two thousand |