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his life in single combat. Thus slavery not only prevents the whites from becoming opulent, but even from desiring to become so.
As the same causes have been continually producing opposite effects for the last two centuries in the British colonies of North America, they have established a very striking difference between the commercial capacity of the inhabitants of the south and those of the north. At the present day, it is only the northern states which are in possession of shipping, manufactures, railroads, and canals. This difference is perceptible not only in comparing the north with the south, but in comparing the several southern states. Almost all the individuals who carry on commercial operations, or who endeavour to turn slave-labour to account in the most southern districts of the Union, have emigrated from the north. The natives of the northern states are constantly spreading over that portion of the American territory, where they have less to fear from competition; they discover resources there, which escaped the notice of the inhabitants: and, as they comply with a system which they do not approve, they succeed in turning it to better advantage than those who first founded, and who still maintain it.
Were I inclined to continue this parallel, I could easily prove that almost all the differences, which may be remarked between the characters of the Americans in the southern and in the northern states, have originated in slavery; but this would divert me from my subject, and my present intention is not to point out all the consequences of servitude, but those effects which it has produced upon the prosperity of the countries which have admitted it.
The influence of slavery upon the production of wealth must have been very imperfectly known in antiquity, as slavery then obtained throughout the civilized world, and the nations which were unacquainted with it were barbarous. And indeed Christianity only abolished slavery by advocating the claims of the slave; at the present time it may be attacked in the name of the master; and, upon this point, interest is reconciled with morality.
As these truths became apparent in the United States, slavery receded before the progress of experience. Servitude had begun in the south, and had thence spread toward the north; but it now retires again. Freedom, which started from the north, now descends uninterruptedly toward the south. Among the great states, Pennsylvania now constitutes the extreme limit of slavery to the
