"facts and arguments," by which Dr. R. demonstrates the expediency of abolishing slavery in West Virginia. Waiving all theoretical or abstract arguments, and all reference to past ages, he grounds his conclusions upon facts furnished by the history of our own age and country.

"No where," says he, "since time began, have the two systems of slave labor and free labor, been subjected to so fair and so decisive a trial of their effects on public prosperity, as in these United States. Here the two systems have worked side by side for ages, under such equal circumstances both political and physical, and with such ample time and opportunity for each to work out its propet effects, that all must admit the experiment to be now complete, and the result decisive. No man of common sense, who has observed this result, can doubt for a moment, that the system of free labor

promotes the growth and prosperity of states, in a much higher degree than the system of slave labor. In the first settlement of a country, when labor is scarce and dear, slavery may give a temporary impulse to improvement: but even this is not the case, except in warm climates, and where free men are scarce and either sickly or lazy and when we have said this, we have said all that experience in the United States warrants us to say, in favor of the policy of employing slave

labor.

"It is the common remark of all who have traveled through the United States, that the free states and the slave states, exhibit a striking contrast in their appearance. In the older free states are seen all the tokens of prosperity:-a dense and increasing population;-thriving villages, towns and cities;-a neat and productive agriculture, growing manufactures and active commerce.

"In the older parts of the slave states, -with a few local exceptions,-are seen, on the contrary, too evident signs of stagnation or of positive decay,-a sparse population,-a slovenly cultivation spread over vast fields, that are wearing out, among others already worn out and desolate;-villages and towns, few and far between,' rarely growing, often decaying, sometimes mere remnants of what they were, sometimes deserted ruins, haunted only by owls;-generally no manufactures, nor even trades, except the indispensable few;-commerce and navigation abandoned, as far as possible, to the people of the free states;-and generally, instead of the stir and bustle of industry, a dull and dreamy stillness, broken, VOL. VI.

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if broken at all, only by the wordy brawl of politics.

But we depend not on general statements of this sort, however unquestionable their truth may be. We shall present you with statistical facts, drawn from public documents of the highest authority. We shall compare slave states with free states, in general and in particular, and in so many points of view, that you can not mistake in forming your judg ment of their comparative prosperity."pp. 11, 12.

This comparison between the prosperity of the free states and that of the slave states, is exhibited in respect to population, agriculture, manufactures, commerce, navigation, and popular education;—and we need not inform our readers, that the comparison exhibits a contrast of the most marked and convincing character.

that the free states have gained In respect to population, he shows greatly upon the slave states taken as a whole; but he contends that the comparison ought to be confined to the old states, where only the full effects of the two systems have had time for development.

"We will therefore," he says, "take the old free states, and compare them with the old slave states of Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia, in which slave labor predominates.

"New England and the middle states of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, contained in 1790, 1,968,000 inhabitants, and in 1840, 6,760,000; having gained in this period, 243 per cent.

"The four old slave states had in 1790, a population of 1,473,000; and in 1840, of 3,279,000, having gained, in the same period, 122 per cent., just about half as much in proportion, as the free states. They ought to have gained about twice as much; for they had at first only seven inhabitants to the square mile, when the free states not only had upwards of twelve, but on the whole much inferior advantages of soil and climate. Even cold, barren New England, though more than twice as thickly peopled, grew in population at a faster rate than these old slave

states.

"About half the territory of these old slave states is new country, and has com paratively few slaves. On this part the increase of population has chiefly taken place. On the old slave-labored lowlands, a singular phenomenon has appear

ed: there, within the bounds of these rapidly growing United States,-yes, there, population has been long at a stand; yes, over wide regions-especially in Virginia-it has declined, and a new wilderness is gaining upon the cultivated land! What has done this work of desolation? Not war, nor pestilence; not oppression of rulers, civil or ecclesiastical-but slavery, a curse more destructive in its effects than any of them. It were hard to find, in old king-ridden, priest-ridden, overtaxed, Europe, so large a country, where within twenty years past, such a growing poverty and desolation have appeared.

"It is in the last period of ten years, from 1830 to 1840, that this consuming plague of slavery has shown its worst effects in the old southern states. Including the increase in their newly settled, and western counties, they gained in population only 7 per cent.; while cold, barren, thickly peopled New England, gained 15, and the old middle states, 26 per cent. East Virginia actually fell off 26,000 in population; and with the exception of Richmond and one or two other towns. her population continues to decline. Old Virginia was the first to sow this land of ours with slavery; she is also the first to reap the full harvest of destruction. Her lowland neighbors of Maryland and the Carolinas, were not far behind at the seeding; nor are they far behind at the ingathering of desolation. Most sorry are we for this fallen condition of The Old Dominion,' and of her neighbors: but such being the fact, we state it, as an argument and a warning to our West Virginia. It demonstrates the ruinous effects of slavery upon the countries in which the longest and most complete trial of it has been made."-p. 14.

"But, seriously, fellow citizens, we esteem it a sad, a humiliating fact, which should penetrate the heart of every Virginian, that from the year 1790 to this time, Virginia has lost more people by emigration, than all the old free states together. Up to 1840, when the last census was taken, she had lost more by nearly 300.000. She has sent or we should rather say, she has driven from her soil-at least one-third of all the emigrants, who have gone from the old states to the new. More than another

third have gone from the other old slave states. Many of these multitudes, who have left the slave states, have shunned the regions of slavery, and settled in the free countries of the West. These were generally industrious and enterprising white men, who found by sad experience, that a country of slaves was not a country for them. It is a truth, a cer

tain truth, that slavery drives free laborers-farmers, mechanics, and all, and

some of the best of them too-out of the country, and fills their places with negroes. "What is it but slavery that makes Marylanders, Carolinians, and especially old Virginians and new Virginians-fly their country at such a rate? Some go because they dislike slavery and desire to get away from it: others, because they have gloomy forebodings of what is to befall the slave states, and wish to leave their families in a country of happier prospects: others, because they can not get profitable employment among slaveholders: others, industrious and high-spirited working men, will not stay in a country where slavery degrades the working man: others go because they see that their country, for some reason, does not prosper, and that other countries, not far off, are prospering, and will afford better hopes of prosperity to themselves: others, a numerous class, who are slaveholders and can not live without slaves, finding that they can not live longer with them on their worn out soils, go to seek better lands and more profitable crops, where slave labor may yet for a while enable them and their children to live.

"But you know well, fellow citizens, that this perpetual drain of our population, does not arise from a failure of natural resources for living in Virginia. How could it, while so much good soil is yet a wilderness, and so much old soil could be fertilized; and while such re

sources for manufactures and commerce lie neglected?

"Had Virginia retained her natural increase, or received as many emigrants as she sent away, from the year 1790 to the present time, she would now have had three times her actual population; and, had all been free men, each laboring voluntarily, and for his own benefit, all could have prospered in her wide and richly gifted territory.

"The true cause of this unexampled emigration is, that no branch of industry flourishes, or can flourish among us, so long as slavery is established by law, and the labor of the country is done chiefly by men, who can gain nothing by assiduity, by skill, or by economy. All the older slaveholding states have proved this by sad experience."-pp. 16, 17.

He next presents a comparative view of the agriculture, the manufactures, and the commerce of the old free states, and the old slave states, especially Virginia.

Speaking of the results of agriculture, he says that in New Eng land, the annual product is about $180 to the hand, that is, for each person employed. In the middle

states of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania, the average is about $270 to the hand. In the old slave states, the average is about $130 to the hand. Thus it appears that the free labor of the middle states, produces more than twice as much value to the hand, as the slave labor of the old slave states.

"Agriculture," he adds, "in the slave states may be characterized in general by two epithets-extensive-exhaustive which in all agricultural countries forebode two things-impoverishment-depopulation. The general system of slaveholding farmers and planters, in all times and places, has been, and now is, and ever will be, to cultivate much land, bad ly, for present gain-in short, to kill the goose that lays the golden egg. They can not do otherwise with laborers who

work by compulsion, for the benefit only of their masters; and whose sole interest in the matter is, to do as little and to consume as much as possible."

Agriculture can not flourish among us, because slave labor is unproductive, and keeps down the population,-also because it prevents the growth of manufactures, and thereby deprives our farmers of a home market, the most valuable of all;-also because it disables the country to construct railroads and canals, to facil itate trade and travel; and finally, we may add, because it destroys the spirit of industry and enterprise in the white population, and thus prevents them from doing what is yet in their power to do for the improvement of the country.

Thus it comes to pass that lower Virginia with stores of fertilizing marl on her extensive shores, still goes on to impoverish probably ten times as much land as she fertilizes; that the valley, though full of limestone and fertile subsoil, is on the whole becoming more exhausted by a too wide-spread and shallow cultivation;-and that West Virginia in general, to mention but one of many particulars, still leaves unoccupied the cheapest and the best sheep-walks in the United States, and confines her husbandry to a few old staple products; while New York and Vermont, in their snowy elimate, gain millions of dollars annually by sheep-husbandry.

"In 1840, Vermont had 160 sheep to the square mile, and New York, in her northern districts, nearly as many: whilst Virginia had only 20 to the square mile, -few of them fine-wooled sheep, and these few chiefly on her northern border, near free Pennsylvania.

"No doubt sheep could be kept among our mountains, at one-third of what they

cost in those cold northern countries, where they must be stabled and fed during the five snowy months.

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Suppose that the mountains of Virginia were as well stocked with improvtries; they would now be pastured by ed breeds of sheep as those north counsix millions of those useful animals; whose yearly product of wool and lambs would be worth seven or eight millions of dollars; and the keeping of them would furnish profitable occupation for 12,000 families of free citizens. Then how changed would be the scene! Our desolate mountains enlivened with flocks; and the thousand now silent nooks and

dells, vocal with the songs of liberty,

The Mountain Nymph, sweet Liberty-Why is it not so in our mountains? -They who keep slaves can not keep The occupation requires care; sheep. but what do slaves care? Poor wretches! what should make them care?

"A few significant facts will conclude this sketch of our slave-system of agricul

ture. The towns and cities of lower Virginia are supplied with a great part of their hay, butter, potatoes, and other vegetables, not from the farms of Virginia, but from those of the free states. even our great pastoral valley imports cheese in large quantities from the North."-pp. 20, 22, 23.

And

The following pregnant remarks may be taken as a specimen of the manner in which he exposes the inferiority of the slave states, in respect to manufactures:

"It matters not to our argument, wheth er a high tariff or a low tariff be thought best for the country. Whatever aid the tariff may give to manufactures, it gives the same in all parts of the United States. Under the protective tariffs formerly enacted, manufactures have grown rapidly in the free states; but no tariff has been able to push a slaveholding state into this important line of industry. Under the present revenue tariff, manufactures still grow in the North; and the old South, as might be expected, exhibits no movement, except the customary one of emigration. We hear indeed, once in a while, a loud report in Southern newspapers, that "The South is waking up," because some new cotton mill, or other manufacturing establishment, has been erected in a slave state: a sure sign that in the slave states an event of this sort is extraordinary. In the free states it is so ordinary, as to excite little attention.

"Even the common mechanical trades do not flourish in a slave state. Some mechanical operations must, indeed, be performed in every civilized country; but the general rule in the South is, to

to

import from abroad every fabricated thing that can be carried in ships, such as household furniture, boats, boards, laths, carts, ploughs, axes and axehelves, besides innumerable other things, which free communities are accustomed make for themselves. What is most wonderful, is, that the forests and iron-mines of the South supply, in great part, the materials out of which these things are made. The northern freemen come with their ships, carry home the timber and pig-iron, work them up, supply their own wants with a part, and then sell the rest at a good profit in the southern markets. Now, although mechanics, by setting up their shops in the South, could save all these freights and profits; yet so it is, that northern mechanics will not settle in the South, and the southern mechanics are undersold by their northern competitors.

"Now connect with these wonderful facts another fact, and the mystery is solved. The number of mechanics in different parts of the South, is in the inverse ratio of the number of slaves: or in other words, where the slaves form the largest proportion of the inhabitants, there the mechanics and manufacturers form the least. In those parts only where the slaves are comparatively few, are many mechanics and artificers to be found; but even in these parts they do not flourish, as the same useful class of men flourish in the free states. Even in our valley of Virginia, remote from the sea, many of our mechanics can hardly stand against northern competition. This can be attributed only to slavery, which paralyzes our energies, disperses our population, and keeps us few and poor, in spite of the bountiful gifts of nature, with which a benign Providence has endowed our country.

"Of all the states in this Union, not one has on the whole such various and abundant resources for manufacturing, as our own Virginia, both East and West. Only think of her vast forests of timber, her mountains of iron, her regions of stone coal, her valleys of limestone and marble, her fountains of salt, her immense sheepwalks for wool, her vicinity to the cotton fields, her innumerable waterfalls, her bays, harbors and rivers for circulating products on every side:-in short every material and every convenience necessary for manufacturing industry.

"Above all, think of Richmond, nature's chosen site for the greatest manufacturing city in America-her beds of coal and iron, just at hand-her incomparable water-power-her tide water navigation, conducting sea vessels from the foot of her falls, and above them her fine canal to the mountains, through which lie the shortest routes from the eastern tides to the great rivers of the West and the South

West. Think also that this Richmond in old Virginia, the mother of states,' has enjoyed these unparalleled advantages ever since the United States became a nation; and then think again, that this same Richmond, the metropolis of all Virginia, has fewer manufactures than a third rate New England town;-fewernot than the new city of Lowell, which is beyond all comparison,-but fewer than the obscure place called Fall River, among the barren hills of Massachusetts: -and then fellow citizens, what will you think,-what must you think of the cause of this strange phenomenon? Or, to enlarge the scope of the question: What must you think has caused Virginians in general to neglect their superlative advantages for manufacturing industry?-to disregard the evident suggestions of nature, pointing out to them this fruitful source of population, wealth and comfort?

What is

"Say not that this state of things is chargeable to the apathy of Virginians. That is nothing to the purpose, for it does not go to the bottom of the subject. What causes the apathy? That is the question. Some imagine that they give a good reason when (leaving out the apathy) they say, that Virginians are devoted exclusively to agriculture. But why should they be, when their agriculture is failing them, and they are flying by tens of thousands from their worn out fields to distant countries? Necessity, we are told by these reasoners, drives the New Englanders from agriculture in their barren country, to trade and manufactures. So it did: Necessity drives all mankind to labors and shifts for a living. Has necessity, the mother of invention, ever driven Virginians to trade and manufactures? No; but it drives them in multitudes from their native country. They can not be driven to commerce and manufactures. the reason of that? If a genial climate and a once-fertile soil wedded them to agriculture, they should have wedded them also to their native land. Yet when agriculture fails them at home, rather than let mines, and coal beds, and waterfalls, and timber-forests, and the finest tide rivers and harbors in America, allure them to manufactures and commerce, they will take their negroes and emigrate a thousand miles. This remarkable fact, that they will quit their country rather than their ruinous system of agriculture, proves that their institution of slavery disqualifies them to pursue any occupation, except their same ruinous system of agriculture. We admit that some few individuals should be excepted from this conclusion: but these few being excepted, we have given you the conclusion of the whole matter; and as Lorenzo Dow used to say-you can not deny it."-pp. 23-25.

For the purpose of satisfying the most incredulous of the immense deficiency of the slave states, in this branch of industry, he gives a comparative view of the iron manufacture, from the census of 1840, and divides the total value of the several states by their population, and finds the average for each individual. In three New England states, the average is $45 a head; in New York, $9; in New Jersey, $16; in Pennsylvania, $9; in Maryland, $7}; and in Virginia, $24. And he thinks the result of the comparison would not be materially different, if the calculation were founded on all the various kinds of manufacture.

In respect to commerce and navigation, he shows by abundant statistics, that the slave states are relatively more deficient in these branches of industry, than in manufactures. This fact he sets in a strong light, by showing the surpassing natural advantages of Virginia.

"We may say," he observes, that her bay and tide-rivers will make one great haven, 500 miles long, situated midway between the northern and southern extremes of our Atlantic coast. Norfolk is the natural centre of the foreign and coasting trade of the United States. It ought to have commanded the trade of North Carolina, of all the countries upon the waters of the Chesapeake, and of half the Great West. It ought to have been the second, if not the first, commercial city in the United States.

Her imports from foreign countries, were, in the year 1765, valued at upwards of 4,000,000 of dollars: in 1791, they had sunk to 24 millions; in 1821, they had fallen to a little over one million; in 1827, they had come down to about half this sum; and in 1843, to the half of this again, or about one quarter of a million; and here they have stood ever since, at next to nothing.

"So our great Virginia, with all her natural facilities for trade, brings to her ports about one five-hundredth part of the goods, wares and merchandize, imported

into the United States. ***

"As to ship building, Virginia, that

ought, with her eminent advantages for the business, to build as many ships as any state in the Union, does less at it than the least of those free states. All that she builds in a year on her long forest-girt shores, would carry only eight or nine hundred tons-that is, about as much as one good packet ship at the North. Maine and Massachusetts build thirty-five times as much; little Rhode Island builds twice as much; New York twenty times as much; Pennsylvania twelve times as much; and Maryland seven times as much; and what would astonish us, if we did not know so many like facts, is, that much of the ship timber used in the North, is actually carried in ships from our southern forests, where it might rot before southern men would use it for any such purpose. We do not blame our southern people for abstaining from all employments of this kind. What could they do? Set their negroes to building ships? Who ever imagined such an absurdity? But could they not hire white men to do such things? No: for in the first place, southern white men have no skill in such matters; and in the second place, northern workmen can not be hired in the South, without receiving a heavy premium for working in a slave state."-pp. 27, 28, 29.

Passing from a view of the influence of slavery in depressing industry, Dr. Ruffner shows its influence upon popular education to be equally disastrous. It appears from the census that the number of adults who can not read, compared with the whole adult population, is, in New England, as one to one hundred and seventy; in New York, as one to fifty-three; in New Jersey, as one to fifty-five; in Pennsylvania, as one to forty-nine; in Maryland, as one to twenty-five; in Virginia, as one to five and a half; in North Carolina, as one to four and