But let us contemplate, for a moment, a certain class of freemen, the lazaroni of Italy, who exist, merely, upon one small dish of macaroni, daily issued to them from the Hospital of St. Lazarus. We are all familiar with the condition of these people. Let us compare theirs with what would be the condition of the beggars and thieves of some other countries, were they placed under the control of some salutary power, whereby their necessary wants would be supplied by the product of their individual labour. We need not ask which condition is most “at variance with the ordinances of God!”
Dr. Wayland has retained, for his last witness, the old trite charge that slavery impoverishes the soil; that, therefore, it constantly “migrates from the old to new regions,” “where alone the accumulated manure of centuries” can “sustain a system at variance with the laws of nature.” “Hence,” he says, “slavery in this country is acknowledged to have impoverished many of our most valuable districts.”
We are not aware how far Dr. Wayland has founded this statement upon facts drawn from his own observation. Has he done so at all; or has he, carelessly and without reflection, adopted it from the assertions of others notoriously destitute of ability to form an opinion with accuracy, or else too deeply prejudiced to give their opinion any value? Does he wish us to infer that the plough and the hoe, in the hands of a slave, communicate some peculiar poison to the soil; and by reason of which “the ground shall not henceforth yield her strength?” Will he please explain how the effect of which he complains is produced? If he finds it merely in the mode of cultivation, we then inquire whether the same mode would not produce the same effect, even if the plough and hoe were held by freemen? If so, then it is evident that “the impoverishment of many of our most valuable districts” is not the result of slavery, but of a bad mode of cultivation. Or, will the doctor contend that if those valuable districts had been cultivated by free hired men, the evils from negligence in the labourer would be remedied? “He that is a hireling fleeth, because he is a hireling, and careth not for the sheep.” John x. 13.
Dr. Wayland will not deny that the “heathen round about,” of whom the Jews were permitted to buy slaves, were a slave-holding people; but we have no account that their country was impoverished thereby. The Canaanites, whom the Israelites drove out from Palestine, were slaveholders; yet the country was represented as very fertile, even to “overflowing with milk and honey.” The Danites found “Laish very good,” Judg. xviii. 9. And the children of Judah “found fat pasture and good” about Gedar. 1 Chron. iv. 40. “For they of Ham had dwelt there of old!”
For many centuries, slavery extended over every part of Europe, yet history gives us no account of the ruin of the soil. In Greece and Rome, the numbers of slaves were extended to millions beyond any number these States possess; but their historians failed to discover their destructive influence on the fertility of those countries.
Before the impoverishment of the soil can, with any force, be adduced as proof against slavery, it must be proved to be a necessary consequence; which, we apprehend, will be a difficult labour, since the sluggishness and the idleness of the Canaanites, and of the nations round about, left their country overflowing with milk and honey, abounding in fat pastures and good, notwithstanding their population were, to a large extent, slaves,—since, also, the servile cultivation of the soil in Greece and Rome did not impoverish it; and since slavery, which everywhere abounded in Europe, never produced that effect.
If Dr. Wayland will discover the legitimate cause of this impoverishment of the soil in the Slave States, and teach the planters a better mode of cultivation, we doubt not he will receive their thanks, and deserve well of his country, as a public benefactor.
LESSON VII.
Dr. Wayland says: