AMERICAN DOMESTIC POLICY AT THE CENTRE ANT CIRCUMFERENCE.
THERE was a time when it was excusable for politicians and their newspapers to speak with less reprobation of negro-slavery in America than of the same institution elsewhere. Besides the old. plea that the British established it in that region, there was the new complaint.of the .disproportion of land and labour in the scantily-peopled agricultural States. Twenty years ago there really was some semblance of the question being one with two sides. It was plain to sound thinkers, however,—as plain then as it is now,—that time must dissolve the pro-slavery plea, that a few years would probably suffice to do it. It has turned out so ; and we now see the question lodged in a conjuncture of time and circumstance which needs but to be noted to be understood. The two or three last mails from the United States have brought news in the highest degree instructive in regard to the future of the American Union.
First, as to the old pleas. It is true, the British introduced negro slavery into their American colonies : but this was no rea- son for the institution outlasting other despotisms which the re- publicans cast out, if they had really desired to be rid of it. A stronger point is, however, that the Americans adopted the in- stitution, deliberately and avowedly, when they decreed the Missouri compromise ; and again when they dissolved that compro- mise. They made slavery an American institution then, in the face of the world. The excuse of a deficiency of labour in proportion to the laud was, in like manner, thrown up by them when they founded their Colonization Society, with the avowed object of settling American negroes, (emancipated slaves,) on the coast of Africa. This is not the moment for exposing the real aim and operation of the scheme. It is a curious story ; but we have not room for it here. Our business with it now is merely as a proof, if its founders were sincere, that labour could not be so deficient as to compel the slavery of the labourers, if colonies of those very labourers could be spared for so remote and improbable an achievement as civilizing Africa. A long course of events has wrought out the same proof into perfect clearness. The influx of free labour into the northern States, rendered their lands so productive that, (as appears from the unquestion- able authority. of Mr. Helper, a North Carolina man, reared in the heart of slave institutions,) the mere hay-crop of the Free States is more valuable than all the cotton, tobacco, and other southern products of the Slave States. If the southern men really desired and sought a sufficiency of labour concentrated on their lands, the means were open to them as to their brethren in the north. Whether it be true or not that whites cannot culti- vate and prepare sugar-crops, they can cotton and tobacco, and the ordinary agricultural products of the Slave States. So well was this known on the spot, and so much was the presence of free European labourers dreaded instead of desired, that the Know-nothing party was created in the south, and carefully pro- pagated northwards, under Protestant pretences, but in reality to atop the influx of free-labour with which slavery could not co- exist. While the plea of economical necessity was wearing out before the world's eyes, the slave-holders published their jealousy of the prosperous Free States in a manner which appears more extraordinary from year to year. They have for several years held an annual Convention of Delegates in some southern city, in order to vent their uneasiness at the unprosperous condition of their section of the Union, and to consult on the means of render- ing themselves independent of the north. Their annual lamenta- tion over their dependence on their rich and busy felloW citizens of New England and New York for capital with which to culti- vate their fields, for shipping with which to carry the produce to a market, for railways and vehicles, for colleges and literature, for everything indeed but mere land and slaves, makes all the world ask why they do not take the same measures to get rich which have made the Free States prosperous. Year by year at these Conventions there are proposals made, which none but slave- holders who live only in a world of their own, could bring forward seriously. They will subscribe (though they complain of mortgaged estates and insolvency,) to set up a line of steamers from their own ports direct to Europe, to cut off the commerce of New York, Philadelphia, and Boston. They try, and raise only money enough to buy coal for five miles of steaming,—if the vessel were given them. They appoint a Committee to prepare school-books for all southern schools, as they have hitherto depended wholly on the north for such literature ; and the avowals of the Declaration of Independence, and the principles and laws of human rights and liberties are found more or less in them all. The issue of this measure is not yet known. They advocate the establish- ment of colleges enough in the south to prevent the race of future slaveholders being sent to see the prosperity of the north, and to form connexions in the land of free labour ; but there is little en- couragement to build new colleges while those which exist are in a depressed condition, and the young men of Virginia and the Carolinas will go for education where the best is to be had. Thus it is throughout the whole range of efforts to rise, as the organs of the slaveholders themselves explain to us. Nobody but themselves could doubt for a moment that the issue must be the succumbing of slavery to free labour in the south, as happened long ago in the other section.
A series of efforts in a different direction remained, however, to be made. It is assumed by slaveholders that their method of cul- tivation is supremely profitable on virgin soils, however soon and certainly it impoverishes the land. Now that eastern Virginia is lapsing into swamp and forest, and North Carolina is a dreary wilderness, and even Alabama, (a new state a quarter of a century since,) has degenerated to the point of desolation described in local publications, it is natural that the landed proprietors of the south should desire new areas for the application of the labour which forms the bulk of their capital. Hence the struggles for ascend- ancy in the Federal Government : hence the cry of " manifest destiny," extorted from an observation of President Monro : hence the annexation of Texas, and the demand for the acquisition of Cuba, and the filibustering expeditions thither and to Niea a : hence the Dred Scott decision, and the Kansas conflict, and accession of the three last Presidents, and the defection, humilia- tion, and ruin of the Websters, Clays, and other leading men who ought to have been Presidents : hence the sudden rise and certain fall of a score of political parties, each of which has hoped to rule by avoiding, instead of dealing directly with, the great vice and perplexity which imperils the Republic : hence the present split in the President's party, and the discomfiture of his plans and policy ; and hence, finally, the phenomenon which we spoke of at the out- set as worthy the fixed attention of the whole civilized world. Political action, in the form of antagonism between the two great sections of the Union would never, (or not for any assignable length of time,) extinguish slavery, even as a national institution. Whe- ther moral action would do it, and how soon, is not a practical question, as other forces are, and ever must be, at work with it. The sure and certain agent which must override political strife, and which is ever on the side of sound morality in the long run is economical experience, or, in other words, the great natural laws of society. Their operation just now in the political field of the American Union is the phenomenon which the world must mark.
It is admitted on all hands now that Kansas must be a Free State. Why ? Because a strong and permanent influx of free labour from the eastern States has rendered slavery impossible in the new territory. Thus the game of the southern faction is up throughout the vast north-west area ; and the people of Missouri itself have seen enough to be half converted, and to have returned an Anti-Slavery candidate at a contested election. While the conflict was at its height in Kansas, it became known that on the south-west frontier slavery was brought to a stop. Olmsted's account of Texas shows how the thing has happened. A line of German settlers, backed by an impassable desert " where no water is," have established so prosperous a cotton-cultivation be- fore the eyes of the negroes and their masters, that " the pecu- liar institution" is daily receding, and can never advance. The hint has been taken in the north, by those who sent-Free iaboul to Kansas. They poured some into eastern Virginia, well aware that the farming population of western Virginia had long desired the abolition of slavery in their State. This was a false move, as sage observers foretold. European and Yankee immigrants cannot live under the laws, usages, discouragements, and incon- veniences of a slaveholding society; and the settlers are pouring out again. Their experiment has produced some good conse- quences, one of which is that Delaware has protested against being a frontier Slave State in such times ; and others are pre- paring to follow, finding slave property too evaporable, and all other acquisition obviated by its presence. Of all the new areas for immigration, Nicaragua seems to promise the best. The pro- ject was welcomed with joy by the inhabitants ; and one of the first results was the disappearance of Walker and his company of filibusters. It seems to be proved that Europeans can live and work in Nicaragua ; and working and trading whites will be supremely welcome to the inhabitants in comparison with, and as a defence against, freebooters who avow an intention of intro- ducing slavery there, where it is abhorred by government and people alike. While the world is waiting for President Buchanan's fulfilment of his programme of annexation, he pauses, though his term of office is slipping away. We knew long ago that the sugar-grow- ing portion of his special constituency dreaded the annexation of Cuba, as fatal to their fortunes, unless they removed thither at great sacrifice. Now there is more behind ;—the same project which has scared Walker from Nicaragua. The active friends of the emigrant have surveyed the ground there too ; and the un- burdened immigrant, who has done all when he has paid for his land, will always have the advantage over the purchaser whose capital is locked up in slaves. There is a scarcity of ordinary agricultural products in Cuba; and, the very hour that the South and the President acquire the island in defiance of the Free States, the free settlers will pour in, and slavery will recede before them as it recedes before the Germans in Texas. These truths, which cannot but be known to Mr. Cass, supply a remarkable elucidation of his correspondence with Lord Napier. It is vexatious that Lord Napier's replies are suppressed, because it is of importance to us to know how far our representative at Washington is aware of the discrepancies between the facts of American history, and the assumptions of Mr. Cass's letters. If occasion should require, we are prepared to analyze the latter. Meantime, and till we can learn what Lord Napier has said about slavery and the slave- trade, we may well be satisfied with the wise and peaceable citi- zen-policy of drawing a cordon of free and virtuous industry round the slave territory of the great republic, at once amending its fearful anomaly and rebuking its radical vice. Mr. Cass says truly that while there are slave-markets there will be a slave- trade. It is equally true that as long as there is slavery there will be slave-markets. The way to deal with the whole group of evils is to swamp slave labour by free industry,—of which, as the Americans very well know, the negro is as capable as the white.
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