Moreover, let us not forget new cultures, that of the vine among others, which are fitted to become introduced into these new countries, or to develop there, and which lack nothing but liberty in order to flourish.  The arts and manufactures also have their place; independently of the tillers of the soil, properly called, the Southern States will have need of workmen in manufactories, and of managers of agricultural machines; large plantations will often, become divided, as has happened in the Antilles, and we shall witness the appearance of the small estate, that essential basis of social order.  There will be employment for all, and the rich Southern cultures will be less neglected than before.

Whoever has descended the Ohio has involuntarily compared its two banks:  here, the State of Ohio, whose prosperity advances with rapid strides; there, the State of Kentucky, no less favored by Nature, yet which languishes as if abandoned.  Why?  Because slavery blights all that it touches.  Could not the whites of Kentucky and Virginia labor as well as those of Ohio?  The comparative poverty of these slave States reminds me of the destitution of our colonies and those of England before emancipation:  mortgaged estates, plantations burdened with expenses, the complete destruction of credit—­such was their position.  We must read American statistics to form an idea of the truly unheard-of extent of this fact—­impoverishment by slavery.  With a larger extent and much richer lands, the slave States possess neither agricultural growth, nor industrial growth, nor advance of population, which can be compared far or near with that which is found in the free States.  A book by Mr. Hinton Rowan Helper, The Impending Crisis of the South, expresses these differences in figures so significant that it is impossible to contest them.

The Southern States, therefore, are certain to increase their cultures, and to found their lasting prosperity by entering the path that leads to emancipation.  But if they take the contrary road, they will hasten to their destruction, and with strange rapidity.  Already, their violent acts of secession, and the monstrous plans which are necessarily attached to them, have had the first effect, easily foreseen, of dealing a most dangerous blow to American cotton.  In a few weeks, they have done themselves more harm than the North, supposing its hostility as great as it is little, could have done them in twenty years.  The meeting of Manchester has replied to the manifestoes of Charleston; England has said to herself, that, from men so determined to destroy themselves, she should count on nothing; and, having taken her resolution, she will proceed with it speedily; let the Southern States take care.  English India can produce as much cotton as America; before long, if the Carolinians persist, they will have obtained the glorious result of despoiling their country of its chief resource; they will have killed the hen that laid the golden