Thus, under the direct influence of the Cotton dynasty, the whole Southern tone on this subject has undergone a change.  Slavery is no longer deplored as a necessary evil, but it is maintained as in all respects a substantial good.  One of the logical necessities of a thorough slave-system is, in at least the slave-portion of the people, extreme ignorance.  Whatever theoretically may be desirable in this respect among the master-class, ignorance, in its worst form,—­ignorance of everything except the use of the tools with which their work is to be done,—­is the necessary condition of the slaves.  But it is said that slaves are property, without voice or influence in the government, and that the ignorance of the black is no obstacle to the intelligence of the white.  This possibly may be true; but a government founded on ignorance, as the essential condition of one portion of its people, is not likely long to regard education as its vital source and essence.  Still the assertion that the rule of education does not apply to slaves must be allowed; for we must deal with facts as we find them; and undoubtedly the slave has no rights which the master is bound to respect; and in speaking of the policy of the Cotton dynasty, the servile population must be regarded as it is, ignoring the question of what it might be; it must be taken into consideration only as a terrible inert mass of domesticated barbarism, and there left.  The question here is solely with the policy and tendency of the Cotton dynasty as affecting the master-class, and the servile class is in that consideration to be summarily disposed of as so much labor owned by so much capital.

[Footnote A:  “In truth,” the institution of slavery, as an agency for cotton-cultivation, “is an expensive luxury, a dangerous and artificial state, and, even in a-worldly point of view, an error.  The cost of a first-class negro in the United States is about L800, and the interest on the capital invested in and the wear and tear of this human chattel are equal to 10 per cent., which, with the cost of maintaining, clothing, and doctoring him, or another 5 per cent, gives an annual cost of L45; and the pampered Coolies in the best paying of all the tropical settlements, Trinidad, receive wages that do not exceed on an average on the year round 6s. per week, or about two-fifths, while in the East Indies, with perquisites, they do not receive so much as two-thirds of this.  In Cuba, the Chinese emigrants do not receive so much even as one-third of this.”—­Cotton Trade of Great Britain, by J.A.  MANN.  —­In India, labor is 80 per cent cheaper than in the United States.]