wealthy than the free; yet of their produce England received in 1839, according to the American estimates, L11,600,000, while of that of the free States she received less than L500,000.”

“It should be remembered that the labor of the slave States, is almost wholly expended in agriculture, under the stimulus of a good market, while a large part of that of the free States is otherwise employed, for the want of such market.  The effective laborers of the free States are double the number of those in the slave States; and were an opportunity given them, they would export in as great a proportion.  Thus England, by her laws, fosters an odious institution abroad, which, in words, she loudly condemns, and spends millions to rid the world of; whilst she rejects more honorable, profitable, and wealthy customers, the fruits of whose free and active industry are in effect made contraband in England by law.

“Not only would England escape this inconsistency and reproach, by repealing the corn law, but she would strike a most effectual blow at the existence of slavery in the United States.  Cotton, at present, from being made by the corn law the principal exchangeable article in the American trade, assumes an undue and unnatural importance in American commerce, legislation, and home industry.  The slave-owner drives his slaves in its production, and purchases supplies of the northern freeman, whose interests are thus identified with those of the cotton grower, and the slave-holding interest becomes predominant in the country.  From their habits, the people of the slave-holding States are constantly contracting more debts in the free States than they have the means of paying; so that, under the present system of intercourse, the slaveholders exercise over the free population of the north, the same control which an insolvent debtor frequently has over his creditor, by threatening to break and ruin him, if not allowed his own way.  A repeal of the corn laws would release the free States from their present commercial and consequent political vassalage to the southern slave-holders, and thereby take from American slavery, the great citadel of its strength, and insure its overthrow by the influences which would arise to assail it from all quarters.

“But as free trade, in destroying the odious monopoly of the haughty slave-holder, would benefit and not injure him, so would its effects be found universally.  It would give peace and plenty to England and the world,—­it would enlarge and secure trade, bind the spreading branches of the Anglo-saxon race by natural affinity to England as their acknowledged head, and promote the liberty and civilization of the human family at large.”

In view of the whole spirit of this discussion of one of the most important questions bearing upon human interests, I would simply add, that a wise Providence has bound the duty and the interest, both of individual and social man, firmly together, but for the trial of his virtue the bands are concealed.