I have said that we all are guilty; yes, England is guilty!  America is guilty!  The Northern states are guilty!  The Southern states are guilty!  There is guilt everywhere!  We should therefore beware how we censure one another.  Mother England furnished her American colonies with slaves, and pocketed the money, and now she tells us, that we have no right to that property which she forced on us, when we were a weak and defenceless people, and could not do otherwise than obey her commands.  The eagle eyed, shrewd, and sagacious Yankees, ever alive to all that pertains to their own pecuniary interests, with that keen-witted penetration and over-reaching foresight, for which they are remarkable, soon made the discovery, that slave labor in a Northern latitude, and on a comparatively barren soil, must prove unproductive.  Hence, they strike a bargain with their Southern neighbors.  The Yankees say to the Southern planters, gentlemen, you can employ these slaves profitably in the cultivation of tobacco and cotton.  Your climate and soil is adapted to slave labor, ours is not, take our slaves, and let us have in return, gold and silver.  It will be a profitable investment on your part, and will relieve us of a species of property, which, to us, is unprofitable.  The Southern planters accept their offer and purchase their slaves, and what next?  The Yankees turn around and say to the Southern men, you have no right to hold these slaves as property.  Kentucky and Tennessee might now, with equal propriety and consistency sell their slaves to the Texan planters, pocket the money, turn on their heels and say, why gentlemen, it is true that we sold you these slaves, and you have paid us for them; but you have no right to hold them in bondage.  Refund our money, cry the Texan planters.  If you have sold us property which we have no right to hold as property, refund our money?  No, say the sturdy Kentuckian and the stalwart Tennessean, not we.  Help yourselves the best way you can, we have got your money, and we shall hold on to it.  We make no children’s bargains, and thus the matter ends.

If slave labor had been profitable in the North, Northern men would have remained in possession of their slaves to the present day.  No one, I suppose, doubts it, and it is a good and sufficient reason why they should be a little more modest in their denunciation of their Southern brethren.  Slavery is perpetuated by selfishness.  Northern men, to say the least, are as selfish as Southern men; and it would require nothing, but a change of location, to make them as oppressive task-masters.  Where there is most selfishness, there we will find most oppression; provided, that surrounding circumstances are favorable.  Most men, in this world, consult their own pecuniary interests.  If they are enhanced by African slavery, African slaves they will have, provided they can get them; but if they cannot get African slaves, they will make slaves of unfortunate and ignorant individuals