Her soil’s surplus products created the means of a widely extended commerce, and Americans can proudly refer to the eighty years of her existence as a period showing greater progress in wealth, refinement, the arts and sciences, and human liberty, than was ever experienced in any two centuries of time within the historical period of man’s existence.  My theme expands, and I am departing from the purposes of this work; yet I cannot forbear the expression of opinion as to the causes of this result.  I know I shall incur the deepest censure from the professors of a mawkish philanthropy, and a hypocritical religion which is cursing with its cant the very sources of this unparalleled progress, this unexampled prosperity.

Slavery was introduced into the Colonies by English merchants about two centuries since:  this was to supply a necessity—­labor—­for the purpose of developing the resources of this immense and fertile country.  The African was designed by the Creator to subserve this purpose.  His centre of creation was within the tropics, and his physical organization fitted him, and him alone, for field labor in the tropical and semi-tropical regions of the earth.  He endures the sun’s heat without pain or exhaustion in this labor, and yet he has not nor can he acquire the capacity to direct profitably this labor.  It was then the design of the Creator that this labor should be controlled and directed by a superior intelligence.  In the absence of mental capacity, we find him possessed of equal physical powers with any other race, with an amiability of temper which submits without resistance to this control.  We find him, too, without moral, social, or political aspirations, contented and happy in the condition of servility to this superior intelligence, and rising in the scale of humanity to a condition which under any other circumstances his race had never attained.  I may be answered that this labor can be had from the black as a freeman as well as in the condition of a slave.  To this I will simply say, experience has proved this to be an error.  Such is the indolence and unambitious character of the negro that he will not labor, unless compelled by the apprehension of immediate punishment, to anything approaching his capacity for labor.  His wants are few, they are easily supplied, and when they are, there is no temptation which will induce him to work.  He cares nothing for social position, and will steal to supply his necessities, and feel no abasement in the legal punishment which follows his conviction; nor is his social status among his race damaged thereby.  As a slave to the white man, he becomes and has proved an eminently useful being to his kind—­in every other condition, equally conspicuous as a useless one.  The fertility of the soil and the productions of the tropical regions of the earth demonstrate to the thinking mind that these were to be cultivated and made to produce for the uses and prosperity of the human family.  The great staples of human