This is a flattering picture of us, truly! By good fortune, it is drawn by one who knows nothing of us. Just such are the current representations which Yankees have made of Southern morals, down to the notable instance of Senator Sumner's speech on the "Barbarism of Slavery." The question whether the system of slave labour deteriorates the morals of master and servant, as compared with that of free labour, may be treated as one of deduction and reasoning, or one of fact. The latter is the more trustworthy way to decide it. Dr. Wayland undertakes to settle it solely by the former. And it is manifest to the first glance, that his whole reasoning begs the question. If the very relation is wicked, if every act of authority on the master's part is a wrong, and of submission on the servant's part is a surrender of his right, then the reasoning is plausible. But let us suppose, for argument's sake, (what may be true, as it is the very point undecided,) that the relation may be right, the authority exercised lawful, and the things our servants are usually enjoined to do, innocent acts. Then, the fact that there is authority on one side and obedience on the other, cannot tend, of itself, to degrade ruler and ruled: for if this were so, the parental relation itself (ordained by God as His school of morals for young human beings) would be a school of vice. But the argument is a sophism, in a yet more audacious and insulting sense. Its author argues the degradation of the slave, chiefly because his wicked master compels him by fear to do so many wicked things. But suppose the master to be a gentleman, and not a brute, so that the things he customarily compels the slave to do, are right things; where, then, is the argument? Which of the two characters masters usually bear, is the question to be solved at the conclusion of the reasoning, and, yet more, to be decided by the surer testimony of fact. But Dr. Wayland chooses to begin by presuming, _à priori_, that masters are generally rascals.