But Mr. Clay, Mr. Brodnax, and Mr. Faulkner, belong to slaveholding States; and the two former, if I mistake not, are slave-owners. _They_ surely are qualified to judge of the system; and I might fill ten pages with other quotations from southern writers and speakers, who acknowledge that slavery is a great evil. There are zealous partisans indeed, who defend the system strenuously, and some of them very eloquently. Thus, Mr. Hayne, in his reply to Mr. Webster, denied that the south suffered in consequence of _slavery_; he maintained that the slaveholding States were prosperous, and the principal cause of all the prosperity in the Union. He laughed at the idea of any danger, however distant, from an overgrown slave population, and supported the position by the fact that slaves had always been kept in entire subjection in the British West Indies, where the white population is less than ten per cent. of the whole. But the distinguished gentleman from South Carolina did not mention that the _peace_ establishment of the British West Indies costs England _two million pounds annually_! Yet such is the fact. This system is so closely entwined with the apparent interests and convenience of individuals, that it will never want for able defenders, so long as it exists. But I believe I do not misrepresent the truth, when I say the prevailing opinion at the South is, that it would have been much better for those States, and for the country in general, if slavery had never been introduced. Miss Martineau, in her most admirable little book on Demerara, says: "Labor is the product of mind as much as of body; and to secure that product, we must sway the mind by the natural means--by motives. Laboring against self-interest is what nobody ought to expect of white men--much less of slaves. Of course every man, woman and child, would rather play for nothing than work for nothing. "It is the mind, which gives sight to the eye, and hearing to the ear, and strength to the limbs; and the mind cannot be purchased. Where a man is allowed the possession of himself, the purchaser of his labor is benefitted by the vigor of his mind through the service of his limbs: where man is made the possession of another, the possessor loses at once and for ever all that is most valuable in that for which he has paid the price of crime. He becomes the owner of that which only differs from an idiot in being less easily drilled into habits, and more capable of effectual revenge.