Your obedient servant, GEO. FITZHUGH. _Port Royal, Aug. 22, 1856._ PREFACE. I have endeavored, in this work, to treat the subjects of Liberty and Slavery in a more rigidly analytical manner than in "Sociology for the South;" and, at the same time, to furnish the reader with abundance of facts, authorities and admissions, whereby to test the truth of my views. My chief aim has been to shew, that _Labor makes values, and Wit exploitates and accumulates them_; and hence to deduce the conclusion that the unrestricted exploitation of so-called free society, is more oppressive to the laborer than domestic slavery. In making a distinct onslaught on the popular doctrines of Modern Ethics, I must share the credit or censure with my corresponding acquaintance and friend, Professor H. of Virginia. Our acquaintance commenced by his congratulating me, by letter, on the announcement that I was occupied with a treatise vindicating the institution of Slavery in the abstract, and by his suggestion, that he foresaw, from what he had read of my communications to the papers, that I should be compelled to make a general assault on the prevalent political and moral philosophy. This letter, and others subsequent to it, together with the reception of my Book by the Southern Public, have induced me in the present work to avow the full breadth and scope of my purpose. I am sure it will be easier to convince the world that the customary theories of our Modern Ethical Philosophy, whether utilitarian or sentimental, are so fallacious or so false in their premises and their deductions as to deserve rejection, than to persuade it that the social forms under which it lives, and attempts to justify and approve, are equally erroneous, and should be re-placed by others founded on a broader philosophical system and more Christian principles. Yet, I believe that, under the banners of Socialism and more dangerous, because more delusive, Semi-Socialism, society is insensibly, and often unconsciously, marching to the utter abandonment of the most essential institutions--religion, family ties, property, and the restraints of justice. The present profession is, indeed, to stop at the half-way house of No-Government and Free Love; but we are sure that it cannot halt and encamp in such quarters. Society will work out erroneous doctrines to their logical consequences, and detect error only by the experience of mischief. The world will only fall back on domestic slavery when all other social forms have failed and been exhausted. That hour may not be far off.