_Freedom._--A great advance was made in the onward march of humanity, when the reasons for abolishing slavery became clear to the conscience of the minority, those nations who lead the van of human progress. The production and sale of human beings as articles of merchandise can be made extremely profitable as a money-making trade. It has been truly said that ‘if the reproduction of capital is the one great means of a nation’s wealth’; if demand and supply, the employment of labour by capital, and profits limited only by the wages of maintenance, are laws of political economy and the right guides of industry, ‘why should sentimental notions about justice and abstract rights of freedom interfere with the national good? Why not grow corn on the sweating system? Why not buy slaves? There is no reason, on so-called economic grounds, why slaves should not be bred like cattle--bred to the exact wants of the agriculturist, and when no more wanted melted down in the sulphuric acid tank and drilled in with the root crops. Any farmer who would have courage to carry on the economy of labour and the reproduction of capital in that way, would farm at a splendid profit.’ For long ages the trade in human beings has been, and is still, carried on. It has only very gradually dawned upon human intelligence, that short-sighted trading customs which destroy the conditions of human development, injure equally the sellers and the sold, and gradually degrade and destroy the societies that practise them. This second foundation of political economy--freedom--still remains unrecognised by the large majority of the human race. But when the destructive character or essential wrong of human slavery was once thoroughly understood by a portion of our nation, they never rested from the fight until it was abolished. The abolition of slavery was the revolt of conscience and intelligence against a false mercantile system which converts everything into money value. The wisdom of Wilberforce and his heroic band made a great step in advance by laying down a permanent law for the guidance of human industry. They saw that the human being belongs to a different category of creation from the subjects of his industry, and that he may not be made a thing of trade, that he owes duties to himself and to his neighbours, and that he can neither sell another adult, nor his child, nor himself; that the purpose of human life and the methods of attaining it, are both destroyed when the condition of human freedom is violated by converting human bodies into chattels. The abolition of slavery forbade henceforward the purchase or sale of any individual, whether adult or child.