In general terms, it may be said, that wherever the white man can labor with effect, that is, can preserve his health and the full exercise of his faculties, there his labor must be more valuable than is that of the negro. People who are ignorant of the laws of climate and industrial adaptations, and still worse, ignorant of the nature of the negro and his relations to the white man, when traveling on the Ohio River, observe that the populations on the Ohio side are more energetic, industrious, and prosperous than they are on the Kentucky side of the river, and they infer that it is because Kentucky has “slavery.” The author is not prepared to admit their assumption, for though there may be greater wealth and apparently greater prosperity in Ohio, the true and only test of well-being in a State is the equality of condition and of the happiness of its people, and we have no means of determining this truth by applying this test in the present instance. England is vastly more wealthy than any other State in Christendom—its annual production is vastly greater, but this wealth is monopolized by a fraction of the population. While the great body of the people are steeped in poverty to the lips, and while the few are every day growing wealthier, the many are, with equal rapidity and certainty, becoming more abject in their poverty, and, consequently more ignorant, vicious, and miserable. If, therefore, it were true that Ohio did increase in wealth more rapidly than Kentucky, it would by no means follow that the people of Ohio were in a better condition than those of Kentucky. But it is reasonable to suppose that the production is greater than that of Kentucky, for while the climate and industrial adaptation are suited to the white man, there are none but white men in Ohio, while nearly half of the laboring population of Kentucky are negroes. The same absurd assumption and inference have been made in respect to Virginia and other so-called Slave States, when contrasted with New York and other so-called Free States. It has been said, “Virginia falls behind New York in general prosperity.” “It is because she has half a million of slaves, and if she will abolish this slavery, then she will soon equal, perhaps surpass, New York, for Virginia has certain natural advantages which New York has not.” Or, in other words, it is said that Virginia is less prosperous than New York, because her half a million of negroes are in a normal condition, and if she will thrust them from this condition and turn them loose, as New York has done, then Virginia will soon be equally prosperous as the latter! Possibly one out of twenty of the negroes in New York, Ohio, or any other so-called Free State, is engaged in productive labor, while the nineteen others live—temporarily—on the labor of the producing classes of those States. The argument of these political economists, therefore, is simply this: Virginia with half a