It is scarcely necessary to appeal to the political history of the country since 1800 to demonstrate the vital importance—indeed, the measureless benefit—of what, by an absurd perversion of terms, has been called negro slavery, to the freedom, progress, and prosperity of the laboring and producing classes of the North, and, indeed, to all mankind. It is seen that the existence of an inferior race—the presence of a natural substratum in the political society of the New World—has resulted in the creation of a new political and social order, and relieved the producing classes from that abject dependence on capital which in Europe, and especially in England, renders them mere beasts of burthen to a fraction of their brethren. The simple but transcendent fact, that capital and labor are united at the South—that the planter, or so-called slaveholder, is, _per se_ and of necessity, the defender of the rights of the producing classes—this simple fact is the key to our political history, and the hinging-point of our party politics for half a century past. The Southern planter and Northern farmer—the producing classes—a Southern majority and a Northern minority—have governed the country, fought all its battles, acquired all its territories, and conducted the nation step by step to its present position of strength, power, and grandeur. Just as steadily a Northern majority and a Southern minority have opposed this progress, and labored blindly, doubtless, to return to the system of the federalists, indeed to the European idea of class distinctions, and to render the government an instrument for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many. They have sought to create national banks; demanded favors for those engaged in manufactures; for others engaged in Northern fisheries; for the benefit of bands of jobbers and speculators, under pretence of internal improvements; in short, the Northern majority have labored continually to render the government, as in England, an instrument for benefiting classes at the expense of the great body of the people. All these efforts, however, have been defeated by the union of Northern and Southern producers, and mainly by the latter. A large majority of the votes in Congress against special legislation and schemes of corruption have been those of so-called slaveholders; and in those extraordinary instances when Northern representatives of agricultural constituencies have proved faithless, and these schemes “worked” through Congress, “slaveholders” in the Presidential chair have interposed the veto, and saved the laboring and producing classes from this dangerous legislation, and the government from being perverted into an instrument of mischief.