Webster had the newspaper faculty, and was as omniscient as any editor need be. A consideration of his general labors belongs elsewhere, but it ought to be noted here that he was prompt to see the perils which underlay American slavery. He discussed the subject, indeed, chiefly in its industrial relations, but he regarded these as affecting parties and national well-being. As early as 1793 he delivered an address before the Connecticut Society for the Promotion of Freedom "On the Effects of Slavery on Morals and Industry," and shortly afterward expanded the address into a treatise. His work bristles with historical illustrations, for it was the habit then more than later to draw inferences from foreign facts; there had not yet accumulated that great swelling volume of home testimony which made reference to experience outside of America unnecessary and rather impertinent. His remedy for the existing evil is the elevation of slaves to the rank of tenants, not in a sudden emancipation, but in the gradual selection of the most capable, and he finds his most satisfactory example in the experiment made thirty years before by the Chancellor of Poland. The appeal is not greatly to the conscience, but to the interest of men. He sums up the argument at the close with the words: "The industry, the commerce, and the moral character of the United States will be immensely benefited by the change. Justice and Humanity require it; Christianity _commands_ it." He had not long been conducting the "Minerva" before he took up the subject again, reminding the public of this treatise. "In that pamphlet," he says, "I endeavored to show by arguments and facts that the labor of slaves is less productive than that of freemen. A doctrine of this kind, if clearly and incontrovertibly established, will perhaps go farther in abolishing the practice of enslaving men than any declamation on the immorality and cruelty of the practice." He then takes up the statistics which had accumulated since the publication of his pamphlet, showing in a forcible manner that the Northern Free States were steadily gaining on the Southern Slave States, and carries forward the argument with great acuteness. "What," he asks, "has produced this difference in the productiveness of the labor in the Northern division? Peace and good markets have been common to both divisions; and the laboring people in the Northern States were as free before the year 1791 as since. What, then, has stimulated the industry of the free laborers since that period? The answer is obvious. An augmentation of capital operating upon their free labor. It is probable there has been an augmentation of capital throughout the United States, though I am convinced that augmentation has been much greater in the Northern than in the Southern. But my general remark is that an increase of capital must be felt by the laboring people themselves to produce its full effect in stimulating industry. The benefits of capital and good markets