Should it be said that slavery will not go into the new territories, because it is unprofitable; I ask, Where is it profitable? Where is ignorance so profitable as knowledge? Where is ungodliness gain, even for the things of this life? How little is the hand worth at one end of an arm, if there is not a brain at the other! Do not Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, and other states, furnish witnesses by thousands and tens of thousands that slavery impoverishes? Yet with what enthusiasm they cherish it! Generally, ignorance is a necessary concomitant of slavery. Of white persons, over twenty years of age, unable to read and write, there were, according to the last census, 58,787 in Virginia, 56,609 in North Carolina, 58,513 in Tennessee, and so forth. I have a letter before me, received this morning, dated in Indiana, in which the writer says, he removed from North Carolina in 1802, when he was fourteen years old, and at that time he had never seen a newspaper in his life. Can there be genius, the inventive talent, or profitable labor, where ignorance is so dense? Can the oppression that tramples out voluntary industry, enterprise, intelligence, and the desire of independence, conduce to riches? Yet this is done wherever slavery exists, and is part and parcel of its working. Is any other form of robbery profitable? Yet individuals and communities have practised it and lived by it, and we may as well rely upon a “law of physical geography” to arrest the one as the other. It is not poetry, but literal truth, that the breath of the slave blasts vegetation, his tears poison the earth, and his groans strike it with sterility. It would be easy to show why the master does not abandon slavery, even amid the desolation with which it has surrounded him. There is a combination of poverty and pride, which slavery produces, _on the doctrine of natural appetence_, and which, therefore, it exactly fits. The helplessness of the master in regard to all personal wants seems to necessitate the slavery that has begotten it. All moral and religious principles are lowered till they conform to the daily practice. Custom blinds conscience, until, without any attempt to emancipate or ameliorate their victims, men can preach and pray and hold slaves, as Hamlet’s grave digger jests and sings while he turns up skulls.