If slave labor, then, is profitable, slaveholding is equitable. Thus it is decided, that whatever is profitable is also equitable: justice and injustice are mere matters of profit and loss; the morality or immorality of slavery a mere question of soil and climate. The great authorities cited as to the evil effects of slavery on the white race, should satisfy the most incredulous. But, says the learned gentleman from Alabama, there were few slaves at that time, and scarce a pound of cotton for exportation. Let us, then, pass from that period, to one when the few slaves had become millions, and the bales of cotton exported were estimated in like manner. In 1832, Thomas Marshall, of Virginia, said of slavery: "It is ruinous to the whites; retards improvement; roots out an industrious population; banishes the yeomanry of the country; deprives the spinner, the weaver, the smith, the shoemaker, the carpenter, of employment and support. Labor of every species is disreputable, because performed mostly by slaves; the general aspect of the country marks the curse of a wasteful, idle, reckless population, who have no interest in the soil, and care not how much it is impoverished." Mr. Berry, of Virginia, spoke thus: "I believe that no cancer on the physical body was ever more certain, steady, and fatal, in its progress, than is the cancer of slavery on the political body of the State of Virginia. It is eating into her very vitals." The records of Southern statesmanship, sir, abound in such and stronger expressions. Slavery had then existed in this country more than two hundred years, yet scarce a man could be then found so bold and so reckless as to proclaim it just and righteous, a humane, a Christian institution. Nearly the whole civilized world united in its condemnation; the ministers of our holy religion in the slave States declaimed against it; their solemn petitions ascended to the throne of God, that the country might be rid of these "bonds." But, slave labor has become profitable in some parts of the South; the _mania_ for wealth has seized the slaveholder's avarice, has dried up the fountain of humanity. The lust of power and dominion deadens their consciences; a million bales of cotton can blind their eyes alike to the flames of perdition and the glories of Paradise. They make to themselves friends of the Mammon of unrighteousness; they become full, and deny their Maker, and say, who is the Lord! Concerning oppression, they speak loftily. But they are set in slippery places; they will be cast down unto destruction. The gentleman from Mississippi [Mr. LAMAR] said, a few days since: "I tell you, Mr. Chairman, that God's sun does not shine upon a nobler, prouder, more prosperous, and elevated class of people, than the non-slaveholders of the South."