If, however, any one still doubts that this system develops itself logically and naturally, and tramples down the resistance offered by the better sentiments of human nature, let him look at the legislation which defines and protects it,--a legislation which, as expressing the average sense and purpose of the community, is to be quoted as conclusive against the testimony of any of its individual members. This legislation evinces the dominion of a malignant principle. You can hear the crack of the whip and the clank of the chain in all its enactments. Yet these laws, which cannot be read in any civilized country without mingled horror and derision, indicate a mastery of the whole theory and practice of oppression, are admirably adapted to the end they have in view, and bear the unmistakable marks of being the work of practical men,--of men who know their sin, and "knowing, dare maintain." They do not, it is true, enrich the science of jurisprudence with any large or wise additions, but we do not look for such luxuries as justice, reason, and beneficence in ordinances devised to prop up iniquity, falsehood, and tyranny. Ghastly caricatures of justice as these offshoots of Slavery are, they are still dictated by the nature and necessities of the system. They have the flavor of the rank soil whence they spring. If we desire any stronger evidence that slaveholders constitute a general Slave Power, that this Slave Power acts as a unit, the unity of a great interest impelled by powerful passions, and that the virtues of individual slaveholders have little effect in checking the vices of the system, we can find that evidence in the zeal and audacity with which this power engaged in extending its dominion. Seemingly aggressive in this, it was really acting on the defensive,--on the defensive, however, not against the assaults of men, but against the immutable decrees of God. The world is so constituted, that wrong and oppression are not, in a large view, politic. They heavily mortgage the future, when they glut the avarice of the present. The avenging Providence, which the slaveholder cannot find in the New Testament, or in the teachings of conscience, he is at last compelled to find in political economy; and however indifferent to the Gospel according to Saint John, he must give heed to the gospel according to Adam Smith and Malthus. He discovers, no doubt to his surprise, and somewhat to his indignation, that there is an intimate relation between industrial success and justice; and however much, as a practical man, he may despise the abstract principles which declare Slavery a nonsensical enormity, he cannot fail to read its nature, when it slowly, but legibly, writes itself out in curses on the land. He finds how true is the old proverb, that, "if God moves with leaden feet, He strikes with iron hands." The law of Slavery is, that, to be lucrative, it must have a scanty population diffused over large areas.