above--the net profits of the North up to 1850--it may be safely assumed that, in the present year of grace, 1857, _the free States are worth at least thirty-four hundred million of dollars more than the slave States_! Let him who dares, gainsay these remarks and calculations; no truthful tongue will deny them; no honorable pen can controvert them. One more word now as to the valuation of negroes. Were our nature so degraded, or our conscience so elastic as to permit us to set a price upon men, as we would set a price upon cattle and corn, we should be content to abide by the appraisement of the slaves of the South, and would then enter into a calculation to ascertain the value of foreigners to the North. Not long since, it was declared in the South that "one free laborer is equal to five slaves," and as there are two million five hundred thousand Europeans in the free States, all of whom are free laborers, we might bring Southern authority to back us in estimating their value at _sixty-two hundred million of dollars_--a handsome sum wherewithal to offset the account of _sixteen hundred million of dollars_, brought forward as the value of Southern slaves! It is obvious, therefore, that if we were disposed to follow the barbarian example of the traffickers in human flesh, we could prove the North vastly richer than the South in bone and sinew--to say nothing of mind and morals, which shall receive our attention hereafter. The North has just as good a right to appraise the Irish immigrant, as the South has to set a price on the African slave. But as it would be wrong to do either, we shall do neither. It is not our business to think of man as a merchantable commodity; and we will not, even by implication, admit "the wild and guilty fantasy," that the condition of chattelhood may rightfully attach to sentient and immortal beings. In this connection, we would direct the special attention of the reader to the following eloquent passage, exhibiting the philosophy of free and slave labor, from the facile pen of the editor of the _North American and United States Gazette_: