[Footnote 17: Men whose impulses are all communicated by the expectation of small pecuniary rewards, quickly acquire that suppleness of conscience, which renders them peculiarly liable to bribery. Take, for example, the waiter in an hotel--it is the hope of little gains that moves him in any direction which you may dictate, and which makes him a ready tool for the execution of any project whatever. His motto is, _I take the money and my employer the responsibility_. Bring this man to the polls, and offer him money for his vote, and the probability is that he would not refuse that which the whole education and training of his life would impel him to receive.] But in our slaveholding country the case is far different. Our laboring classes and menials are all slaves of a different color from their masters--the source of greatest distinction among the freemen is taken away; and the spirit of equality, the true spirit of genuine republicanism may exist here,--without leading on to corruption on the one side or agrarianism on the other.[18] Political power is thus taken from the hands of those who might abuse it, and placed in the hands of those who are most interested in its judicious exercise. Our law most wisely ordains that the slaves "shall not be sought for in public council, nor sit high in the congregation: they shall not sit high on the judges' seats nor understand the sentence of judgment; they cannot declare justice and judgment; and they shall not be found where parables are spoken. How can he get wisdom that holdeth the plough, that glorieth in the goad, that driveth oxen and is occupied in their labors, and whose talk is of bullocks?" Lycurgus, more than two thousand years ago, in his celebrated system of laws, was so well aware of the aristocratic feeling generated by diversity of occupation, that he decreed in order that a perfect spirit of equality might reign among the Spartans, that slaves alone should practice the most laborious arts, or fill the menial stations. And in this particular he showed perhaps as much sagacity as in any other law of the whole system. We want no legislation in the south to secure this effect--it flows spontaneously from our social system.