1st. Carolina's loss in the extra two years' war. $2,000,000 2d. For her four thousand citizens slain in that time, 600,000 3d. For twenty-five thousand slaves lost, 7,500,000 4th. For buildings, furniture, cattle, grain, &c. &c. destroyed, 5,000,000 ----------- $15,100,000 ----------- Making the enormous sum of fifteen millions and odd dollars CAPITAL; and bearing an annual interest of nearly ten hundred thousand dollars besides! and all this for lack of a few free schools, which would have cost the state a mere nothing." I sighed, and told him I wished he had not broached the subject, for it had made me very sad. "Yes," replied he, "it is enough to make any one sad. But it cannot be helped but by a wiser course of things; for, if people will not do what will make them happy, God will surely chastise them; and this dreadful loss of public property is one token of his displeasure at our neglect of public instruction." I asked him if this were really his belief. "Yes, sir," replied he, with great earnestness, "it is my belief, and I would not exchange it for worlds. It is my firm belief, that every evil under the sun is of the nature of chastisement, and appointed of the infinitely good Being for our benefit. When you see a youth, who, but lately, was the picture of bloom and manly beauty, now utterly withered and decayed; his body bent; his teeth dropping out; his nose consumed; with foetid breath, ichorous eyes, and his whole appearance most putrid, ghastly, and loathsome, you are filled with pity and with horror; you can hardly believe there is a God, or hardly refrain from charging him with cruelty. But, where folly raves, wisdom adores. In this awful scourge of lawless lust, wisdom discerns the infinite price which heaven sets on conjugal purity and love. In like manner, the enormous sacrifice of public property, in the last war, being no more, as before observed, than the natural effect of public ignorance, ought to teach us that of all sins, there is none so hateful to God as national ignorance; that unfailing spring of NATIONAL INGRATITUDE, REBELLION, SLAVERY, and WRETCHEDNESS!