and the interests of farmers, individually and collectively, as well
as the interest of every American citizen, requires at their hands to
so cultivate their lands as to augment their fertility; and not solely
with a view to their present productiveness. It is a duty incumbent on
them as good citizens; a duty they owe to themselves; to their
posterity; to the nation; to the world.




CHAPTER VI.


There is yet another evil growing out of slavery which I must notice
before I bring my remarks to a close on this topic. I allude to the
degraded condition of a portion of the white population in the slave
States. There are, throughout the slave States, a class of the white
population who are so debased by ignorance and vice, that the slaves
are in many respects their superiors. They are about on a par with the
free negroes. About the larger cities in the North, a similar class
may be found, a majority of whom are free negroes and foreigners. The
poverty, vice, ignorance and degradation of this class of persons, in
the South, is a sore evil, and demands the attention of every
Christian philanthropist in the Southern States. This, I conceive, has
originated partly from the competition of slave and free labor, but
mainly, I presume, from the association of this class with the African
population. There are other agencies, no doubt, which have contributed
to debase and brutalize this class of the white population, but I
judge, that the causes above indicated, are the principal ones. Some
will, no doubt, attribute this in part to the disparity between the