evil greater than the aggregate of all the other evils which beset us,
and we are perfectly willing to bear our proportion of the burden of
removing it. We ask, further, What is the evil of any such alarm as our
proposition may excite in minds unnecessarily jealous compared with that
of the fatal catastrophe which ultimately awaits our country, and the
general depravation of manners which slavery has already produced and is
producing?"

I cannot forbear giving one more extract from this paper. The
memorialists state their belief

"That the labor of slaves is vastly less productive than that of freemen;
that it therefore requires a larger space to furnish subsistence for a
given number of the former than of the latter; that the employment of the
former necessarily excludes that of the latter; that hence our
population, white and black, averages seventeen, when it ought, and would
under other circumstances, average, as in New England, at least sixty to
a square mile; that the possession and management of slaves form a source
of endless vexation and misery in the house, and of waste and ruin on the
farm; that the youth of the country are growing up with a contempt of
steady industry as a low and servile thing, which contempt induces
idleness and all its attendant effeminacy, vice, and worthlessness; that
the waste of the products of the land, nay, of the land itself, is
bringing poverty on all its inhabitants; that this poverty and the
sparseness of population either prevent the institution of schools
throughout the country, or keep them in a most languid and inefficient
condition; and that the same causes most obviously paralyze all our
schemes and efforts for the useful improvement of the country."

Gentlemen, you have only to look around you to know that this picture has