Equal legislation and general education are the two arms of a wise political economy. And to our thinking the most efficient and prosperous people, must be that one which secures to its members the most eminently practical education with the most perfect enjoyment of and right to the avails of their own industry. The white laborer in a slave State is excluded by the very necessities of slavery, from the means of culture on the one hand, and the highest encouragements to industry on the other. It dare not give education to the free blacks, for they are in sympathy with the slave, and policy forbids that they be allowed facilities demonstrating that freedom can elevate their race to a level with the white. It will not do to educate the white laborers, for by the aid of machinery compete with the slave laborer and depreciate his chattel value.
Labor is degraded in the fettered limbs of the slave.
The slaves are the only real producers of wealth, and they consume what they produce. Having no right to the wealthy they create, they lack the incentive to accomplish what they are able, and consequently accomplish less than half the labor of an intelligent freeman. A slave State lacks the intelligent labor requisite to develop its internal resources on the one hand, and on the other, the wealth and enterprise needed to push forward internal improvements. The white man's legal rights may be as fully recognized under Southern institutions, but the privileges by which he may rise to an honorable position are sadly wanting. Free institutions are the crowning glory of a State, and the most congenial to individual usefulness, happiness and respectability, for they bring within the reach of all, the means of self-development for the noblest ends and the highest enjoyment.