The southern press., 1850-10-29

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Generalization Of the laborers." Any real and
extensive improvement of agriculture in Francs
and the free States must be attended with SIMILAR
consequences, for these requirements Of scientific
farming cannot be met, with due regard TO the
morals and comfort Of the laborers, except III a
slayeholdng community. The slave feels all the
wholesome Influences of moral life, near his home,
and beneath the guardian care Of his master, while
the owner can obtain all the efficiency of gang and
factory organization, without any or It's evils.
Hence it is that the highest practical examples Of
agricultural science in the Union are TO be found
in the Southern States, despite all their burdens.
We have seen what Mr.. Solon Robinson says of
the wheat culture in Virginia, and recent authentic
statements have proved that grain crops are mo-
where raised with more profit than IN Underwater
Virginia, where the slaves are most numerous.
There is no farming country north OF Virginia,
which can compare with the valley OF the James
river for skill, extensive enterprise, and success.
If we go further South, Mr.. Skinner says, that
the rice plantations Of Carolina are amongst the
best models of agriculture in the world. MIR.
Fleischmant says that it would astonish many
Northern farmer to behold the vast canals Of the
sugar planters, and the immense steam engines al
work in draining them--canals which, eff joined
together, would well deserve the name Of q great
national work Of internal Improvement, but exc
cuted without any assistance from the State.
He " cannot describe his delight" ut the perfec-
ton of the cultivation and the beauty Of tile resi-
sippi. All this the work Of slave institutions,
where circumstances have afforded some compen-
sation for the burdens Of the Federal Government.
And the slaves themselves live in state of conf
fort--we had almost said Of luxury-superior to
many a Northern farmer. The free States have
none Of these advantages free labor is not capable
of such an organization in agriculture, except by
lowering its condition to the level of the degraded
operatives Of European factories; and capital can
not be employed to the greatest profit on minute
farms whose holders have neither courage to risk
it, credit to command it, nor skill to apply it.
The combination of such causes has aggravated
the war between labor and capital in the old coun-
tries and especially i'm France until il has brought
about the late socialist upheavng of the very foun-
dations of society. Hence we hear so much of
+" the right to labor, which means right to BET,
ter wages hence the war upon property, and
law, and order, which threatens a worse than
Vandal overthrow of European civilization. II is
true that the remedy applied by the suffering la
borer, increases the evil--that whatever weakens
confidence in the right of property retards the in
crease Of public wealth, and cuts off the very
springs of that comfort and well-being which they
would use violence to share. 1t is true that the
laboring classes cannot hold the unwonted power
it may have seized that the triumph Of to-day
must be followed by the defeat Of tomorrow, and
that the February Saturnalia in the Tuilleries
must be expiated by the June carnage in the
streets But when have the slaves of hunger ever
listened to reason' The Iaboring poor cannot but
remember the wan faces of their shivering wives,
the pieous plants Of their children begging for
bread, when they see the costly fur, the dainty
food, and luxuries Of the rich. Their city pal
aces, and country villas, their 'pIide that apes
humility" in Gothic cottages, and model farms,
but serve to make the garrets look more wretched,
the fetid cellars darker and damper. The black,
mouldy loaf is worse than the crumbs which La
zarus may pick up at Dives door. The stables,
the very pig stye of the lord of the oom is better
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the prodigal son. would fain fill his belly with the
husks of his lords swine. but, unlike that son,
there is no father to array him in purple and fine
linen, and kill for him the fatted calf; he must
toll for his bread by ncessant labor, for twelve
fourteen hours a day, and when strength and
youth wasted, and he is weak and weary with
sickness and premature old age, he is cast forth
upon the cold charity Of an almshouse. When
the poor man all this, and thinks that his
hands have worked to build up the wealth and
luxury which the rich exclusively enjoy, can we
wonder that the thought eats into his heart, and
So has it been in Europe, and what security have
the free States that the same ineXorable fatality
will not overtake them? The South has the qua
rantee OF negro slavery capitalist and laborer,
master and slave, are indssoubly united in inter-
| est; even if the owner cannot probably employ
and support the laborer, his interest prompts him
to transfer him by sale to those who can.
In the South, society is divided into masters and
slaves at the North, into rich and poor and
what shall protect her people from the social war,
which that division has begoten in the history of
| every similar community The dark cloud lowers
| upon their horizon; its low muterings are already
heard. Every year larger number is supported
by the aims of the State; the criminal statistics
show frightful increase Of crime, especially in
offences against property the right to gratuitous ed
ucation by the forced taxes of the property holder
is already part Of the public law, and societies
ara nod IN establish sin oh N
division of lands. They declare that the earth is
the gift of God for the common use--that no one
| has right to monopoliZe it for himself and his
posterity-and that every man has natural claim
to an equal share in its enjoyment. The next
step is to deny the right to transmit any kind of
property by will, or by inheritance, and to force
a general re-division IN every generation, if not
! an entire community Of ownership. These socie-
ties are numerous they hold National Conventions
and have organs, avowed and secret, in the news
paper press. Long leases distrusted at the
North for there danger that the tenants will re-
fuse to surrender at their close. Whole counties
have united in refusing to pay rents, which the
courts decided were justly due, and the officers Of
the law, while in the execution Of its mandates,
have been deliberately murdered And these vio-
lators of the rights of property and life, of the
laws of God and man, had strength enough to
elect Governor, whom they could force to par
don the convicted murderers So strong is the
agrarlan spirit, that so eminent man as Mr..
Webster is forced to conciliate i, by proposing in
solemn Senate to confscate the public lands, by
giving quarter section to every free white male,
native or foreign, who may choose to enter upon
them. To meet all these dangers, the free States
have no security out of the Union once left to
themselves, their perils would increase ten-fold.
For it is essential to the public welfare, to the la
borers and the poor themselves, that Government
should be able to protect all the rights of property.
No matter what the suerings Of the laborng class,
they would be doubled and trped by the inse-
curity Of private rights. In England, this ability
in Government has been preserved by highly
aristocratc constitution, both social and political
but in France, the tide has swept away govern
ment after government, like the waves Of the sea;
one dictatorship has followed another, now an EN-
peror, now King now the bourgeois capitalists,
and now mere numbers, all equally unstable.
And all this despite the fact France has been, un-
der all dynasties, since the first revolution, emf
nently democratic in her civil laws The reason
is not hard TO discover. At the bottom Of all
French politics, aud the same applies with equal
truth to the free States Of the North lies the idea
that might makes right in other words, that ma
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