The weekly Minnesotian. [volume] (Saint Paul, Minn. Territory) 1852-1858, 1857-11-14
The Path of Free La b0r.

Inc population of the free States, lift aug
ments during the current decade in the same
ratio as IN the last, and the ratio will probab
~ be higher, will amount, in l86O,to 28,7O5'-
6l5. Deducing the number which may be
assumed for Minnesota, Iowa. Nebraska,
Kansas and California, there will be left for
the tree States east of the Mississippi popu-
latlon OF about seventeen millions, compress
sed upon an area Of 405, 7O3 square miles. As
compared with the area and population and
numbers of square miles of the free States in
1890, this area is less than two and half
times greater while the population will be
more than eight and half times greater and
there will be forty-six persons and three
tenths, instead of eleven persons and eight.
tenths, to the square mile. The hive be-
coming filled, and preparing to pour fourth its
swarms
"a multitude like which the populous North
Poured never from her frozen oins, to pass
Rhine or the Danube"
The forces of nature act in silence and un-
observed; and by imperceptible degrees. So
succeed t. each other the revolving seasons !;
SO advance and recede the tides SO wakes
and wanes tie vital energy of nations and of
men. 1t is only after the lapse of time that
we mark the expanding tree, which yet ceas-
es not to grow, either by day or in the still
ness OF the night. So unnoticed, so by inap-
preclable accretions and SO measured only at
intervals, has arisen this population of the
Tree States, now assuming such vast proper
tons. The child has become a man, and has
the thews and muscles of q giant. No such
mass OF moral. intellectual, or even physical
power, has ever been found before, in ons
political combination, in the history of man.
Bodily strength is no longer the only physical
power. Accumulated capital is physical pow
er. Science is physical power. Skill is physi-
cal power. Measured by al true tests, the
educated and intelligent millions of the free
State make up an aggregate of strength, with
out parallel since the world began.
The strong man cannot be bound with
withes. The population of the free States,
increasing and multiplying, will demand out
let's, and will obtain outlets, in the direction
of any system less vigorous than their own !;
which is only saying that in political dynam-
les, the greater force will overcome the less
AS they cease to pass the Mississippi, they
will begin the Ohio and the Potomac. An
inferior civilization must give room to that
which is superior. 1t ought not to be t.l-
Grated that eight hundred thousand black
slaves should, by their presence in Maryland
and Virginia, and Kentucky, exclude five
times times that number of skilfu and intel
ligent white artizahs and farmers from the
North. Not only ought it not to be tolera-
ted, but it will not be tole. ated. When the
white artizans and farmers want the room
which the African occupies, they will take it,
not by rude force. but by gentle and gradual
and peaceable processes. The negro will dis
appear, perhaps, to regions more congenial
to him, perhaps to regions where his labors
can be made more useful, perhaps some pre-
Cess of colonization which charity may yet
devise but, at all events, he will disappear
1t is not more certain that the native Indian
recedes before the Anglo-Saxon, than that
rude labor will recede before the skilled la
Dor and slave labor, the slave being an AZ
rican, can never be anything but labor of the
rudest description.
Strangely enough, it has ceased to be the
national custom in America to say anything
in praise of freedom. No codes to Free
dom" are composed, or sung, in modern
times, except by those who are content to
turn their backs upon all hopes OF political
advancement. The very name of freedom
has become kissing, by-word and a re-
proach. The poets Laureate are at the
court, and in the service of slavery. Upon
the affairs of that idol, at once hideous and
grotesque, smoked the latest burnt-offerings
and the richest incense ascends daily, and
yet how mean, and squalid, and poverty
stricken, and barbarous thing slavery is, IN
contrast with that freedom VIII CHI America
this day disdains and disowns, but to which
she owes all her greatness and all her glory,
her fertile fields, her teeming workshops, her
stately ships, her thronged cities, her arts,
her genius and her culture. The intrinsic
yigor of freedom, however, is not impaired by
the refusal of men to acknowledge it !; nor
does wretched idol become true divinity,
because men choose to worship it. When
the trial ofstrength between freedom and sla-
very is made along the line between the free
and slave States, we shall see in which force
| are embodied the elements of permanent as
cendcncy.-Weston's Progress Of Slavery.