The Cecil Whig. [volume] (Elkton, Md.) 1841-current, 1863-09-26

| tue rate OF assessment lOWeT tudl
value relative to other property, which
the slavelo.ding interest has been care
full to secure it.
Thus the very administration OF jus
lice is made subject to its exactions.
TO an interest SO selfish, so grasping,
so domineering, the people of the State
are under no obligations.
BY our laws alone it exists their
repeal is is death, aud by their repeal
alone can the people of Maryland seize
and hold the mastery of their own affairs.
Were the value of a slave greater
than the same man free ; did the owner
ship of slaves elevate the master as much
above free laborers as it does above his
slaves did light and wisdom radiate
from the region whore they arc held and
darkness dwell where they arc not, we
might reconcile ourselves to profitable
domination, submit to a benefcent supe-
riori y, turn gratefully for guidance
moral and political-to The Source of all
Light.
But as these things are not so-as a
slave is worth less than a free man, and
the master is not above the free white
laborer-as education and intelligence
prevail where freedom rcigns, this domi-
nation is the most odous of usurpa ions.
1t is the domination of an interest
over free men of property over people !;
of aristocratic privilege over republican
equality of minority over a ma orlty.
1t has all he qualities of an aristoc-
syacy except its refinement and eleva-
.ions. 1t is arrogant, exclusive, selfish,
tenacious, unjust, jca Gus Of everything
which will not submit.
l. has for many years bound the State
politically to the policy impressed on
the Government by the negro interest of
the planting Sta es, with which The in
dustry of Maryland has no identity, and
dragged it away from its natural associa-
ton with the great free labor States,
whose manufacturing, mining. CONNER
cill and agricultural industry is ideni-
cal with ours: require the same laws,
policy and protection, against which the
planting States have waged incessant
war for thirty years.
1t has ostracised every public man who
refused to submit to its DONNA ion and
defend its power. No one has been able
to maintain himself in public life any
where in the State who has refused to
give the watchword at ITS demand.
If any ventured to revolt, the hue
and cry was made against the traitor to
this power, and no weapon was too foul
to be welded to his destruction
Originally treated by law and regarded
by the people as an evil, moral and pollt
ical, to be restricted till it could be
cxtcrminated, when it became power
its pcrmanence and expansion were the
conditions of stability and they who
welded the power turned all their encr.
gies to its consolidation.
The interests of TIE owner were then
secondary considerations they were
merely the instruments of ambition, to
be sacrificed, if necessary, in The strife,
from which 1t might emerge successful
or in which it might succumb.
If it failed the owner lost his pro-
| perty, but that was the fate Of war and
of small moment to any one but the
owner and he was taught to submit to
the policy, because it was for is ultima c
good. The yoke was forced on his neck
he soon learned to bear i, meckly
first, then proudly.
The slave interest now, excludes free
white labor from The farms of the slave
holding counties ; and the masters pro-
fit by the exclusion, at the expense of
DO il the free white laborer and of the
smaller landowners, who arc dependent
on the slaveholdiug monopoly for much
Of their labor.
More labor is needed. but white labor
shrinks from Contact with slave labor !;
and the mas,c have an interest in re-
polling it and they succeed by making
rrec labor hold the level of the slave.
This slave competi ion is the only
dangerous competition. 1t has already
sacrificed free labor to its domination !:
and lis destruction is the surest way to
promote the interests of free labor. lis
intelligence, activity, economy, will
insure its supremacy, so soon as the ban
of the Shareholders contempt, and the
monopoly of the shareholders interests
are removed.
They who desplsc free labor and inso-
lently place free mechanics on the foo
ing of their slaves will be the first to
prejudice the men of the mechanical
classes agains emancipation, by suggest
Ing hat it means negro equality, politi
cal privileges, negro compe ition wi h
white labor they will talk of the lazi-
ness and dishonesty of free negroes !:
their swarming in o the cities for theft
aud bcggary. At least, they will say,
let emancipa ion be not adopted without
colonization.
But do they consider free labor aoD
above slave labor Do they not look
down on it with con empt! Has this
not always been avowed by their confed-
era cs in Congress
Are there not now more free negroes
than slaves in Maryland, Jet they have
neither social nor political equality?
The slave interest tells free labor to
oppose emancipation because it brings
negro labor into competition with white
labor.
The very object of emancipation is to
end that competition IN the most power
full and only dangerous form--the COM