Western Reserve chronicle. [volume] (Warren, Ohio) 1855-1921, 1864-02-03
Ancient and Modern Aristocracy.

Mr. Banclolt had an essay on the doc
trine ofthe Roman Empire which, written
in 1884, and describing a society which ex-
isted more than two thousand years ago,
is in many particulars, q curiously exact
description of our slave States before the
war:
When Tiberius Sempronius Gracious,
before Numantia, travelled through Italy,
he was led TO observe the impoyerishment
of the great body OF citizens in the rural
districts Instead of little farms studding
the country with their pleasant aspect, an
independent race. he beheld nearly allthe
lands of Italy engrossed by large proprie
tors; and the plough was in the hands of
the slave" He saw the inhabit-
ants of the Roman State divided into the
few wealthy mobiles; the many INDECENT
citizens; the still more numerous slaves
Reasoning correctly, he perceived that it
was slavery which crowded the poor free
man out of employment, and barred the
way to his advancement"
Again he writes:
The sristocracy owned the soil and its
cultivators. The vast capacity for accu-
mutation, which the laws of society So
cure to capital in a greater degree than to
personal exertion, displays itself no where
so clearly as in slayeholding States, where
the laboring class is but portion of the
capital of the opulent. As wealth con
sists chiefly in land and slaves, the rates
of interest are, from universally operative
causes, always comparatively high; the
difficulty of advancing with borrowed cap
ital proportionally great The small land
holder finds himself unable 10 compete
with those who are possessed of whole CO.
hOrts of bondmen; his slaves, his lands,
rapidly pass, in consequence of his debts,
into the hands of the more opulent. The
large plantations are continually swallow
ing up the smaller ones; and land and
slaves come 10 be engrossed 10y Il few"
This is n correct history of society all
along the lower Mississippi, where the area
in which cotton and sugar can be prohta-
bly, grown is narrow The great planters
have driven out the smaller holders. No
one who has read Olmstead's account Of
the terrible struggle Of the small cotton
planter. with his few slaves, TO keep his
head above water and maintsin himself
beside his great neighbor, but will see the
likness. Again, If in ancient Italy
THE large proprietors of slaves not
only titled their immense plantations, but
also INDUCED their avarice in training
their slaves to every species of labor, and
letting them out, AS horses from a livery
stable, we find the same practice in the
Southern States; many of the wealthy
and more of the decaying families living
on the returns of such hire Of their train
ed slaves. Nor can we omit this passage
which brings before us the dreary worn
out ''old pine fields" of Virginia before
the war:
''The large Roman plantations, titled
by slave-labor, where the ruin of Italy,
and Tcr1Up eoafteHfbaS, Lqfiftu,dia Haliani
gerdjdere The careless system impover-
ished the soil, and wore out even the Cam
pagnia. Large districts were left waste;
others had been turned into pastures, and
grazing instituted for tillage. The aver
age corps hardly ever returned four-iold
increase"
Such was fertile Italy under slavery:
such was the more fertile South under the
same detestable system. If we want to
save the great part of our country from
ruin, if we want to raise the working-man
there TO intelligence and prosperity, if we
would save our children from the fatal
competition with slaves, We must utterly
destroy this slave aristocracy, which is
the worst enemy the free wOrkingman
has.--Fos'.