ago? To attempt it would require a police
ill the nature of a standing army.
And away with the desirable trash, of
maintaining the idea, in violation of all the
instincts of human nature, that these people
will not work when they can and cannot
work when they will. This class has ar-
rayed itself upon the battle-field to the num-
ber of 100,000 men. They have many of
them left comfortable homes for the purpose
of asserting and gaining their liberty. Such
an absurdity never entered the brain of man,
as the supposition that having shown that
determination, having waited with so much
patience before taking any action upon their
own part, but now, whenever the flag of the
United States waves, obeying the signal to
them to follow over every obstacle, every
degree of pain and suffering, they can be re-
fused the rights of freemen and brought back
to their former condition.
What is the reason these poor degraded
people have left their homes? It is because
they desired to flee from slavery. Do you
suppose that a negro ever ran away from the
place where he was born for any other rea-
son? Any man who can give any other rea-
son than that they fled from slavery, must
apply a process of reasoning to which I am a
stranger. Are we then to frame a new Con-
stitution, and let this institution go on in the
condition in which we find it to-day ?
Gentlemen say they do not want immigra-
tion; that the system of free labor is no more
productive than the system of slave labor ;
and they talk about there being slaves in Eu-
rope, and a system of white labor of the
poorer classes which is another species of
servitude. Do they know that remarks of
that kind are as much a reflection upon my
constituency as upon the men of New Eng-
land and New Yolk? Do gentlemen pretend
to say that the operatives in manufactories,
the workmen in workshops, mechanics, agri-
culturists, and day laborers, are upon a po-
litical, moral, or any other kind of equality
with slaves? I represent here a large class of
men who own no property except the furni-
ture in their houses, and yet who in manly
uprightness, stand before God, as men and
citizens, as high as anybody in the limits of
the State, who have families around them,
whom they support by honest labor, but who
are not taxable men. They are men who are
compelled to work for their support; and yet
they are as far removed from the condition of
negro slaves as the kings of the earth are re-
moved from their people in political position.
If we get rid of this institution, why should
we not take the plaice of other States where
free labor exists? I should like to have gen-
tleman point to any reason why this State
may not maintain the position of Pennsyl-
vania. Why is it that the position of Penn-
sylvania is better than the position of Mary-
land? I do not believe that the hospitality |
or cultivation of gentlemen owning large
tracts of land is any higher than that of those
owning smaller tracts of land. I do not be-
lieve that condition which prevents the
growth of towns, prevents the care of roads,
which prevents the distribution of all that
kind of wealth which divides while it multi-
plies, is better than the system of free labor in
the Northern States.
What is the natural effect of slave labor, as
shown by its past history, and what must be
its effect now? What has prevented immi-
gration into this State? And what has driven
young men out of the State? Is it not simply the
reason that in a slaveholding community there
is no way in which a young man raised with-
out property can live. A father who in a
slaveholding country provides his son with
an education, but has no land to bestow upon
him, makes it necessary that he should go to
some Northern State to obtain his subsistence.
The necessary result is that the State of
Maryland is sending her population into the
Western country or to the North, simply be-
cause of this fact.
Every one knows that the value of real
estate in the slaveholding parts of Maryland,
is decreasing not increasing. Property in
fine locations, and cultivated estates are de-
preciating. Instead of there being more
houses, they are becoming less. Instead of
the farms being divided into homesteads,
every census return shows that the number of
homesteads in those parts of Maryland is de-
creasing. They must decrease, because slave-
ry requires it. if a man has to buy his labor,
he must not only have a capital to buy his
land but also to buy the labor; and the con-
sequent tendency is in a slaveholding com-
munity to have the land held in few hands.
it is a system which produces towns some-
times, but not cities. It is a system which
prevents education; for the few never will
give education to the many; when the many
have no power to assert their rights. What
is the reason that counties so ably represented
upon this floor stand in some respects where
they stood fifty years ago? What is the
reason that St, Mary's to-day is not equal to
what it was in 1790? Can any man say that
the soil is cursed in any other respect or by
anything else? Has anything but the system
of slave labor produced these results?
There can be no building of villages or
towns to any considerable extent, no devel-
opment of tracts, where one man controls and
provides for five hundred people; when he
buys everything for them, and distributes it
to them. But when those five hundred people
feed themselves, and clothe themselves, and
are forced to buy for themselves, villages
necessarily grow up to supply them. Under
no system where one man provides for nu-
merous laborers, can there be villages grow-
ing up, as when they provide for themselves.
When we see that the institution produces |
