You are told, much of the wealth is invested in negroes--yet it obviously is a wealth that impoverishes; and no stronger evidence of the truth of this assertion is needed, than the comparative price of land in the free and slave States.
Tappan critiques the notion that wealth invested in enslaved people is beneficial, pointing out its detrimental effects on land value.
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The slaveholders form a powerful landed aristocracy, banded together for the preservation of their own privileges, and ever endeavoring, for obvious reasons, to identify their private interests with the public welfare.
The power of the slaveholders, as we have already showed you, depends on the acquiescence of the major part of the white inhabitants in their domination.
If we turn to the new States, we find that slavery and freedom have the same influence on population as in the old.
In a community so unenlightened as yours, it is a matter of course, that the arts and sciences must languish, and the industry and enterprise of the country be oppressed by a general torpor.