Substantial and honest prosperity is gradually taking the place of that wealth, which, as in all other slave countries, was concentrated in the hands of a few, and was extorted from the labor of a wretched, degraded and dangerous population.
He contrasts the honest prosperity of free labor with the wealth derived from slavery.
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It, is however, worthy of remark, that its cultivation affords a livelihood to only a small proportion of the free inhabitants; and scarcely to any of those we are now addressing.
It is also a matter of notoriety, that the price of slaves has been and still is such as to confine their possession almost exclusively to the rich.
Statesmen may differ about policy, or the means to be employed in the promotion of the public good, but surely they ought to be agreed as to what prosperity means.
You have lamentable experience, that such is not the case where slaveholders bear rule.