On the record
If, therefore, there is any ingredient of wrong in this institution, we ought not to adopt it, or to permit it, even though it should pour wealth in golden showers over the whole surface of the land.
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gutenberg.orgEditor's note · Context
Mann argues that if slavery is inherently wrong, it should not be accepted for any potential economic benefits.
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Even cold, barren New England, though more than twice as thickly peopled, grew in population at a faster rate than these old slave states.
The general system of slaveholding farmers and planters, in all times and places, has been, and now is, and ever will be, to cultivate much land, badly, for present gain,--in short, to kill the goose that lays the golden egg.
Not the most fertile soil, not mines of silver and gold, can make a nation rich, without intelligence.
So far from facilitating the increase of individual or national wealth, slavery retards both.
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