us, first enunciated the dogma, that to constitute a democratic Republic there must be an aristocracy of color and race. The maxim of Mr. Calhoun is, that a democratic government cannot exist unless the laboring class be slaves; that if the man who has nothing is allowed to rule, there can be no safety for property-property would soon be voted robbery. A democracy, therefore, must consist of freemen and slaves. This is the substance of the dogma. It is not a new thing, but is two thousand years old. So far from being "first enunciated" by Mr. Calhoun, it is as ancient as Aristotle. In his "politics"which should be a text book in all Southern colleges-in words as clear and emphatic as language can furnish, he lays down the maxim, that a complete household or community is one composed of freemen and slaves. He was writing to democracies. He maintains, also, that the slaves should be barbarians, not Greeks, as Mr. Calhoun now holds it to be an advantage, that the slaves of the South are negroes, a barbarian race sufficiently strong and docile for labor. The whole proposition, both as to slavery itself and the race of the slave, is distinctly stated by the Greek philosopher. Our learned traveller assuming that it was a new heresy, runs off into long speculations on the influence of the dogma on the minds of the Southern people. It has produced singular effects. One of these, as he thinks, is the belief, that a peculiar odor exhales from the negro. The traveller doubts the existence of it. He assigns the best of all reasons, for the doubt; it is not perceptible to the traveller's nose. Of things not perceived by themselves and not existing, the reason is always the same with our British friends.

In another vague theory, he speculates on the causes that have prevented the Southern States from advancing in literature.

Fifty years ago, critics and philosophers indulged in similar inquiries in reference to the whole Union; New-England was not excepted. Numerous reasons were assigned by the European inquirer, why there was no growth of letters in America. The climate, the government, the degeneracy of the race, the hunting after dollars, explained the deficiency. But the reasoners had hardly settled the matter satisfactorily, when a few years overturned their arguments, and proved that advancement in knowledge or progress in bookmaking was merely a question of time. Many centuries elapsed before England produced a writer of eminence. Germany had no literature a hundred years ago. The rise and growth of letters have been more rapid in America than in any other nation. But the true solution of the question in relation to the country as a whole, had barely been made by time and recognized by the world, when the same kind of inquiry began again, with the same gravity, in reference to a portion of the Republic. It is admitted they now say, that the Northern people write books; but why, it is solemnly asked, is there no literature in the Southern States? Why have they no poets, historians, novelists, critics, or philosophers? Our traveller informs us that the people of the South are aware of the deficiency, but not of the cause.

He

modestly volunteers to explain it. The most amusing part of the farce is, that our New-England brethren, who were but yesterday the angry objects of Sydney Smith's sneer, are to-day repeating it with ludicrous self-complacency, at the expense of those whose career will be only a little later, from obvious causes, than their own. They bark in couples, with Sydney's successors. They are not able to see that, as with themselves, so with the South, it is a mere question of time. Admitting all the deficiencies they may choose to impute, she will not be long behind them. The progress of education has been rapid in the Southern States during the last twenty years. This is the seedtime; the harvest is not remote. That the genius is there, is sufficiently proved by the admitted success of the South in one or two departments of intellectual exertion. Dr. Johnson defines genius to be large general powers of mind accidentally directed to any particular department. The powers which have made Southern statesmen and orators illustrious, will, by-and-by, be diverted, in part, to other objects. This is, we believe, the true solution of the whole matter. There is no other. We bide our time, are not impatient, and laugh at cavillers and soothsayers.

Our traveller offers another solution. There are no poets, novelists, historians, essayists, philosophers, in the Southern States, because there are slaves. Why should there be orators and statesmen ? Does it require an inferior order of mind to form them? or is there some ingredient in slavery which is favorable to the formation of one mode of intellect, though adverse to others? Is there anything in the world's history to sustain such an opinion? Have letters flourished in those States only in which there were no slaves? Quite the reverse. The people most illustrious in the annals of nations for the cultivation of art, in all its forms, who have left models in every department of poetry, in history, in oratory, in philosophy-the people who have given literature to the world which, but for them, might still be without it-these people were slaveholders, and the state among them most distinguished for science and arts, was the greatest slaveholder of them all. In the Athenian republic, when the freemen were thirty thousand, the number of slaves was four hun dred thousand., Individuals owned a thousand. The father of Demosthenes had thirty engaged as mechanics in one business. The slaves employed in mines were worked in chains. If any traveller, like our worthy English friend, had gone among them, he might have seen things even more oppressive to his lungs than the slave mart of New-Orleans. We have not been able to discover whether women and children were compelled to labor, stripped of all clothing, in the mines of Attica, as they are, or lately have been, in the coal mines of England; bnt there was, without doubt, slavery enough to induce our supposed traveller to conclude confidently that there could be no science or art consistently with his theory, in the city of Minerva. He might have required a visit to the theatre and a tragedy of Euripides, or a view of the Acropolis, or an introduction to the studio

of Phidias or Apelles, to disabuse his mind of the whimsical notion that the arts cannot flourish where slavery exists. It will be seen that we have not controverted the assertions of the traveller in reference to the lack of mental cultivation in the Southern States. Our present purpose is not to vindicate the literary claims of the South, but to expose the shallow sophistries of the critic. To do this more effectually, we concede all his premises and take his facts as he chooses to make them.

As slavery forbids the growth of letters in the South, so also it prevents success in any other pursuit. Our traveller enlarges on the superior condition of the Northern States; their cultivated lands are larger, their forests more subdued, their advancement in every respect vastly greater. The Southern people have no enterprise, no energy; their fields are badly tilled, their railroads ill managed, their country overspread with trees. He looks through the spectacles of anti-slavery and sees everything distorted and amiss. The difference is easy to explain. The North began with a larger population and a smaller extent of country. They have received from Europe six million emigrants in fifty years, with a large amount of capital and skill. The legislature of the Union has been shaped to favor and foster their navigation interest, fisheries, and manufactories. The South has wrought out her fortunes by her own unassisted efforts. Yet the first canal-from the Santee to the Ashley--was dug at the South; the first railroad of any length-from Charleston to Augusta-was built at the South; the greatest agricultural triumph of modern times that of adding a new product to the commerce of the world, of incalculable value-has been achieved at the South, by Southern slaveholders. This new article given to the comforts of mankind, is worth one hundred and eighty millions of dollars in the planters' hands. It gives employment and support to millions in other regions. It is the product of slave labor, like the sugar of Cuba and the coffee of Brazil. The energy and capital of England have been applied, with feverish anxiety, in every quarter of the globe, to contend with the Southern slaveholder, but in vain. Southern cotton continues to be the life of English manufactures. The agriculture of our tide rice lands and Sea Islands is skilfully conducted. But suppose it to be otherwise, and all as bad or slovenly as our British observer declares it to be-there is nothing in this to oblige him to resort to his standing diagnosis for all social diseases in the Southern States. The laborers of the South were, but yesterday, savages in Africa. It requires numerous generations to produce intelligent laborers. Many centuries elapsed in Europe before skilful hired men were formed. Arthur Young, in his agricultural tour in France, about the beginning of the revolution in that country, applies remarks to French agriculture, similar to those bestowed on the South. Miss Edgeworth tells amusing stories of Irish farming. The political economist knows that where there is much land and little labor, there will be rough cultivation. It is the scarcity of land, the den_

sity of population, that produce, for the most part, a nice attention to the careful cultivation of the soil-as we see in England, Belgium, and Northern Italy. The English philosopher accounts for everything by one cause. He sees too much wood in Georgia, and ascribes it to her holding slaves. He forgets that Georgia is as extensive as England, and contained, within the memory of living men, but eighty thousand inhabitants, slaves included. The too much forest, like the too little learning, is caused by slavery alone, in the opinion of this sagacious observer. The management of Southern railroads is said to be bad, but we have no wholesale murders. No passenger has lost life on the oldest road. Its stock is among the very few at par.

Our traveller is not content with looking around now and finding all barren from Dan to Beersheba, in the Southern States, but he peers into the future and "guesses and fears" for them. The people of the South, he thinks, are "blinded, by education and habits and supposed self-interest," to the evils and horrors of their situation : and he, understanding their interest better than themselves, and exempted by the "atmosphere" of England from all prejudice and blindness, kindly undertakes to put them on their guard. He makes a calculation by which he satisfies himself, that, some time or other, the blacks of the slave States will outnumber the whites, and then he predicts the deluge. But in the ancient slaveholding States the slaves outnumbered the freemen, five or ten to one, as calculations vary. In South Carolina the negroes have been more numerous than the whites for fifty years. In all the lower country of the South, the slaves are five or six fold more in number than the masters. There is not a company of regular soldiers from the seaboard to the mountains. On certain plantations there are a thousand negroes under the charge of one white man. Yet there is no apprehension. This may be the consequence of "blindness." But we have no emeutes. In ancient Attica the four hundred thousand slaves produced much good, but little evil to the thirty thousand freemen. They never gave occasion to any serious disturbance. We apprehend nothing except from the foolish or malignant interference of outsiders. They can do mischief anywhere. How long would the mills of Manchester, or the workshops of Birmingham, or the banks of London and Paris, be safe, if all troops were removed, and cunning and knavish demagogues whispered seductive lies, day after day, in the ears of the "white slaves" that constitute the laboring masses?

The traveller thinks that the people at the South fear discussion. He is mistaken. They fear the secret machinations of factious demagogues only, or the wanton, mischievous interference of self. complacent foreigners. He admits that the planters are willing to give every opportunity for investigation. We think he overstates the matter when he says there is "universal anxiety" to do so. There is universal readiness. When an Englishman especially, comes

among them with the character and claims of a gentleman, they think it a part of the courtesy due to him, to offer opportunities for investigating a subject which is occupying his mind evidently more than any other. Of this he may be assured always, that the attentions of his entertainers in this matter proceed from no desire to defend themselves from any supposed belief of his, that they murder or maim their slaves. This is the motive suggested by Dr. Mackay. Such a belief on the traveller's part might exclude him from the society of Southern gentlemen; it certainly would not conciliate their attentions. What is done for the traveller, is for his information, not for the slaveholder's defence. Whether the opportunities so presented are ever candidly used, may be well doubted. The traveller is alive to whatever may confirm his preconceived opinions; he is blind to everything else. What he is compelled to see and admit produces no effect. He answers facts with a phrase, and puts by conviction with a sneer.

The author of Life and Liberty in America is as fair, perhaps, as can be expected. But as his countrymen are noted all over Europe for being more accustomed to dogmatize than to, examine, it should not be surprising if our travelling Doctor of Laws is not altogether free from the national failing. To misapprehend and misrepresent an argument is a natural consequence of this supercilious humor. We will furnish an example. Dr. Mackay professes to give an account of a pro-slavery answer he had met with to an English Review. The Westminster Review, as he tell us, "cited, among other objections to slavery, that it demoralizes the slave-owner far more than the slave, and that slavery was to be condemned for the same reason that induced Parliament to pass a law against cruelty to animals." A pro-slavery writer, he continues, replied by saying, “Very true, but did the British legislature go so far in their zeal as to decree the manumission of horses ?" And, as if this was a triumphant answer to all objections, the pro-slavery writer, he says, leaves the Reviewer" with no farther reply."

We have been enabled by a friend to lay our hands on the proslavery argument, and on the article of the Review. It may be seen by a reference to them, that what is marked by Dr. Mackay as a quotation from the first, is no quotation at all, and that the Review is not citing, among other objections, the one answered, but is insisting on that one as the only one on which the whole question at issue must be considered as resting. In an article on another subject, the Reviewer goes out of his way to expatiate, in an argument against slavery, as resting on one position alone, "the ultimate ground," on which "ground precisely" moralist and legislator, he insists, must take their stand. He declares that it would make no difference if the negroes were apes; that slavery is to be abolished for the same reason, and no other, for which we prosecute the man who maltreats his ox or horse. The pro-slavery writer takes the position as the Reviewer makes it, and replies accordingly. If the evils are pre