Was it not this slavery to capital that occasioned the great Irish famine, and is it not this same slavery that keeps the large majority of the laboring class in Western Europe in a state of hereditary starvation?
In old societies, where the laborers are domestic slaves, and exceed in number the demand for labor, would not emancipating them subject them at once to a mastery, or exacting despotism of capital, far more oppressive than domestic slavery?
Did not the emancipation of European serfs, or villiens, in all instances, injure their condition as a class?
In the event of the occurrence of such excess of domestic slaves, would it not be more merciful to follow the Spartan plan, and kill the surplus, than the abolition plan, which sets them all free, to live on half allowance, and to "make free labor cheaper than slave labor," by this fierce competition and underbidding to get employment?
Are there not fewer checks to superior wit, skill and capital, and less of protection afforded to the weak, ignorant and landless mass in Northern society, than in any other ever devised by the wit of man?
Is not "_laissez-faire_," in English, "Every man for himself, and devil take the hindmost," your whole theory and practice of government?
When your society grows older, your population more dense, and property, by your trading, speculating and commercial habits, gets into a few hands, will not the slavery to capital be more complete and unmitigated than in any part of Europe, where a throne, a nobility and established church, stand between the bosses, bankers and landlords, and the oppressed masses?
Do not almost all well-informed men of a philosophical turn of mind in Western Europe and our North, concur in opinion that the whole framework of society, religious, ethical, economic, legal and political, requires radical change?
Is not the absence of such opinion at the South, and its prevalence in free society, conclusive proof of the naturalness and necessity of domestic slavery?
Would not the North be willing to leave the settlement of the slavery question in Kansas to the public opinion of Christendom, (for it will be settled by all Christendom, of whom not one in a hundred will be slaveholders,) if it were not sensible that public opinion was about to decide in favor of _negro_ slavery, and, therefore, that it must be forstalled by Federal legislation?