for slavery: they are compelled to furnish
halters to hang their posterity.

Machiavel says that "the whole politics of rival states consist in
checking the growth of one another." It is sufficiently obvious, that
the slave and free States are, and must be, rivals, owing to the
inevitable contradiction of their interests. It needed no Machiavel to
predict the result. A continual strife has been going on, more or less
earnest, according to the nature of the interests it involved, and the
South has always had strength and skill to carry her point. Of all our
Presidents, Washington alone had power to keep the jealousies of his
countrymen in check; and he used his influence nobly. Some of his
successors have cherished those jealousies, and made effective use of
them.

The people of the North have to manage a rocky and reluctant soil; hence
commerce and the fisheries early attracted their attention. The products
of these employments were, as they should be, proportioned to the
dexterity and hard labor required in their pursuit. The North grew
opulent; and her politicians, who came in contact with those of the
South with any thing like rival pretensions, represented the commercial
class, which was the nucleus of the old Federal party.

The Southerners have a genial climate and a fertile soil; but in
consequence of the cumbrous machinery of slave labor, which is slow for
every thing, (except exhausting the soil,) they have always been less
prosperous than the free States. It is said, I know not with how much
truth, but it is certainly very credible, that a great proportion of
their plantations are deeply mortgaged in New-York and Philadelphia. It
is likewise said that the expenses of the planters are generally one or
two years in advance of their income. Whether these statements be true
or not, the most casual observer will decide, that the free States are
uniformly the most prosperous, notwithstanding the South possesses
a political power, by which she manages to check-mate us at every
important move. When we add this to the original jealousy spoken of
by Mr. Madison, it is not wonderful that Southern politicians take so
little pains to conceal their strong dislike of the North.

A striking difference of manners, also caused by slavery, serves to
aggravate other differences. Slaveholders have the habit of command;
and from the superior ease with which it sits upon them, they seem to
imagine that they were "born to comman