gal punishment which follows his conviction; nor is his social
status among his race damaged thereby. As a slave to the white man, he
becomes and has proved an eminently useful being to his kind--in every
other condition, equally conspicuous as a useless one. The fertility
of the soil and the productions of the tropical regions of the earth
demonstrate to the thinking mind that these were to be cultivated and
made to produce for the uses and prosperity of the human family. The
great staples of human necessity and human luxury are produced here in
the greatest abundance, and the great majority of these nowhere else.
The white man, from his physical organization, cannot perform in these
regions the labor necessary to their production. His centre of
creation is in the temperate zones, and only there can he profitably
labor in the earth's cultivation. But his mental endowments enable him
to appropriate all which nature has supplied for the necessities of
life and the progress of his race. He sees and comprehends in nature
the designs of her Creator: these designs he develops, and the
consequence is a constant and enlightened progress of his race, and
the subjection of the physical world to this end.

He finds the soil, the climate, the production, and the labor united,
and he applies his intelligence to develop the design of this
combination; and the consequence has been the wonderful progress of
the last two centuries. I hold it as a great truth that nature points
to her uses and ends; that to observe these and follow them is to
promote the greatest happiness to the human family; and that wherever
these aims are diverted or misdirected, retrogression and human misery
are the consequence. In all matters, experience is a better test than
speculation; and to surrender a great practical utility to a mere
theory is great folly. But it has been done, and we abide the
consequences.

In all nations, a spurious, pretentious religion has been the
_avant-coureur_ of their destruction. In their inception and early
progress this curse exercises but slight influence, and their growth
is consequently healthy and vigorous. All nations have concealed this
cancerous ulcer, sooner or later to develop for their destruction.
These wear out with those they destroy, and a new or reformed religion
is almost always accompanied with new and vigorous developments in
a new and progressive Government. The shackles which have paralyzed
the mind, forb