PROFESSOR OF JURISPRUDENCE AND POLITICAL ECONOMY IN QUEEN'S COLLEGE, LONDON: PARKER, SON, AND BOURN, WEST STRAND. The right of translation is reserved. AMBOLIAD 2458 "I could easily prove that almost all the differences, which may be remarked between the characters of the Americans in the Southern and Northern States, have originated in Slavery."-De Tocqueville. R. D. WEBB AND SON, PRINTERS, DUBLIN. Dear Sir, TO JOHN STUART MILL, ESQ. I have great satisfaction in prefixing your name to the present work. Its appearance on my page will show that I have not engaged in speculation on an important subject without some qualification for the task. The sanction it gives to the views which I advocate will furnish an apology for the confidence with which they are urged-a confidence which, divided as opinion is on the subject of which I treat, might otherwise appear unbecoming. Lastly, the opportunity of connecting my name in public with that of one from whose works I have profited more largely than from those of any living writer, was one which I could not easily PREFACE. Ir is proper that I should state the circumstances under which the present volume is offered to the public. The substance of it formed the matter of a course of lectures delivered about a year since in the University of Dublin. In selecting the subject of North American slavery I was influenced in the first instance by considerations of a purely speculative kind-my object being to show that the course of history is largely determined by the action of economic causes. To causes of this description, it seemed to me, the fortunes of slavery in North America-its establishment in one half of the Union and its disappearance from the otherwere directly to be ascribed; while to that insti. tution, in turn, the leading differences in the character of the Northern and Southern people, as well as that antagonism of interests between the two sections which has issued in a series of political conflicts extending over half a century, were no less |