formed around such centres. The influence of these aggregations of men upon their progress in civilization is a matter of common historical observation.*

And the importance of their absence from the South can. hardly be exaggerated. It prevented the general establishment of newspapers, of the lecture-room, that great educator, and, to an extent, of the town-meetings and frequent political assemblages which are made so powerful as educational agents in the North. In a country so sparsely settled, and so devoid of small towns as intellectual centres, a general common-school system, or, in fact, any general educational system, is impossible. And the difference in this respect between the North and South was as marked in Colonial times as now. Berkeley, a Colonial Governor of Virginia, writing home to England, thanked God that there were no free schools in his Colony, as in the North. And, again, the fact of the exuberance of the soil is hostile. to any general intellectual activity. The labor of a few months gives the small proprietor food for the year; and, like all men without the stimulus of want, his months of freedom from necessary toil are spent in idleness, with its consequent unfitness. for labor during the next season, thus leading to ignorance, dissipation, in short, the degradation of the poor whites. It is with nations as with individuals; the heirship of great riches is seldom conducive to general mental development.

And we should add to these two still another consideration,— the direct effects of the warmth of climate upon individuals. This is opposed as well to intellectual as to bodily activity, and would prevent those energetic struggles for the acquisition of knowledge which are seen so often among the agricultural people of the North.

Considering these influences, we need not attribute a great weight to slavery in causing such a condition of education as all the Southern States exhibit. For example, in Virginia, in 1848, there were 166,000 youths between the ages of seven and sixteen years; of these, 126,000 attended no schools, and received no education.†

Wealth of Nations, Book III. Chap. 4. Notes and Illustrations to Robertson's Charles the Fifth.

† Cited from Harrison's History of Virginia, by F. L. Olmsted, "Seaboard Slave States," p. 173.

Moreover, this sparseness of population, absence of small towns, richness of soil, and warmth of climate also prevent the religious education so important as the supporter of democratic ideas. The reports of colporteurs, travelling among the "poor whites," read like missionary letters from India or Africa. One writes: "Visited sixty families; forty-one destitute of the Bible; average of their going to church, once in seven years. Some grown-up youths had never heard a prayer or sermon before mine."

Such books as those of Kirke and Olmsted give a sad picture of the religious and moral degradation of these people. This religious ignorance cannot be wholly ascribed to slavery; for certainly ministers enough can be found, both at home and abroad, who can defend slavery from the Bible, and who have no scruples against living among a slave-holding population. But churches, like schools, cannot exist where the people are too widely scattered to furnish supporting congregations. And though Northern farmers may go several miles to church or Sunday school, this obstacle is almost morally insuperable to an indolent people, dwelling in a warm climate, where the roads are impassable in winter, and in the summer exertion is the burden of life.

We should, however, discriminate between that moral obliquity which seems to be consistent with pro-slavery Christianity, and that moral and religious blindness which results from want of Christian teaching. The former, so forcibly illustrated in the conduct of the Christian leaders of the Rebellion, undoubtedly was mainly caused by slavery; while the latter has no more necessary connection with it than the heathenism of the Ashantee prince has with his participation in the slavetrade.

In addition to these effects upon intellectual and religious education of an exclusive devotion to agriculture, we must

The inferiority in education and positive morality of the inhabitants of rural districts is ably discussed in an essay on "Rural Life," by Dr. Holland (Lessons in Life, p. 162). See also Kay's "Social Condition of the English People," which but confirms the opinion of all travellers, that the English peasant is not only more ignorant, but more immoral, than the inhabitants of manufacturing towns. Also Hume's "Essay on Agriculture"; Buckle's "History of Civilization," Vol. I. p. 273 and note 86, Amer. ed.; Adam Smith's "Wealth of Nations,” Book III. Chap. 4.

And in

consider its effect upon the third condition of democratic institutions, the general division of property in land. regard to this, it appears that all purely agricultural countries. naturally tend from such a distribution, and to the accumulation of landed property in the hands of a few.

Estates grow by accretion. The rich man is able to tide over a bad harvest, and buys in the land which his poor neighbor, barely able to support himself in ordinary times, is obliged to sell at a great sacrifice. The most notable instance of this is recorded in the forty-seventh chapter of Genesis, where, during the famine in Egypt, Pharaoh bought up all the land of the kingdom. Illustrations of this gravitation of property to the hands of the wealthy may be gathered from every quarter of the earth, and from the history of almost every nation. Buckle, in his "History of Civilization," traces the process in a few nations, Egypt, ancient Mexico, India, and Peru, showing why the principle is especially true of countries lying in warm latitudes. John Stuart Mill thus speaks of Rome: "When inequality of wealth once commences, in a community not constantly engaged in repairing by industry the injuries of fortune, its advances are gigantic; the great masses swallow up the smaller. The Roman Empire ultimately became covered with the vast landed possessions of a comparatively few families, for whose luxury, and still more for whose ostentation, the most costly products were raised, while the cultivators of the soil were slaves, or small tenants in a nearly servile condition. From this time the wealth of the empire progressively declined." At this point in the history of Rome, the vast tribute exacted from conquered nations, together with the toil of their ancestors in overcoming the obstacles of nature, had effected for the inhabitants of Rome what a bounteous nature had done for their southern provinces, as for our Southern States, in creating a state of affairs in which the bare necessaries of life could be obtained with almost no labor.

In a cold climate, among a commercial and manufacturing people, such concentration of property in families is impossible, unless produced by laws or customs of primogeniture, or other

* Political Economy, Vol. I. p. 36, Amer. ed.

abnormal means. In the North, we find that the great estates held a hundred years ago by the patroons, or grantees of patents, have mostly dwindled away to the size of ordinary farms.

The fluctuations and contingencies of trade, or even the natural division among children, equalizes property; so that the descendants of wealthy men, in the third or fourth generation, are rarely by inheritance in affluent circumstances. In addition to this process of levelling down the rich, which is true in a smaller degree of agricultural countries, there is the more powerful equalizing process, among a manufacturing or commercial people, of elevating the poor. These departments of industry open a field for the display of mechanical or business talents such as agricultural pursuits never afford. The operative in the factory often makes a valuable mechanical or scientific discovery, and becomes rich by his invention; and the office boy, beginning life by sweeping out the counting-room or store, often rises, through the successive grades of clerkships, to an equality with his employer. And in this each is aided by the education of the school rendered possible by the towns which these branches of industry establish.

But the peasant or poor white tilling the ground has no such opportunities as this; his fate is fixed; he dies as he has lived, fortunate if a kind Heaven permits his dust to mingle with that of his fathers in the soil which he trod when living. When the cultivator of the soil lives near a market, like a great city, there is a field for the exercise of certain talents, in raising vegetables, fruits, and flowers for sale, and so far an opportunity for him to rise. But in a country with so few towns as the South, even this narrow field is wanting.

In addition to these considerations, general in their nature, is the special fact applicable to the South, that her great staples afford a peculiar advantage to capital. They require extensive and valuable machinery in their preparation for market, which the poor cultivator cannot purchase. And, moreover, a large force of labor is required, but only during a short season of the year. This the small cultivator cannot hire from others like himself, since all need it at the same time; nor without capital can he support dependants, whether slaves or hired laborers, VOL. CII. — NO. 210.

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to supply this labor. Thus by both these means the competition of the poor with the rich is prevented, and the large landholder stands ever ready to buy in the land which a discouraged or necessitous small proprietor may offer for sale.

We thus see why political power has remained so long in the hands of certain families in the South, when we consider the obstacles to be encountered by those endeavoring to rise from the lower classes of society.

Such are some of the effects upon society of an exclusive devotion to agriculture. Tried by the three conditions first laid down, general education, religious training, and division of property in land, we have seen that the South was wanting. The result of this ignorance, debasement, impoverishment of the masses, and a monopoly of wealth and power in the hands of a few is a virtual aristocracy.

There still remains the consideration of one other cause of this aristocratic tendency of the South. Those already enumerated may be regarded as the more or less indirect effects of climate; indirect, because affecting the people through the pursuits which the climate forces upon them. In addition to this is the direct influence of the temperature of the atmosphere upon individuals. The consequences of this, because more apparent, are better understood and more universally acknowledged than the former, and only need mention to present more fully the power of the forces which impel the South to an aristocracy.

This direct effect of climate is discussed at length by Montesquieu, by Hume, Buckle, J. S. Mill,† &c. A warm climate makes men indolent; "energy at the call of passion they possess in abundance, but not that which is manifested in sustained and persevering labor." With this indolence comes pride,§ and contempt for those who labor. And sluggishness of body is rarely united with that activity of mind which, taking cognizance of all the bearings of a subject, and looking far into the future, forms or guards good political institutions. Still more

* Spirit of Laws, Book XIV.

↑ Political Economy, Book I. Chap. 7, § 3.

J. S. Mill.

Montesquieu, Book XIX. Chap. 9.