Wendell Phillips, Theodore C. Pease, Speeches, Lectures and Letters of Wendell Phillips: Volume 1

[367] relation which now rests upon it. What I would do with Massachusetts is this: I would make her, in relation to South Carolina, just what England is. I would that I could float her off, and anchor her in mid-ocean!

Severed from us, South Carolina must have a government. You see now a reign of terror,--threats to raise means. That can only last a day. Some system must give support to a government. It is an expensive luxury. You must lay taxes to support it. Where will you levy your taxes? They must rest on productions. Productions are the result of skilled labor. You must educate your laborer, if you would have the means for carrying on a government. Despotisms are cheap; free governments are a dear luxury,--the machinery is complicated and expensive. If the South wants a theoretical republic, she must pay for it,--she must have a basis for taxation. How will she pay for it? Why, Massachusetts, with a million workmen,--men, women, and children,--the little feet that can just toddle bringing chips from the wood-pile,--Massachusetts only pays her own board aid lodging, and lays by about four per cent a year. And South Carolina, with one half idlers, and the other half slaves, .a slave doing only half the work of a freeman,--only one quarter of the population actually at work,--how much do you suppose she lays up? Lays up a loss! By all the laws of political economy, she lays up bankruptcy; of course she does! Put her out, and let her see how sheltered she has been from the laws of trade by the Union! The free labor of the North pays her plantation patrol, we pay for her government, we pay for her postage, and for everything else. Launch her out, and let her see if she can make the year's ends meet! And when she tries, she must educate her labor in order to get the basis for taxation. Educate slaves Make a locomotive with its furnaces of open wire-work, fill them with anthracite coal,