Slavery, as we shall afterwards show, dishonors labor; it introduces idleness into society, and with idleness, ignorance and pride, luxury and distress.

It enervates the powers of the mind, and benumbs the activity of man.

The influence of slavery, united to the English character, explains the manners and the social condition of the Southern States.
[Footnote a: The charter granted by the Crown of England in 1609 stipulated, amongst other conditions, that the adventurers should pay to the Crown a fifth of the produce of all gold and silver mines.

See Marshall's "Life of Washington," vol.i.pp.

18-66.] [Footnote b: A large portion of the adventurers, says Stith ("History of Virginia"), were unprincipled young men of family, whom their parents were glad to ship off, discharged servants, fraudulent bankrupts, or debauchees; and others of the same class, people more apt to pillage and destroy than to assist the settlement, were the seditious chiefs, who easily led this band into every kind of extravagance and excess.