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Show 140 DESPOTIS!\'l the verge of the free States, and owes the principal part of its importance to that very. cncut?st~ncc. In wealth, trade and public institutiOn~, m h.teratu.re, science and creneral refinement, Baltimore JS far mferior to eithe; of the great cities of the north. Charleston is a little more than a place of depos1te for the produce of the surrounding country, and a r_ctreat for th.e neighboring planters from the unhealthmess of the1r plantations. It has been about statwnary for th1s last thirty years, and the same 1s true of Alexandrm, Norfolk, Savannah, and oth?r ~n~ient towns. Jame~town, the original capital of Vngmta, has ~cased to cxtst, ~he ruins of an old church steeple are lts only memonal. Williamsburg the second capital of Virginia, has long been in decay. Such existence as 1t has, 1t owes to the ancient college established there .. Richmond, the present capital presents a more _thnvmg_ appear_ance,but to judge by the depopulation and 1mpovenshment of the surrounding country, it must soon share a Sllllllar fate. What are called towns in these States, would for the most part, be esteemed at the north, as little better than villages. In add1t10n to the small number scattered along the sea-coast, there are a few of more re· cent growth, situated on the great rivers, generally at the head of steam-boat navigation. They are pomts at which the produce of the country is collected for shipment, and whence imported goods are d1stnbuted through the adjoining country; but so few and far between as scarcely at all to vary the dull monotony of a poor'ly peopled country which presents at the samo time all the rudeness of a new settlement, and all the marks of old age and decay. . If the slave holding states formed a separate and msu1atcd nation, cut off from commumcatwn an~ mter~ course with the free states of the north, there IS goo~ reason to suppose that they would fall rapidly behm hand in the career of civilization. As 1t 1s, they a~e sustained and dragged along by the energy of thed northern sisters. Improvements are first started an IN Al\lEUICA. 141 put into execution at the north, then slowly and faintly imitated at the south. The best educated and most accomplished men of the southern states have passed their youth at northern schools and colleges; such seminaries for education as the southern states possess, are supplied almost entirely with northern or foreign teachers. The whole trade of the south, so far as relates to transactions on the large scale, is in the hands of northern merchants who carry on this important branch of business for which the native citizens of those states, seem to lack the requisite knowledge, sagacity, perseverance and. application. The learned professions, .phystc, divimty, and even the law, arc more or less, recruited fron1 the same source. 'l'h_c newspapers have northern editors; even the composttors who set the types are imported. The same is the case with all mechanics who have any considerable skill in the art they profess. Sou thcrn rail roads are built with northern capital and by northern engmeers and contractors. It is hardly possible to erect a large hotel or block of ware-houses without the aid of northern ;rtificers. The southern states are supplied with books and periodicals from norther~ presses! and_ it seems to be only by a close and intimal~ umon With the north that civilization at the south IS enabled to make anY progress, or even to preserve itself from decline. It is worthy of special remark however, that those northern men who emigrate to the south 1mb1be by degrees, the feelings and the habits, the indolence, and the incapacity of the population by wh1ch they are surrounded. They arc unable to transmit_ to th~ir children any of those qualities which they earned w1th them from home. 'l'hese children, bred up after the southern fashion, are thoroughly southern. It is constantly necessary that new blood should be transferred from the warm and vigorous circulation of the north, to revive and qnicken the veins, palsied, and made stagnant by the poison of slavery. |