But a different law is operating in the cotton states. They are receiving constant accessions to their number from abroad, which, added to the natural increase, are introducing a fearful odds in favor of the slaves, which must, without the protection of the United States, make itself felt. True, the Southern planters are anxious for more negroes, while they tremble for their own safety at the hands of those they already possess; but they are not the first people who have committed national suicide. The population of the seceding states, free and slave, since 1790, is as follows:

From a cursory glance at these figures it would appear that the two races have kept nearly even during seventy years; but an analysis will show that, in general, the negroes are rapidly outstripping the dominant race, and that the reverse is only the case in particular localities, and where certain influences, altogether temporary in their operations, have had control.

The actual gain of the white population on the black during the ten years from 1850 to 1860 was but a trifle over 20,000, so that the per cent. has been nearly the same in both; but it must be remembered that in the state of Texas and the city of New Orleans the augmentation of the white population amounted to 316,356, while that of the negro was but 125,398; so that, outside of these localities, the servile increased 191,042 more than the dominant class; and the same causes which operated in the older states must soon act with equal force upon Texas, while New Orleans, with secession, must cease to grow.

Slave population cannot be removed to a new country easily, nor is compulsory labor profitable in a country until at least partially settled. Hence all of the new states in the cotton range have been first occupied by free inhabitants; the

whites have been the pioneers, but the negroes have followed quickly and rapidly, and driven the original inhabitants further into the wilderness. All of the present slave states, when new, showed a preponderance of the free over the slave population. In South Carolina the slaves did not exceed the freemen till 1820; in Mississippi not till 1840; in Louisiana the blacks have preponderated since its admission into the Union, and they would now have constituted two thirds of the population had not the city of New Orleans kept up the balance. In the other seceded states, Texas excepted, the ratio of servile increase is infinitely greater than that of the whites, and as soon as a supply of negroes can be obtained, the same will be the case in that state. No city can grow faster than the country which supports it, and hence New Orleans can no longer keep up the equilibrium in Louisiana, and within the next ten years the negroes will, under ordinary circumstances, outnumber the whites; but in case of a dissolution of the Union and the establishment of a Cotton Confederacy the consummation will be greatly hastened.

The remaining states are not adapted to slave labor, and negroes, except for exportation, are unprofitable. Assured that their lot was cast with the North, and feeling themselves emancipated from the gulf tier, the border states would soon export all their negroes southward. The outside pressure would at once overcome the usual order of supply and demand, and cause the exporting states not to sell their surplus only, but the original stock. Thus would 1,650,000 slaves be precipitated upon the Southern confederacy in an incredibly short period, and this new accession of laborers would be eagerly welcomed. In the mean time the new regimen would be productive of its natural fruits in another respect: the free population would emigrate northward, and the egress would be sufficient to diminish the number of whites; so that within twenty years we should see at least 5,000,000 of slaves to less than 3,000,000 of freemen, with the disparity constantly and rapidly increasing.

ART. VIII.-DISTINCTION BETWEEN AUTOMATIC EXCELLENCE AND MORAL DESERT.

AN automaton is a machine, constructed sometimes in the human form, whose parts, by force of interior springs, are made to operate apparently like a human system, with self-motion. The movement of the parts is necessitatively caused to take place, in precise proportion and in the direction of the forces applied. When the whole is artistically framed, we admire the beauty, the ingenuity, and perhaps the imitation—that is, the automatic excellence. But we attribute not to its action or its being the slightest intrinsic quality of moral merit or demerit. The highest order of mechanical or automatic excellence is found in a watch. So numerous and nice are its parts, so exquisitely adjusted are its forces, and so beautiful is its aspect to the eye, that we gaze upon it with admiration. And then, in the pointing of its hand to the figure according to the true time, we behold one of the most wonderful adjustments of mechanism to the demands of mind. With but slight fancy we attribute to it the qualities of truth and reliability, or of falsehood and fickleness. We wish it gently handled according to its excellent nature. And yet, literally and coolly, we attribute only automatic excellence; and we are utterly unable to see in it the slightest intrinsic trace of moral merit or demerit. We are unable to see in it guilt or good desert; we are, by the very nature of things, compelled to deny of it the possibility of penalty or reward.

Should the question be asked why, in a thing which is so noble and so pleasing to æsthetical sense, all moral merit must be denied, the answer might be, because it has no consciousness, and so cannot be made happy by reward or miserable by penalty. That this is an insufficient answer may be made evident by an additional supposition. Imagine the automaton endowed with sensibility in every particle of its substance; and that it is consciously impressed by every contact, and every force applied, and feels every movement it is made to undergo. Yet it is still an automaton, being moved solely in the proportion and in the direction of the forces applied. Its every

operation is the exact mechanical measure of the causation. It is plain that its sensibility has not endowed it with the possibility of moral blame or merit, and for a very plain reason. It is seen not to be truly the author of its own actions. It moves only as it is moved. It acts only as its springs are touched. There exists not in its entire being any power to move otherwise than as the fixed and constant result of the force received. Its operations are the necessitated effects of necessitative causations. It is guiltless, undeserving, irresponsible, because it can act no otherwise than it does act. Common-sense demands not only sensibility but free self-control. We thence deduce the LAW, which is universal and apodictical, that no act can be morally obligatory, responsible, or guilty—no agent can be morally obligated, rewardable, or punishable-unless there be in the agent adequate power for other act than the act in question.

Rising from mechanical into animal existence, we recognize in the horse, for instance, every combination of both material and mental automatic excellence. Beauty of form, color, and motion, adjustment of parts for strength and speed, balance of forces there are so as to fit him for his place in the economy of creation. And then in his mind there is just such a proportionment of perceptive faculties and emotions as to produce that train of volitions and actions as will suit him to his intended uses. If, on the other hand, his dispositions be so badly proportioned as to produce irregular and refractory action, we apply severity or blandishment as we do the means to repair the watch, as a regulative. It is simply an alterative. That alterative is not a justice, but an expedient. By applying the impulses of pain and fear, we alter the balance of forces and produce better modes and habits of action. We may thus so rearrange, that both mind and body may present again the model of automatic excellence. But being a simple automatic though mental organism, we have not yet found a particle of moral merit.

The beauty of appearance, the skill of the artist, the adaptation to the ends, the perfection of the working, and the value of the results-these are the qualities of automatic excellence. When we find these in body or mind, we admire, love, and desire them. We appropriate the article to ourselves, confer upon it values and preferences. We make of the whole class

pets, ornaments, and enjoyments. On the contrary, where the automatism of thing or animal is defective, ugly, or offensive, we render it our disgust or hatred. We repel it from use, and are ready to abandon it to misery or destruction. But if we examine our feelings we shall find them purely non-ethical; we shall find ourselves absolutely unable to attribute to it the least element of moral merit or demerit. Its ugliness and its beauty, its precise action or mal action, is not its own fault; it is entirely automatic.

But is the animal will or action automatic? Yes, as truly as the machine, if it be necessitated. Just as automatically. an object strikes the retina, so automatically the perception rises. As automatically the perception, so automatically the highest desire. As automatically the highest desire, so automatically the volition. And as automatically the volition, so automatically the action. So the whole round of impulses and effects are automatic because all are necessitated, and alike necessitated. The volition is here no less necessitated, and so no less automatic, than the perception or the desire.

But suppose that, as one term in this series of automatic mental states or operations, there should be inserted a feeling, automatically rising, of right or wrong, of blame or moral approval. Suppose that, after one automatic volition, a consequent feeling of guilt or of merit should emerge. The question then is, Would this entire automatic organism of intellect, however clear, of sensibility, however acute, of volition, however exact, and of moral feeling, however intense, constitute a moral being, truly capable of blamable and rewardable acts? Common sense can give only a negative answer. The feeling of blame or praise would be an arbitrary interpolation, false in its affirmations and absurd in its nature. It would be out of place. Should that feeling assume that the volitions of an organism which possessed, in the given instance, no power for the production of any but that volition, were guilty or morally approvable, its assumption would be untrue.

From these considerations we can see that Edwards rightly defined a moral agent to be "a being that is capable of those actions that have a moral quality, and which can properly be denominated good or evil in a moral sense, virtuous or vicious, commendable or faulty." But the elements necessary to conFOURTH SERIES, VOL. XIII.—31