James McDowell, in the same debate, said:
"Sir, it is true of Virginia, not merely that she has not advanced,
but that in many respects she has greatly declined; and what have we
got as a compensation for this decline? As a compensation for this
disparity between what Virginia is and what she might have been?
Nothing but the right of property in the very beings who have
brought this disparity upon us. This is our pay; this is what we
have gotten to remunerate us for our delinquent prosperity; to repay
us for our desolated fields; our torpid enterprise; and in this dark
day of our humbled importance, to sustain our hopes and to soothe
our pride as a people."[190]
Jesse Burton Harrison, in an article published in the _American
Quarterly Review_, December, 1832, sets out at length the poverty of
Virginia, and the disastrous effects of slavery upon her industrial
development.
"What," says Mr. Harrison, "is now the productive value of an estate
of lands and negroes in Virginia? We state as a result of extensive
inquiries, embracing the last fifteen years, that a very great
portion of the larger plantations, with from fifty to one hundred
slaves, actually bring their proprietors in debt at the end of the
short term of years, notwithstanding what would once, in Virginia,
have been deemed very sheer economy; that much the larger part of
the considerable land-owners are content if they barely meet their
plantation expenses without a loss of capital, and that those who
make any profit, it will, in none but rare instances, average more
than one to one and a half per cent, on the capital invested. The
case is not materially varied with the smaller proprietors. Mr.
Randolph of Roanoke, whose sayings have so generally the raciness
and truth of proverbs, has repeatedly said in Congress that the time
was coming when the masters would run away from their slaves, and be
advertised by them in the public papers.... Of the white emigrants
from Virginia, at least half are hard working who carry away with
them little beside their tools and a stout heart of hope. The
mechanics' trades have failed to give them bread. Commerce, she has
little, shipping none, and it is a fact that the very staple of the
state, tobacco, is not exported by her own capital. The state does
virtually a commission business in it. All the sources of
prosperity, moral and economical, are deadened; there is general
discontent with one's lot; in some of the first settled and choicest
part of her territory symptoms are not wanting of desolate
antiquity. And all this in youthful America, and in Virginia too,
the fairest region of America and with a race of people inferior to
none in the world in its capacity to constitute a prosperous
nation."