The laws of nature as regards influences of climate, food, and society,
have operated less upon the condition of the rich slaveholder than the
poorer white, who has struggled for existence, contending with the poverty
of sterile or abandoned soils, and the hostile influences of climate, and
the sneer of the slave and his master. The rich man has resisted the
opposing forces of the elements with less apparent changes, whilst the
poor man has succumbed to the influences and sadly degenerated, but the
poor white still possesses the rough nobility and majesty of natural man,
whilst the rich slaveholder, with his perverted ideas of honor, virtue,
and justice, has gained the merited contempt of mankind. For the one,
civilization has the sympathetic feeling of compassion; from the other,
Nature herself recoils in horror.
This degeneration of the poor white is no mystery. Their poverty of blood
and weakness of mind were not engendered by the insalubrity of climate,
nor even by the sterility of the soil alone. Deny to any race, class, or
community free social condition, freedom of thought, the expansion of the
mind, the liberty of political and religious ideas, and it is sure to
degenerate, and in time to perish.
The doctrine of Adam Smith and the theory of Malthus as to the fatal
necessity of starvation, are in some measure correct, but they are
mistaken in the view that human fecundity tends to get the start of the
means of subsistence, for on the contrary it keeps pace with it.
We find that the fishes in the lakes, and the wolves in the forests,
increase in exact ratio to the amount of food furnished. Nature regulates
the fecundity of animals and human beings when society neglects it.