forget, that in modern times the most active and enterprising class of society, as soon as it becomes numerous, will inevitably become the ruling class. How can, therefore, the slaveholders do as you say, without undermining the foundation of their own ascendency? But it is just that ascendency which they mean, not to weaken, but to fortify. Do not bring forward this city of St. Louis as proof to the contrary. Your commerce and your industry are, indeed, largely developed, although Missouri is a Slave State; but do you not see that in the same measure as they rise, the ascendency of the slave-power disappears? [Great cheering.] Thus this has become a free city on slave soil. [Repeated cheering.]
But this is not all. Not only are the slaveholders, as a class, unfit to direct the commercial and industrial movement, but their system of labor is unfit to carry it out. Commerce and industry, in order to become independent, need intelligent labor. In the North, every laborer thinks, and is required to think. In the South, the laborer is forbidden to think lest he think too much; for thought engenders aspirations. [Laughter and applause.] With us, progress and enterprise derive their main support, their strongest impulses, from the intellectual development of the working classes. We do not dread the aspirations arising from it; it is the source of our prosperity, and at the same time of our safety. Our laboring man must be a freeman, in order to be what he ought to be—an intelligent laborer. Therefore, we educate him for liberty, by our system of public instruction. In the South, the intellectual development of the laboring classes, necessary for intelligent labor, would create aspirations dangerous to your domestic institutions. Your laboring man must be a brute, in order to remain what you want him to be—a slave. Therefore, you withhold from him all means of intellectual development. Among our farms
