it had its own laborers, its own mechanics. It either produced its own natural and manufactured supplies or it imported them from abroad. There was no mutual dependence among plantations such as would have been observed if the estates had been small, which would have signified a division of labor.
The moral influence of the large plantation was equally extraordinary. It fostered habits of self-reliance in individual men; it assisted in promoting an intense love of liberty;[1] it strengthened the ties of family and kinship at the very time that it cultivated the spirit of general hospitality. Descended from the race of Englishmen, indeed, in many instances born under English skies themselves, the Virginians of the seventeenth century led a life, in consequence of the independent and manly existence permitted by the plantation system, that confirmed all the
- ↑ Edmund Burke, in his celebrated speech on Conciliation with America, attributed the intense love of liberty characteristic of the people of the Southern colonies to the presence of slaves. “There is a circumstance attending these colonies (Southern) which . . . makes the spirit of liberty still more high and haughty than in those to the Northward. It is that in Virginia and the Carolinas they have a vast multitude of slaves. Where this is the case in any pan of the world, those who are free are by far the most proud and jealous of their freedom. Freedom is to them not only an enjoyment but a kind of rank and privilege. Not seeing there that freedom, as in countries where it is a common blessing, and as broad and general as the air, may be united with much abject toil, with great misery, with all the exterior of servitude, liberty looks amongst them like something that is more noble and liberal. I do not mean to commend the superior morality of this sentiment, which has at least as much pride as virtue in it; but I cannot alter the nature of man. The fact is so; and these people of the Southern colonies are much more strongly and with a higher and more stubborn spirit, attached to liberty, than those to the Northward. Such were all the ancient commonwealths; such were our Gothic ancestors; such in our days were the Poles; and such will be all masters of slaves, who are not slaves themselves. In such a people, the haughtiness of domination combines with the spirit of freedom, fortifies it and renders it invincible.”
