EDMUND RUFFIN

I protest against the fitness and truth of the usually received definitions and applications of "slave labor" and "free labor"--and, in contradiction thereto, maintain that, in proportion to the respective populations, there are many more slaves in England, and in very much more suffering and painful conditions, than in all the negro slaveholding States of this Confederation.

The arguments of the protectionists in favor of creating home markets by protecting duties, operating to exclude the taxed foreign commodities, if addressed to the manufacturing and bountied States, would be impregnable. For these States pay but a small proportion of the costs, and enjoy nearly all the benefits of the home markets so created

Every laborer, when possessing most strength and skill, and even when also exhibiting industry and general worth of character, and however healthy, and entirely free from family or other encumbrances, still is regarded by every poor-rate payer and by every parish official as a prospective pauper; or one who, though not yet chargeable to the parish, will surely become so thereafter, when his health fails, or old age approaches, if not much sooner. The most independent laborer regards himself in the same light of a pauper in a state of transition.

It is notorious that, whenever the demand for labor is much greater than the supply, or the wages of labor are much higher than the expenses of living, very many, even on the ordinary laboring class, are remarkable for indolence, and work no more than compelled by necessity.

Every laborer, when possessing most strength and skill, and even when also exhibiting industry and general worth of character, and however healthy, and entirely free from family or other encumbrances, still is regarded by every poor-rate payer and by every parish official as a prospective pauper; or one who, though not yet chargeable to the parish, will surely become so thereafter, when his health fails, or old age approaches, if not much sooner. The most independent laborer regards himself in the same light of a pauper in a state of transition.

I protest against the fitness and truth of the usually received definitions and applications of "slave labor" and "free labor"--and, in contradiction thereto, maintain that, in proportion to the respective populations, there are many more slaves in England, and in very much more suffering and painful conditions, than in all the negro slaveholding States of this Confederation.

The arguments of the protectionists in favor of creating home markets by protecting duties, operating to exclude the taxed foreign commodities, if addressed to the manufacturing and bountied States, would be impregnable. For these States pay but a small proportion of the costs, and enjoy nearly all the benefits of the home markets so created

It is notorious that, whenever the demand for labor is much greater than the supply, or the wages of labor are much higher than the expenses of living, very many, even on the ordinary laboring class, are remarkable for indolence, and work no more than compelled by necessity.