In respect to South-Carolina, it is a remarkable fact that while she has now nearly four tunes as many slaves as she had in 1790, her whole population (slaves and all) is not three times what it then was, and her free population is only a little more than twice its number in 1790.  In other words, while in seventy years her slave population has increased four-fold, her free population has only a little more than doubled.[B]

These facts teach their own lesson; but they compel all who value the Union and the peace of the nation, to ask how far they have had to do with the troubles of nullification and secession, which for thirty years have been plaguing us, and have now culminated in a terrible rebellion!

* * * * *

A philosophic bankrupt.

The great financial storm that swept over our country and Europe, in the ‘fall of 1857,’ overwhelming so many large and apparently staunch vessels, did not disdain to capsize and send to the bottom many smaller craft; my own among the number.  She was not as heavily freighted (to continue for a moment the nautical metaphor) as some that sunk around her; but as she bore my all, it looked at first pretty much like a life-and-death business, especially the latter.  For a time, all was horror and confusion; but as the wreck cleared away, I soon discovered that there would, at any rate, remain to me the consolation that others would not lose through my misfortunes; that the calamity, if such it were, would affect no one but myself.  My own experience, and my observation of those around me, has led me, naturally enough, to ponder a good deal on the subject of reverses in life, and as no page of genuine experience can be considered wholly valueless, it may do no harm to record my own.  Though many have undergone reverses, few, with the exception of ministers, ever seem to have written about them, a class of men who, whatever their other troubles, in these days of bronchitis and fastidious parishes, have usually been exempt from trials of this peculiar character.

Bishop Butler, in one of his sermons on Human Nature, alludes to a sect in philosophy, representing, I suppose, the ‘selfish system,’ one of whose ideas is that men are naturally pleased on hearing of the misfortunes of others.  La Rochefoucauld expresses the same sentiment as his own.  Couched in plain language, this appears to be a gloomy and heartless doctrine; but probably nothing more is meant than a refinement of the common adage, ‘Misery loves company,’ and that very good and benevolent persons, if themselves overtaken by misfortune, can not but feel some alleviation for their sorrows, in reflecting that others have trials equally great and that they are but partakers of a common though bitter lot.  If there be really any consolation in reflections of this kind, history furnishes us many striking examples, and, as far as great changes in worldly condition are concerned, the prince and the plebeian, the emperor and the exile, have often found themselves for a time on the same level.