Kitabı oku: «The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 09, No. 55, May, 1862», sayfa 13

We are brought now to the third great object of Richelieu's policy. He saw from the beginning that Austria and her satellite Spain must be humbled, if France was to take her rightful place in Europe.

Hardly, then, had he entered the council, when he negotiated a marriage of the King's sister with the son of James I. of England; next he signed an alliance with Holland; next he sent ten thousand soldiers to drive the troops of the Pope and Spain out of the Valtelline district of the Alps, and thus secured an alliance with the Swiss. We are to note here the fact which Buckle wields so well, that, though Richelieu was a Cardinal of the Roman Church, all these alliances were with Protestant powers against Catholic.⁵ Austria and Spain intrigued against him,—sowing money in the mountain-districts of South France which brought forth those crops of armed men who defended La Rochelle. But he beat them at their own game. He set loose Count Mansfyld, who revived the Thirty Tears' War by raising a rebellion in Bohemia; and when one great man, Wallenstein, stood between Austria and ruin, Richelieu sent his monkish diplomatist, Father Joseph, to the German Assembly of Electors, and persuaded them to dismiss Wallenstein and to disgrace him.

But the great Frenchman's master-stroke was his treaty with Gustavus Adolphus. With that keen glance of his, he saw and knew Gustavus while yet the world knew him not,—while he was battling afar off in the wilds of Poland. Richelieu's plan was formed at once. He brought about a treaty between Gustavus and Poland; then he filled Gustavus's mind with pictures of the wrongs inflicted by Austria on German Protestants, hinted to him probably of a new realm, filled his treasury, and finally hurled against Austria the man who destroyed Tilly, who conquered Wallenstein, who annihilated Austrian supremacy at the Battle of Lüizen, who, though in his grave, wrenched Protestant rights from Austria at the Treaty of Westphalia, who pierced the Austrian monarchy with the most terrible sorrows it ever saw before the time of Napoleon.

To the main objects of Richelieu's policy already given might be added two subordinate objects.

The first of these was a healthful extension of French territory. In this Richelieu planned better than the first Napoleon; for, while he did much to carry France out to her natural boundaries, he kept her always within them. On the South he added Roussillon, on the East, Alsace, on the Northeast, Artois.

The second subordinate object of his policy sometimes flashed forth brilliantly. He was determined that England should never again interfere on French soil. We have seen him driving the English from La Rochelle and from the Isle of Rhé; but he went farther. In 1628, on making some proposals to England, he was repulsed with English haughtiness. "They shall know," said the Cardinal, "that they cannot despise me." Straightway one sees protests and revolts of the Presbyterians of Scotland, and Richelieu's agents in the thickest of them.

And now what was Richelieu's statesmanship in its sum?

I. In the Political Progress of France, his work has already been sketched as building monarchy and breaking anarchy.

Therefore have men said that he swept away old French liberties. What old liberties? Richelieu but tore away the decaying, poisonous husks and rinds which hindered French liberties from their chance at life and growth.

Therefore, also, have men said that Richelieu built up absolutism. The charge is true and welcome. For, evidently, absolutism was the only force, in that age, which could destroy the serf-mastering caste. Many a Polish patriot, as he to-day wanders through the Polish villages, groans that absolutism was not built to crush that serf-owning aristocracy which has been the real architect of Poland's ruin. Any one who reads to much purpose in De Mably, or Guizot, or Henri Martin, knows that this part of Richelieu's statesmanship was but a masterful continuation of all great French statesmanship since the twelfth-century league of king and commons against nobles, and that Richelieu stood in the heirship of all great French statesmen since Suger. That part of Richelieu's work, then, was evidently bedded in the great line of Divine Purpose running through that age and through all ages.

II. In the Internal Development of France, Richelieu proved himself a true builder. The founding of the French Academy and of the Jardin des Plantes, the building of the College of Plessis, and the rebuilding of the College of the Sorbonne, are among the monuments of this part of his statesmanship. His, also, is much of that praise usually lavished on Louis XIV. for the career opened in the seventeenth century to science, literature, and art. He was also a reformer, and his zeal was proved, when, in the fiercest of the La Rochelle struggle, he found time to institute great reforms not only in the army and navy, but even in the monasteries.

III. On the General Progress of Europe, his work must be judged as mainly for good. Austria was the chief barrier to European progress, and that barrier he broke. But a far greater impulse to the general progress of Europe was given by the idea of Toleration which he thrust into the methods of European statesmen. He, first of all statesmen in France, saw, that, in French policy, to use his own words, "A Protestant Frenchman is better than a Catholic Spaniard"; and he, first of all statesmen in Europe, saw, that, in European policy, patriotism, must outweigh bigotry.

IV. His Faults in Method were many. His under-estimate of the sacredness of human life was one; but that was the fault of his age. His frequent working by intrigue was another; but that also was a vile method accepted by his age. The fair questions, then, are,—Did he not commit the fewest and smallest wrongs possible in beating back those many and great wrongs? Wrong has often a quick, spasmodic force; but was there not in his arm a steady growing force, which could only be a force of right?

V. His Faults in Policy crystallized about one: for, while he subdued the serf-mastering nobility, he struck no final blow at the serf-system itself.

Our running readers of French history need here a word of caution. They follow De Tocqueville, and De Tocqueville follows Biot in speaking of the serf-system as abolished in most of France hundreds of years before this. But Biot and De Tocqueville take for granted a knowledge in their readers that the essential vileness of the system, and even many of its most shocking outward features, remained.

Richelieu might have crushed the serf-system, really, as easily as Louis X. and Philip the Long had crushed it nominally. This Richelieu did not.

And the consequences of this great man's great fault were terrible. Hardly was he in his grave, when the nobles perverted the effort of the Paris Parliament for advance in liberty, and took the lead in the fearful revolts and massacres of the Fronde. Then came Richelieu's pupil, Mazarin, who tricked the nobles into order, and Mazarin's pupil, Louis XIV., who bribed them into order. But a nobility borne on high by the labor of a servile class must despise labor; so there came those weary years of indolent gambling and debauchery and "serf-eating" at Versailles.

Then came Louis XV., who was too feeble to maintain even the poor decent restraints imposed by Louis XIV.; so the serf-mastering caste became active in a new way, and their leaders in vileness unutterable became at last Fronsac and De Sade.

Then came "the deluge." The spirit of the serf-mastering caste, as left by Richelieu, was a main cause of the miseries which brought on the French Revolution. When the Third Estate brought up their "portfolio of grievances," for one complaint against the exactions of the monarchy there were fifty complaints against the exactions of the nobility.

Then came the failure of the Revolution in its direct purpose; and of this failure the serf-mastering caste was a main cause. For this caste, hardened by ages of domineering over a servile class, despite fourth of August renunciations, would not, could not, accept a position compatible with freedom and order: so earnest men were maddened, and sought to tear out this cancerous mass, with all its burning roots.

But for Richelieu's great fault there is an excuse. His mind was saturated with ideas of the impossibility of inducing freed peasants to work,—the impossibility of making them citizens,—the impossibility, in short, of making them men. To his view was not unrolled the rich newer world-history, to show that a working class is most dangerous when restricted,—that oppression is more dangerous to the oppressor than to the oppressed,—that, if man will hew out paths to liberty, God will hew out paths to prosperity. But Richelieu's fault teaches the world not less than his virtues.

At last, on the third of December, 1642, the great statesman lay upon his death-bed. The death-hour is a great revealer of motives, and as with weaker men, so with Richelieu. Light then shot over the secret of his whole life's plan and work.

He was told that he must die: he received the words with calmness. As the Host, which he believed the veritable body of the Crucified, was brought him, he said, "Behold my Judge before whom I must shortly appear! I pray Him to condemn me, if I have ever had any other motive than the cause of religion and my country." The confessor asked him if he pardoned his enemies: he answered, "I have none but those of the State."

So passed from earth this strong man. Keen he was in sight, steady in aim, strong in act. A true man,—not "non-committal," but wedded to a great policy in the sight of all men: seen by earnest men of all times to have marshalled against riot and bigotry and unreason divine forces and purposes; seen by earnest men of these times to have taught the true method of grasping desperate revolt, and of strangling that worst foe of liberty and order in every age,—a serf-owning aristocracy.

UNDER THE SNOW

 
The spring had tripped and lost her flowers,
  The summer sauntered through the glades,
The wounded feet of autumn hours
 Left ruddy footprints on the blades.
 
 
And all the glories of the woods
  Had flung their shadowy silence down,—
When, wilder than the storm it broods,
She fled before the winter's frown.
 
 
For her sweet spring had lost its flowers,
  She fell, and passion's tongues of flame
Ran reddening through the blushing bowers,
  Now haggard as her naked shame.
 
 
One secret thought her soul had screened,
  When prying matrons sought her wrong,
And Blame stalked on, a mouthing fiend,
  And mocked her as she fled along.
 
 
And now she bore its weight aloof,
  To hide it where one ghastly birch
Held up the rafters of the roof,
  And grim old pine-trees formed a church.
 
 
'Twas there her spring-time vows were sworn,
  And there upon its frozen sod,
While wintry midnight reigned forlorn,
  She knelt, and held her hands to God.
 
 
The cautious creatures of the air
  Looked out from many a secret place,
To see the embers of despair
  Flush the gray ashes of her face.
 
 
And where the last week's snow had caught
  The gray beard of a cypress limb,
She heard the music of a thought
  More sweet than her own childhood's hymn.
 
 
For rising in that cadence low,
  With "Now I lay me down to sleep,"
Her mother rocked her to and fro,
  And prayed the Lord her soul to keep.
 
 
And still her prayer was humbly raised,
  Held up in two cold hands to God,
That, white as some old pine-tree blazed,
  Gleamed far o'er that dark frozen sod.
 
 
The storm stole out beyond the wood,
  She grew the vision of a cloud,
Her dark hair was a misty hood,
  Her stark face shone as from a shroud.
 
 
Still sped the wild storm's rustling feet
  To martial music of the pines,
And to her cold heart's muffled beat
  Wheeled grandly into solemn lines.
 
 
And still, as if her secret's woe
  No mortal words had ever found,
This dying sinner draped in snow
  Held up her prayer without a sound.
 
 
But when the holy angel bands
  Saw this lone vigil, lowly kept,
They gathered from her frozen hands
  The prayer thus folded, and they wept.
 
 
Some snow-flakes—wiser than the rest—
  Soon faltered o'er a thing of clay,
First read this secret of her breast,
  Then gently robed her where she lay.
 
 
The dead dark hair, made white with snow,
  A still stark face, two folded palms,
And (mothers, breathe her secret low!)
  An unborn infant—asking alms.
 
 
God kept her counsel; cold and mute
  His steadfast mourners closed her eyes,
Her head-stone was an old tree's root,
  Be mine to utter,—"Here she lies."
 

SLAVERY, IN ITS PRINCIPLES, DEVELOPMENT, AND EXPEDIENTS

Within the memory of men still in the vigor of life, American Slavery was considered by a vast majority of the North, and by a large minority of the South, as an evil which should, at best, be tolerated, and not a good which deserved to be extended and protected. A kind of lazy acquiescence in it as a local matter, to be managed by local legislation, was the feeling of the Free States. In both the Slave and the Free States, the discussion of the essential principles on which Slavery rests was confined to a few disappointed Nullifiers and a few uncompromising Abolitionists, and we can recollect the time when Calhoun and Garrison were both classed by practical statesmen of the South and North in one category of pestilent "abstractionists." Negro Slavery was considered simply as a fact; and general irritation among most politicians of all sections was sure to follow any attempt to explore the principles on which the fact reposed. That these principles had the mischievous vitality which events have proved them to possess, few of our wisest statesmen then dreamed, and we have drifted by degrees into the present war without any clear perception of its animating causes.

The future historian will trace the steps by which the subject of Slavery was forced on the reluctant attention of the citizens of the Free States, so that at last the most cautious conservative could not ignore its intrusive presence, could not banish its reality from his eyes, or its image from his mind. He will show why Slavery, disdaining its old argument from expediency, challenged discussion on its principles. He will explain the process by which it became discontented with toleration within its old limits, and demanded the championship or connivance of the National Government in a plan for its limitless extension. He will indicate the means by which it corrupted the Southern heart and Southern brain, so that at last the elemental principles of morals and religion were boldly denied, and the people came to "believe a lie." He will, not unnaturally, indulge in a little sarcasm, when he comes to consider the occupation of Southern professors of ethics, compelled by their position to scoff at the "rights" of man, and Southern professors of theology, compelled by their position to teach that Christ came into the world, not so much to save sinners, as to enslave negroes. He will be forced to class these among the meanest and most abject slaves that the planters owned. In treating of the subserviency of the North, he will be constrained to write many a page which will flush the cheeks of our descendants with indignation and shame. He will show the method by which Slavery, after vitiating the conscience and intelligence of the South, contrived to vitiate in part, and for a time, the conscience and intelligence of the North. It will be his ungrateful task to point to many instances of compliance and concession on the part of able Northern statesmen which will deeply affect their fame with posterity, though he will doubtless refuse to adopt to the full the contemporary clamor against their motives. He will understand, better than we, the amount of patriotism which entered into their "concessions," and the amount of fraternal good-will which prompted their fatal "compromises." But he will also declare that the object of the Slave Power was not attained. Vacillating statesmen and corrupt politicians it might address, the first through their fears, the second through their interests; but the intrepid and incorruptible "people" were but superficially affected. A few elections were gained, but the victories were barren of results. From political defeat the free people of the North came forth more earnest and more united than ever.

The insolent pretensions of the Slavocracy were repudiated; its political and ethical maxims were disowned; and after having stirred the noblest impulses of the human heart by the spectacle of its tyranny, its attempt to extend that tyranny only roused an insurrection of the human understanding against the impudence of its logic. The historian can then only say, that the Slave Power "seceded," being determined to form a part of no government which it could not control. The present war is to decide whether its real force corresponds to the political force it has exerted heretofore in our affairs.

That this war has been forced upon the Free States by the "aggressions" of the Slave Power is so plain that no argument is necessary to sustain the proposition. It is not so universally understood that the Slave Power is aggressive by the necessities of the wretched system of labor on which its existence is based. By a short exposition of the principles of Slavery, and the expedients it has practised during the last twenty or thirty years, we think that this proposition can be established.

And first it must be always borne in mind, that Slavery, as a system, is based on the most audacious, inhuman, and self-evident of lies,—the assertion, namely, that property can be held in men. Property applies to things. There is a meta-physical impossibility implied in the attempt to extend its application to persons. It is possible, we admit, to ordain by local law that four and four make ten, but such an exercise of legislative wisdom could not overcome certain arithmetical prejudices innate in our minds, or dethrone the stubborn eight from its accustomed position in our thoughts. But you might as well ordain that four and four make ten as ordain that a man has no right to himself, but can properly be held as the chattel of another. Yet this arrogant falsehood of property in men has been organized into a colossal institution. The South calls it a "peculiar" institution; and herein perhaps consists its peculiarity, that it is an absurdity which has lied itself into a substantial form, and now argues its right to exist from the fact of its existence. Doubtless, the fact that a thing exists proves that it has its roots in human nature; but before we accept this as decisive of its right to exist, it may be well to explore those qualities in human nature, "peculiar" and perverse as itself, from which it derives its poisonous vitality and strength. It is plain, we think, that an institution embodying an essential falsity, which equally affronts the common sense and the moral sense of mankind, and which, as respects chronology, was as repugnant to the instincts of Homer as it is to the instincts of Whittier, must have sprung from the unblessed union of wilfulness and avarice, of avarice which knows no conscience, and of wilfulness that tramples on reason; and the marks of this parentage, the signs of these its boasted roots in human nature, are, we are constrained to concede, visible in every stage of its growth, in every argument for its existence, in every motive for its extension.

It is not, perhaps, surprising that some of the advocates of Slavery do not relish the analysis which reveals the origin of their institution in those dispositions which connect man with the tiger and the wolf. Accordingly they discourage, with true democratic humility, all genealogical inquiries into the ancestry of their system, substitute generalization for analysis, and, twisting the maxims of religion into a philosophy of servitude, bear down all arguments with the sounding proposition, that Slavery is included in the plan of God's providence, and therefore cannot be wrong. Certain thinkers of our day have asserted the universality of the religious element in human nature: and it must be admitted that men become very pious when their minds are illuminated by the discernment of a Providential sanction for their darling sins, and by the discovery that God is on the side of their interests and passions. Napoleon's religious perceptions were somewhat obtuse, as tried by the standards of the Church, yet nothing could exceed the depth of his belief that God "was with the heaviest column"; and the most obdurate jobber in human flesh may well glow with apostolic fervor, as, from the height of philosophic contemplation to which this principle lifts him, he discerns the sublime import of his Providential mission. It is true, he is now willing to concede, that a man's right to himself, being given by God, can only by God be taken away. "But," he exultingly exclaims, "it has been taken away by God. The negro, having always been a slave, must have been so by divine appointment; and I, the mark of obloquy to a few fanatical enthusiasts, am really an humble agent in carrying out the designs of a higher law even than that of the State, of a higher will even than my own." This mode of baptizing man's sin and calling it God's providence has not altogether lacked the aid of certain Southern clergymen, who ostentatiously profess to preach Christ and Him crucified, and by such arguments, we may fear, crucified by them. Here is Slavery's abhorred riot of vices and crimes, from whose soul-sickening details the human imagination shrinks aghast,—and over all, to complete the picture, these theologians bring in the seraphic countenance of the Saviour of mankind, smiling celestial approval of the multitudinous miseries and infamies it serenely beholds!

It may be presumptuous to proffer counsel to such authorized expositors of religion, but one can hardly help insinuating the humble suggestion, that it would be as well, if they must give up the principles of liberty, not to throw Christianity in. We may be permitted to doubt the theory of Providence which teaches that a man never so much serves God as when he serves the Devil. Doubtless, Slavery, though opposed to God's laws, is included in the plan of God's providence, but, in the long run, the providence most terribly confirms the laws. The stream of events, having its fountains in iniquity, has its end in retribution. It is because God's laws are immutable that God's providence can be foreseen as well as seen. The mere fact that a thing exists, and persists in existing, is of little importance in determining its right to exist, or its eventual destiny. These must be found in an inspection of the principles by which it exists; and from the nature of its principles, we can predict its future history. The confidence of bad men and the despair of good men proceed equally from a too fixed attention to the facts and events before their eyes, to the exclusion of the principles which underlie and animate them; for no insight of principles, and of the moral laws which govern human events, could ever cause tyrants to exult or philanthropists to despond.

If we go farther into this question, we shall commonly find that the facts and events to which we give the name of Providence are the acts of human wills divinely overruled. There is iniquity and wrong in these facts and events, because they are the work of free human wills. But when these free human wills organize falsehood, institute injustice, and establish oppression, they have passed into that mental state where will has been perverted into wilfulness, and self-direction has been exaggerated into self-worship. It is the essence of wilfulness that it exalts the impulses of its pride above the intuitions of conscience and intelligence, and puts force in the place of reason and right. The person has thus emancipated himself from all restraints of a law higher than his personality, and acts from self, for self, and in sole obedience to self. But this is personality in its Satanic form; yet it is just here that some of our theologians have discovered in a person's actions the purposes of Providence, and discerned the Divine intention in the fact of guilt instead of in the certainty of retribution. The tyrant element in man is found in this Satanic form of his individuality. His will, self-released from restraint, preys upon and crushes other wills. He asserts himself by enslaving others, and mimics Divinity on the stilts of diabolism. Like the barbarian who thought himself enriched by the powers and gifts of the enemy he slew, he aggrandizes his own personality, and heightens his own sense of freedom, through the subjection of feebler natures. Ruthless, rapacious, greedy of power, greedy of gain, it is in Slavery that he wantons in all the luxury of injustice, for it is here that he tastes the exquisite pleasure of depriving others of that which he most values in himself.

Thus, whether we examine this system in the light of conscience and intelligence, or in the light of history and experience, we come to but one result,—that it has its source and sustenance in Satanic energy, in Satanic pride, and in Satanic greed. This is Slavery in itself, detached from the ameliorations it may receive from individual slaveholders. Now a bad system is not continued or extended by the virtues of any individuals who are but partially corrupted by it, but by those who work in the spirit and with the implements of its originators. Every amelioration is a confession of the essential injustice of the thing ameliorated, and a step towards its abolition; and the humane and Christian slaveholders owe their safety, and the security of what they are pleased to call their property, to the vices of the hard and stern spirits whom they profess to abhor. If they invest in stock of the Devil's corporation, they ought not to be severe on those who look out that they punctually receive their dividends. The true slaveholder feels that he is encamped among his slaves, that he holds them by the right of conquest, that the relation is one of war, and that there is no crime he may not be compelled to commit in self-defence. Disdaining all cant, he clearly perceives that the system, in its practical working, must conform to the principles on which it is based. He accordingly believes in the lash and the fear of the lash. If he is cruel and brutal, it may as often be from policy as from disposition, for brutality and cruelty are the means by which weaker races are best kept "subordinated" to stronger races; and the influence of his brutality and cruelty is felt as restraint and terror on the plantation of his less resolute neighbor. And when we speak of brutality and cruelty, we do not limit the application of the words to those who scourge, but extend it to some of those who preach,—who hold up heaven as the reward of those slaves who are sufficiently abject on earth, and threaten damnation in the next world to all who dare to assert their manhood in this.

If, however, any one still doubts that this system develops itself logically and naturally, and tramples down the resistance offered by the better sentiments of human nature, let him look at the legislation which defines and protects it,—a legislation which, as expressing the average sense and purpose of the community, is to be quoted as conclusive against the testimony of any of its individual members. This legislation evinces the dominion of a malignant principle. You can hear the crack of the whip and the clank of the chain in all its enactments. Yet these laws, which cannot be read in any civilized country without mingled horror and derision, indicate a mastery of the whole theory and practice of oppression, are admirably adapted to the end they have in view, and bear the unmistakable marks of being the work of practical men,—of men who know their sin, and "knowing, dare maintain." They do not, it is true, enrich the science of jurisprudence with any large or wise additions, but we do not look for such luxuries as justice, reason, and beneficence in ordinances devised to prop up iniquity, falsehood, and tyranny. Ghastly caricatures of justice as these offshoots of Slavery are, they are still dictated by the nature and necessities of the system. They have the flavor of the rank soil whence they spring.

If we desire any stronger evidence that slaveholders constitute a general Slave Power, that this Slave Power acts as a unit, the unity of a great interest impelled by powerful passions, and that the virtues of individual slaveholders have little effect in checking the vices of the system, we can find that evidence in the zeal and audacity with which this power engaged in extending its dominion. Seemingly aggressive in this, it was really acting on the defensive,—on the defensive, however, not against the assaults of men, but against the immutable decrees of God. The world is so constituted, that wrong and oppression are not, in a large view, politic. They heavily mortgage the future, when they glut the avarice of the present. The avenging Providence, which the slaveholder cannot find in the New Testament, or in the teachings of conscience, he is at last compelled to find in political economy; and however indifferent to the Gospel according to Saint John, he must give heed to the gospel according to Adam Smith and Malthus. He discovers, no doubt to his surprise, and somewhat to his indignation, that there is an intimate relation between industrial success and justice; and however much, as a practical man, he may despise the abstract principles which declare Slavery a nonsensical enormity, he cannot fail to read its nature, when it slowly, but legibly, writes itself out in curses on the land. He finds how true is the old proverb, that, "if God moves with leaden feet, He strikes with iron hands." The law of Slavery is, that, to be lucrative, it must have a scanty population diffused over large areas. To limit it is therefore to doom it to come to an end by the laws of population. To limit it is to force the planters, in the end, to free their slaves, from an inability to support them, and to force the slaves into more energy and intelligence in labor, in order that they may subsist as freemen. People prattle about the necessity of compulsory labor; but the true compulsory labor, the labor which has produced the miracles of modern industry, is the labor to which a man is compelled by the necessity of saving himself, and those who are dearer to him than self, from ignominy and want. It was by this policy of territorial limitation, that Henry Clay, before the annexation of Texas, declared that Slavery must eventually expire. The way was gradual, it was prudent, it was safe, it was distant, it was sure, it was according to the nature of things. It would have been accepted, had there been any general truth in the assertion that the slaveholders were honestly desirous of reconverting, at any time, and on any practicable plan, their chattels into men. But true to the malignant principles of their system, they accepted the law of its existence, but determined to evade the law of its extinction. As Slavery required large areas and scanty population, large areas and scanty population it should at all times have. New markets should be opened for the surplus slave-population; to open new markets was to acquire new territory; and to acquire new territory was to gain additional political strength. The expansive tendencies of freedom would thus be checked by the tendencies no less expansive of bondage. To acquire Texas was not merely to acquire an additional Slave State, but it was to keep up a demand for slaves which would prevent Virginia, North Carolina, Maryland, and Kentucky from becoming Free States. As soon as old soils were worn out, new soils were to be ready to receive the curse; and where slave-labor ceased to be profitable, slave-breeding was to take its place.