354 SLAVE-BREEDING IN VIRGINIA. 



progress retarded, production lessened, and ignorance 

 increased; and the differences are ascribed by the Legis 

 lative Committee of the State of New York to the 

 natural tendencies, respectively, of slave labour and free. 



I believe there, are no people more sensible than the 

 people of Virginia themselves, of the evils which the 

 system of slavery imposes upon them. I travelled for 

 some distance with a slave-holding farmer on the James s 

 Hiver, in Virginia, who owned a thousand acres, which he 

 cultivated with the aid of fifty slaves : wheat was the 

 principal article of produce which he sent to market, and 

 he could barely make the ends of the year meet. This 

 state of things is very much the same as that which pre 

 vailed on the banks of the Hudson River, in New York 

 State, twenty-five years ago, before slavery was abolished, 

 and labour ceased to be considered a disgrace to the 

 white population.* 



One of the most melancholy results of the system of 

 slavery in Virginia, especially since slave-labour ceased 

 to be profitable within the State itself, is the attention 

 which proprietors have been induced to pay to the breed 

 ing and rearing of slaves, and to the regular sale of the 

 human produce to the southern States, as a means of 

 adding to their ordinary farming profits as a branch, in 

 fact, of common rural industry ! One of the represen 

 tatives to Congress from Virginia, in a pamphlet on the 

 slavery question recently published, says, &quot; Virginia has 

 a slave population of near half a million, whose value is 

 chiefly dependent on southern demand. 1 And the gentle 

 man who states this fact is a defender of the system ! 



&quot; In plain English,&quot; said Mr Stevens, one of the 

 members for Pennsylvania, when commenting on this 

 statement before the House &quot; In plain English, what 

 does it mean ? that Virginia is now fit to be the breeder, 



* See Ante, p. 270. 



