Oration delivered before the Agricultural Society. 9 



fairly made, it appears that the profits of plantations mull be 

 enormous to fupport the expence of a flave-cultivation. The 

 income of a rice, an indigo, a fugar or a tobacco cftate has been 

 great enough in the newly-cultivated lands of fome of the 

 fouthern States and Weft-India Iflands, to admit of this mode 

 of management. But at prefent the profits feem not fo prodigious 

 as they have heretofore been. The dearnefs of Weft-India 

 fugars, the prohibition of new importations of flaves in fomc 

 places, and the introduftion of the plough in the ftead of the 

 hoe, all indicate the decline of flavery, and all prove it to be lefs 

 and lefs the true intereft of the planters to conduft their bufinefs 

 in the old way. Where the produce of a farm is bread-corn, 

 flax, hemp, grafs and live ftock, the profits are moderate, and 

 the labour of free-men is generally preferred, as moft confiftent 

 with good oeconomy: accordingly, in the northern States, flavery 

 is entirely abolifhed. It appears from the great depreciation 

 and frequent manumiflTions of flaves in this State, that our 

 fellow-citizens are becoming convinced of the fame truth by 

 experience. Upon taking a furvey of the flave-holders with 

 whom I am acquainted, I find thofe who have the greateft 

 numbers, to be men of confiderable hereditary eftates in land, 

 or of a handfome capital acquired by marriage or bequeft, 

 but I cannot name an inftance of a man of fmall property, ever 

 getting rich upon the profits of flave-labour. Therefore the 

 kitchen eftablifliments of thofe who keep fifteen or twenty 

 negroes are not to be confidered as matters of revenue but of 

 expence, juft after the manner of a ftud of fupernumerary 



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