FARMERS' REGISTER 



731 



vancing either. If the happiness of an idle epicure 

 is deeply afl'ected by (bod, what must be its influ- 

 ence upon labor and hunger? In the article offbod, 

 the force of rewards and punishments may be hap- 

 pily combined to unite the whole body of slaves into 

 conservators, instead of being pilferers of the move- 

 ables on a farm. It may be made both a ligament 

 to lie the slave to its service, and enable him to 

 perlbrm that service better. A scheme (br produ- 

 cing these ends has been found so successful in 

 practice, and coincides so entirely with the sub- 

 ject of agriculture by slaves, that it is chosen to 

 terminate this subject. Bread alone, ought ne- 

 ver to be considered as a sufficient diet ibr slaves, 

 except as a punishment ; and at one meal each 

 day they should have salt meat boiled into a soup 

 with peas, beans, potatoes, turnips, cabbages, 

 cimblins or pumpldns. At other meals, salt fish, 

 milk or butter milk. Vegetables are raised in 

 great abundance at little expense, and at all sea- 

 eons a supply of some species should be allowed 

 to the slaves without stint. We shall be astonish- 

 ed upon trial to discover that this great comfort to 

 them, is a profit to the master, in its single effect 

 of contributing to their health vvithout estimating 

 the benefits arising from a cheerful acquiescence 

 in their condition. One great value of establishing 

 a comfortable diet for slaves, is its conveniency 

 as an instrument of reward and punishment, so 

 powerful as almost to abolish the thefts, which 

 ofren diminish considerably the owners ability to 

 provide for them. These can seldom or never be 

 committed without being known to the other slaves, 

 but they are under no interest to restrain them. 

 It is the interest of all to steal, by which they oc- 

 casionally get some addition to bread, if this ad- 

 dition cannot be procured by honesty. But if 

 thefts are punished by placing the whole on that 

 diet, all will have an interest to prevent and for- 

 bear theft, provided a diet much more profitable 

 is thereby secured. Nor is involving all in the 

 punishment a hardship, because ail share in the 

 benefit, which nothing but this system for preven- 

 venting the waste of^ theft can produce ; and be- 

 cause a knowledge of the criminal is usually ge- 

 neral. It is this unavoidable knowledge, which 

 makes the innocent comrades, who will not surren- 

 der their own daily comforts, that another may 

 occasionally steal luxuries, a solid check upon 

 theft. The better the diet of negroes, the more 

 effectual will such a system become. — It should 

 be executed rigidly, so as to produce a loss of food 

 additional to bread, of double value to the thing 

 stolen, except the guilty person is detected, who 

 ought in that case to sustain the whole punishment, 

 which must either be corporal, or a sale to eome 

 distant place. The latter, combined with the en- 

 joyments provided for slaves by this system, will 

 soon become an object of terror ; and as many 

 buyers care little for moral character, it is unex- 

 ceptionable, provided the seller states it fairly, and 

 records it in the bill of sale, as he ought to do, for 

 his own honor and security. 



A daily allowance of cider will extend the suc- 

 cess of this system for the management of slaves, 

 and particularly its effect of diminishing corporal 

 punishments. But the reader is warned, that a 

 Btern authority, strict discipline, and complete sub- 

 ordination, must be combined with it, to gain any 

 Buccess ai all ; and that so long as white soldiers 

 eannot be kept in order, or rendered useful, with- 



out all three, he is not to expect that black slaves 

 can without either ; nor that those can be govern- 

 ed by the finest threads of the human heart who 

 possess only the coarsest. 



Those tied by habit to the rotation of corn, 

 wheat and pasture, or the three shift system, ob- 

 ject to the inclosing and four shift system, " that 

 having labor adequate to the tilling one third of 

 their arable land, a portion of it would be unem- 

 ployed, by restricting this labor to the cultivation 

 of a fourth only." The rotation of corn, wheat 

 and clover for twojeais, without being cut or gra- 

 zed, need only be confronted with its rival course, 

 to satisfy the reader, that under the latter system, 

 the iburth will soon overtake the third in product, 

 and at length infinitely exceed it. The profit of 

 making greater crops from less land, is visible at 

 once. The same crop from a fourth may produce 

 profit, and yet a loss from a third. If 120 acres 

 of poor land produce 120 barrels of corn, and the 

 expenses of cultivation amount to a barrel an acre, 

 there is no profit; but if 90 acres of the same 

 land are improved by inclosing, so as to produce 

 120 barrels, there will be a profit of 30 barrels. 

 This principle equally applies to every case of an 

 existing profit under the three shift system, be- 

 cause whatever it may be, it is greatly increased 

 by obtaining an equal crop by cultivating less land. 



The error of making the mode of cultivation 

 subservient to fluctuating labor, instead of adapt- 

 ing the labor to permanent land, however egre- 

 gious, cannot properly be termed vulgar, because 

 it is common to men of the best, as well as to 

 those of the meanest understandings. However 

 glaring it is, it really constitutes the most stubborn 

 argument in favor of using labor to kill rather 

 than to improve land ; and though some readers 

 may think it idle to controvert a mistake, appa- 

 rently not within the scope of human weakness to 

 commit, the greater number will, 1 fear, consider 

 the application of labor to the improvement, ra- 

 ther than to the impoverishment of land, as far 

 more ridiculous. The collision between these opi- 

 nions, will excuse the matter of this number, 

 though it may seem trite to some, and visionary 

 to others. 



An application of labor to land, which daily di- 

 minishes the fertility of the land, considered in a 

 national light, is obviously a national evil ; and a 

 habit from which such boundless or wide ruin and 

 depopulation must ensue, supposing it to be gene- 

 ral, seems incapable of deserving the approbation 

 of virtue, or the concurrence of selfishness. If the 

 employment of labor in the course of corn, wheat 

 and pasture, produces a regular impoverishment of 

 the soil, the practice falls within the scope of this 

 observation. 



It is equally at enmity with the purest devotion 

 of self-interest, which ever chilled the human 

 heart. This devotion pants for compound or in- 

 creasing, not for decreasing interest ; and beholds 

 with horror a diminution of principal. Our three 

 shift system gradually destroys the principal, land, 

 and gradually diminishes the interest, crop. If 

 the labor increases as in the case of slaves, the ef- 

 fect is not to enrich, but to impoverish the owner. 



Plight is his resource against the poverty he de- 

 rives from the increase of his slaves. If the ap- 

 plication of labor to the impoverishment of land 

 was universal, an emigration to another world, 

 1 would be the only remedy ; if national, it must 



