CALCAREOUS MANURES— THEORY. 23 



check, either prudential, moral, or physical. These several checks to the 

 increase of population operate more or less on all free persons, whether rich 

 or poor ; and slaves, situated as ours are, perhaps are placed in the only 

 possible circumstances in which no restraint whatever obstructs the pro- 

 pagation and increase of the race. From the general existence of this 

 state of circumstances, the particular effects may be naturally deduced ; 

 and facts completely accord with what these circumstances promise. A 

 gang of slaves on a farm will often increase to four times their original 

 number, in thirty or forty years. If a farmer is only able to feed and 

 maintain his slaves, their increase in value may double the whole of his 

 capital originally vested in farming, before he closes the term of an ordinary 

 life. But few farms are able to support this increasing expense, and also 

 furnish the necessary supplies to tlie family of the owner ; whence very 

 many owners of large estates, in lands and negroes, are throughout their 

 lives too poor to enjoy the comforts of wealth, or to encounter the expenses 

 necessary to improve their unprofitable farming. A man so situated, may 

 be said to be a slave to his own slaves. If the owner is industrious and 

 frugal, he may be able to support the increasing number of his slaves, and 

 to bequeath them undiminished to his children. But the income of few 

 persons increases as fast as their slaves ; and if not, the consequence must 

 be, that some of them will be sold, that the others may be supported ; and 

 the sale of more is perhaps afterwards compelled, to pay debts incurred in 

 striving to put off that dreaded alternative. The slave first almost starves 

 his master, and at last is eaten by him — at least he is exchanged for his 

 value in food. The sale of slaves is always a severe trial to their owner. 

 Obstacles are opposed to it, not only by sentiments of -humanity and of re- 

 gard for those who have passed their lives in his service — but every feeling 

 he has of false shame comes to aid ; and such sales are generally postponed 

 until compelled by creditors, and are carried into effect by the sheriff, or by 

 the administrator of the debtor. But when the sale finally takes place, its 

 magnitude makes up for all previous delays. Do what we will, the surplus 

 slaves viust be sent out of a country which is not able to feed them ; and 

 these causes continue to supply the immense numbers that are annually sold 

 and carried away from lower Virginia, without even producing the poli- 

 tical benefit of lessening the actual number remaining. Nothing can check 

 this forced emigration of blacks, and the voluntary emigration of whites, 

 except increased production of food, obtained by enriching our lands, and 

 the consequent increase of farming profits. No effect will more certainly 

 follow its cause than this —that whenever our land is so improved as to 

 produce double its present supply of food, it will also have, and will retain, 

 double its present amount of population. The improving farmer who adds 

 one hundred bushels of corn to the previous product of his country, also 

 effectually adds, and permaHcntly, to its population, as many persons as 

 his increase of product will feed and support. 



CHAPTER III. 



THE DIFFERENT CAPACITIES OF SOILS FOR RECEIVING IMFROVEMENT. 



As far as the nature of the subjects permitted, the foregoing chapters 

 have been merely explanatory and descriptive. The same subjects will be 

 resumed and more fully treated in the course of the following general argu- 

 ment, the premises of which are tiie facts and circumstances that have been 



