FARMERS' REGISTER— AGRICULTURAL REVIEW. 



37 



applicable to Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama, If 

 the prosperity of any of these is founded in circum- 

 stances of soil, climate, products, &c. of such nature 

 and degree, as that it will not sink under the precarious 

 specrHc (neck or nothing) of slave labor, « la bonne heiire 

 — let them go on. This is undoubtedly the case more 

 or less of the sugar, cotton, and rice plantation states 

 But it is not the case of Virginia. "We propose to treat 

 " I. Of the injury slavery does to the prosperity of 

 Virginia. Let us cursorily indicate some of the evils 

 which the experience of the United States shows to be 

 consequent on slavery under ordinary circumstances, 

 some of which Virginia has suffered in common with 

 other states, and of some of which she has been pecu- 

 liarly tiie victim. 1. An inertness of most of the springs 

 of prosperity — a want of what is commonly called pub- 

 lic spirit. 2. Where slave labor prevails, it is scarcely 

 practicable for free labor to co-exist with it to any great 

 extent. Not that the latter would not deserve the pre- 

 ference, both for cheapness and efficienc)^, but that many 

 obvious causes conspire to prevent the rivalship being 

 perssveringly sustained. Freedom being itself regard- 

 ed as a privilege in a nation that has slaves, there is a 

 natural tendency to consider exemption from manual 

 labor as the chief mark of elevation above the class of 

 slaves. In a republic this tendency is vastly increased. 

 A disposition to look on all manual labor as menial and 

 degrading, may safely be set down as a distemper of 

 the most disastrous kind. We shall not dilate on this. 

 It must instantly be admitted that nothing can com- 

 pensate a nation for the destruction of all the virtues 

 which flow from mere industry. Virginia has experi- 

 enced this most signally ; had her slave labor been ten 

 times as productive as it has been, and grant that she 

 possesses all the lofty qualities ever claimed for her in 

 their highest degree, she would still have been the loser 

 by contracting this ruinous disjiosition. Nothing but 

 the most abject necessity would lead a white man to 

 liire himself to work in the fields under the overseer, 

 and we must say that we cannot refuse to sympathize 

 with the free laborer who finds it irksome to perform 

 hard work by the side of a slave. 3. Agriculture is the 

 best basis of national wealth. 'Arts,' says that eminent 

 farmer Mr. John Taylor of Caroline, ' improve the 

 works of nature ; when they injure it they are not arts 

 but barbarous customs. It is the office of agriculture 

 as an art not to impoverish, but to fertilize, the soil and 

 make it mo1-e useful than in its natural state. Such is 

 the effect of every species of agriculture which can as- 

 pire to the name of an art.' Now it is a truth that an 

 improving system of agriculture cannot be carried on by 

 slaves. The negligent wasteful habits of slaves who 

 are not interested in the estate, and the exacting cupidi- 

 ty of transient overseers who are interested in extorting 

 from the earth the greatest amount of production, ren- 

 der all slave agriculture invariably exhausting. How 

 many plantations worked by slaves are there in Vir- 

 ginia which are not perceptibly suffering the sui-e pro- 

 cess of exhaustion? Perhaps not one, except a few on 

 the water courses, composed of the alluvial soils which 

 are virtually inexhaustible. The uncertainty of the 

 profits of a crop generally deters the planters in Vir- 

 ginia from giving standing wages to their overseers — 

 indeed, it has too often happened that the salary of the 

 overseer has absorbed all the proceeds. Hence it is 

 usual to give him, instead of salary, a share of the crop. 

 The murderous effects of this on the fertility of the soil 

 may well be conceived. An estate submitted to over- 

 seers entitled to a share of the crop, (who are changed 

 of course, almost yearly) suffers a thousandfold more 

 than would English farms put out on leases of one or 

 two years to fresh lessees. Twenty-one years is thought 

 too short a term there. 4. It is a fact that no soil but 

 the richest, and that in effect inexhaustible, can be pro- 

 fitably cultivated by slaves. In the Legislature of Vir- 

 ginia it was repeatedly said that her lands were poor, 

 and for that reason none but slaves could be brought to 

 vfork them well. On the contrary, poor lands and those 



of moderate fertility can never rep.ay the expense of 

 slave labor, or bear up under the vices of that slovenly 

 system. 5. In modern times, in most cases where slave 

 labor prevails, it has been found in plantation states and 

 colonies. There are many obvious reasons why, if 

 profitable any where, it must only be there. Now, if 

 iliis be the case, it would appear that slavery to be pro- 

 fitable IS essentially incompatible with a dense popula- 

 tion — at all events, with a relatively dense population 

 of freemen. No country can afford to be given up ex- 

 clusively to agriculture in the shape of plantation til- 

 lage, or to devote the entire attention of all the men it 

 rears to that occupation, except its soil be extremely 

 fertile and its products of tlie richest nature. Under 

 other circumstances, the soil and products not making 

 adequate returns, there is a vast waste of capabilities 

 for other purposes, which the surface of many countries 

 might answer. 6. It seems agreed among the econo- 

 mists of the south that slaves are unfit for the business 

 of manufactures. A most sensible essay was published 

 in Philadelphia in 1827 by Dr. Jones, afterwards super- 

 intendent of the patent office at Washington, to show 

 that slaves are not necessarily unfit for this employ- 

 ment. We were persuaded at the time, that, if his po- 

 sition r.ere true, it would prove the most important of 

 all suggestions in an economical view, to Virginia. It 

 has surprised us, indeed, that the advocates of the ]Dcr- 

 petuity of slavery in Virginia have not seen the im- 

 mense advantage of such an argument to their side of 

 the question. But the entire current of opinion in the 

 south (led by an invincible sentiment of hostility to the 

 protective system) is that states where slave labor pre- 

 vails, and where the whole capital for labor is vested in 

 slaves, cannot manufacture. It will need no words to 

 show what an injury this voluntary disability inflicts 

 on a country which may happen to liave the most feli- 

 citous capacities for manufactures. 7. Where slave la- 

 bor prevails, it would appear that the rearing a large 

 class of skilful mechanics is greatly discouraged. The 

 slaves themselves of course never make mechanics ex- 

 cept of the coarsest description. Although the whites 

 in the cities are not entirely averse to becoming arti- 

 sans, yet, in the country, the natural policy of the rich 

 planters to have mechanics among their slaves to do all 

 the needful business on their estates, deprives the white 

 mechanics of their chief encouragement to perfect them- 

 selves in their trades, diminishes the demand for their 

 services, and generally has the effect of expelling them 

 from one neighborhood to another until they finally ex- 

 patriate themselves. 8. Slave labor is, without contro- 

 versy, dearer than free. It suffices to state, that in the 

 one case you have a class of laborers that have a direct 

 interest in doing and saving as little as possible, so that 

 they barely escape punishment ; in the other a class, 

 every member of wliich has a direct interest in pro- 

 ducing and saving as much as possible. But this posi- 

 tion is too well established to justify any one in an ar- 

 gument to prove it. The categories wherein the con- 

 trary holds true are cumulatively : a. it must be in a 

 plantation country ; 6. it must be in a soil extremely 

 and inexhaustibly fertile ; c. where the products are of 

 the greatest value ; d. and after all, it must be where 

 white men cannot endure the climate and the nature of 

 the cultivation. 9. The experience of the United States 

 has shown that slavery decidedly discourages immigra- 

 tion (to use Dr. Southey's word) from foreign countries 

 into the sections of country where it is prevalent. It is 

 not a sufiicient answer to this to say that the emigrants 

 are in general allured to the United States by the temp- 

 tation of the rich country in the west, so that slavery 

 cannot be said to repel them from the southern states. 

 It is not true of the best emigrants that come to our 

 shores, that they are intent on pushing into the path- 

 less forest, to be there banished from all the blessings of 

 a settled country. This is in fact the positive passion 

 of none but the hardy native pioneers, the Boones of 

 Vermont, of New York, and Virginia. The Germans, 

 for example, who are perhaps the most valuable of the 



