38 



FARxMERS' REGISTER— AGRICULTURAL REVIEW. 



emigrants to America, are not j^eople who would prefer 

 to make tlieir home in the midst of the extreme discom- 

 forts and often cruel privations which the pioneers un- 

 dergo. Besides, what rejDcls all those emigrants who 

 are not agriculturists, and whose occupations lead them 

 among crowds of men ? Of immigration into the slave- 

 holding stales, except in some of the western states, 

 where the principle of slavery is not yet predominant, 

 it may be said there is none. The emigrants under- 

 stand that their hope of employment there is forestalled, 

 that the only labor wanted is indigenous to the soil ; 

 they feel that that labor is incompatible with their own, 

 and they shrink from the idea of giving their children, 

 who are to live by manual labor, a home in a slave- 

 labor land, while fair regions, dedicated as well to do- 

 mestic as to civil freedom, tempt their adventurous foot- 

 steps. With this evil may be classed the tendency of 

 the whites of these states to emigrate from the soil of 

 their birth. 10. Slavery begets inevitably a train of 

 habits and ojiinions which^ to say the least, are destruc- 

 tive of all those springs of prosperity which depend on 

 economy, frugality, enterprise. Young people bred up 

 to be maintained by slaves are apt to imbibe improvi- 

 dent habits. Of its favorable operation on the spirit of 

 liberty in the whites, we are not disposed to t;uestiou 

 the well known opinion of Mr. Burke ; the passage we 

 refer to, is itself an evidence of the profound knowledge 

 he possessed of the human heart. We consider it truer, 

 however, of the spirit of liberty in its aspect of resist- 

 ance to foreign oppression: in its home aspect it is, we 

 think, comparatively just. But as relates to its opera- 

 tion in equalizing the whites with each other, v/e throw 

 out the suggestion without note or comment, that no 

 property gives rise to greater inequalities than slave pro- 

 perty. We question, too, whether it could well be main- 

 tained that the beau ideal of a nabob — (we use the word 

 in its fair, not invidious sense,) — endow him with noble- 

 ness of soul, sensibility, the utmost delicacy of honor, 

 generosity, and hospitality — is the finest specimen of 

 our species. There are many solid and essential virtues 

 (wholly disconnected with those named) which could 

 not so well be dispensed with as some of those, in going 

 to make uj) the being of whom par excellence nature 

 might stand up and say ' this is a man.' 



" We can now venture to define pretty accurately 

 what sort of a country that must be, which having re- 

 gard solely to the economincal principles, is adapted to 

 be for a long term of years a prosperous slave-labor 

 state. It mvist possess an extremely rich soil, hence 

 under most circumstances be a comparatively small 

 country, (otherwise the greater the difficulty of finding 

 a uniformly fine soil, and consequently the impossibility 

 of making the ivhole state flourish,) in a latitude the 

 products of which, from their scarcity in the world, 

 the pei-manent demand for them, and the possibility of 

 rearing them in but few spots on the globe, are sure of 

 a market at high prices, where the culture of such crops 

 requires that the slaves be worked together in bodies, 

 so that the constant supervision necessary over them 

 may be performed by a few whites, and finally in a 

 chmate so nearly tropical, or otherwise precarious, as 

 to make the esjjosure and toil insupportable to free 

 (say xohite) laborers. A country unithig all these re- 

 quisites may be prospei-ous with slave labor. It pos- 

 sesses certain sources of wealth, by the help of which 

 it may dispense with many others, that are the neces- 

 sary resource of counti'ies of moderate fertility, and 

 which are under different general circumstances. Such 

 a country seems to need the moral-economical springs 

 less. It will of necessity contain a sparse white popu- 

 lation, but it may be formidable in war from its superior 

 relative wealth. The countries growing cotton, rice, 

 and the sugarcane, bountifully, are of this description. 

 For aught we know, Brazil may fall under the defini- 

 tion. The principal West India islands appear to be 

 entitled to expect prosperity, (supposing no adverse ad- 

 ventitious circumstances) but Louisiana unites all the 

 requisites more perfectly perhaps than any other coun- 



tr3^ South Carolina and Georgia do it but imperfectly, 

 on account of there being so large a portion of both of 

 them to which such description would not at all apply ; 

 Alabama and Mississippi do more perfectly than tliey. 

 But it may boldly be said that Virginia possesses scarce- 

 ly a single requisite to make a prosperous slave-labor stale. 



" She has not the inexhaustible rich soils : her earth origi- 

 nally yielded fair returns to hard labor judiciously di- 

 rected, but all such soils, as she has learned by bitter ex- 

 perience, are fated, under the hands of slaves, to dete- 

 rioration down to utter barrenness. She has too large a 

 territory : the curse of the presence of slaves and the 

 monopoly of labor in their hands, is all over the state ; 

 the spots really adapted for profitable slave labor are 

 few and scattered. She has not the so7't of products : only 

 a small part of the state ))roduces cotton ; the culture of 

 tobacco, which was originally the general staple of Old 

 Virginia Proper, after destroying immense tracts of good 

 lands, is shrinking into a very diminished compass, and 

 scarcely repays the cost of production under the ave- 

 rage prices of the last fifteen years. If any one would 

 cast his eye over the list of the Tobacco Inspections es- 

 tablished by law, in the revised code of Virginia, he 

 would smile to see places mentioned for inspection ware- 

 houses, in quarters of Virginia where no man has ever 

 seen a hundred weight of tobacco. Besides this, there 

 is an unlimited competition springing up around her, to 

 reduce prices to nothing. With regard to the crops of 

 tobacco of the western states, we can say with confi- 

 dence, that there is a regular annual increase in quanti- 

 ty, with great imjirovement in its curing and manage- 

 ment; so that it is fiist taking the place of Virginia to- 

 bacco for consumption in the leaf in the north of Europe, 

 and as strips in Great Britain. The article of tobacco 

 is novf cultivated in Ohio, Kentucky, Illinois, Indiana, 

 Missouri, Tennessee, and in Canada, as well as Mary- 

 land, Virginia, the Carolinas and Georgia. The quan- 

 tity raised is altogether too great for consumption. The 

 other jiroducts of Virginia are the ordinary growth of 

 all temperate, and most northern regions. She has not 

 the climate which would put slaves on the vantage ground 

 above whites : every part of her territory is adapted to 

 the men of all climates, and she has not a foot of soil 

 which nature declares that none but blacks shall culti- 

 vate, nor a product the cultivation of which demands 

 lives and labors baser than those of white men. To- 

 bacco is notoriously cultivated with success by whites 

 in any part of the world, which is temperate enough to 

 grow it. It is then a total miscalculation in every point 

 of view — a false position for Virginia to have allotted to 

 herself the exclusive labor of slaves. 



"But appeal is made to the history of the economy of 

 Virginia to contradict this assertion. Is it demanded 

 for instance, why Virginia should jirosper before the 

 revolution as she .did, with her slave labor, if there be a 

 fatal error in her adoption of slavery ? We may an- 

 swer, that there is no great mystery in that. Virginia 

 while a colony never did furnish the miracles of great 

 and sudden fortunes which the West India and South 

 Carolina nabobs used to exhibit in England. Adam 

 Smith in his day made this remark. At that time fine 

 tobacco was an article only grown in Virginia and 

 Maryland, and the prices were relatively to the times 

 very high ; whereas now and for all future time, a com- 

 petition wholly beyond the conception of that day has 

 completely revolutionized the market. But admit that 

 the colony was very prosperous : if from this it is meant 

 to argue that Virginia may again be so under the same 

 system, we hope it will not at least be denied that the 

 revolution found almost all the lands which had been 

 opened nearly or quite exhausted, showing plainly that 

 the preceding hundred years had been passed in fits of 

 profitable planting from the frequent resort to succes- 

 sive new lands. Mr. Taylor of Caroline had under- 

 stood that 60,000 hogsheads of tobacco were exported 

 from Virginia, when the whole population did not ex- 

 ceed 1 50,"000. Had the fertility of the country by pos- 

 sibihty rc'nained undimijiished, (as he says it would if 



