FARMERS' REGISTER— AGRICULTURAL REVIEW. 



39 



her slave agriculture had been any thing else than ' a 

 barbarous custom,' not an art,) Virginia ought in ISIO, 

 to have exported 240,000 Jiogsheads, or their equivalent 

 in other produce, and at present nearly the d'oubleot" that. 

 Thus the agricultural exports of Virginiain 1810 would, 

 at the estimated prices of the Custom House at that 

 time, have been seventeen millions of dollars, and now 

 at least thirty-four, while it is known tliat they are not 

 of late years greater than from three to five millions! — 

 This will at once show that the great crops of the colo- 

 nial times were forced, or we may say exaggerated by 

 the possession of means, v.'hich will never again be in 

 her hands. 



" The fact that the whole agricultural products of the 

 state at present, do not exceed in value the exports 

 eighty or ninety years ago, when it contained not a 

 sixth of the population, and when not a third of the sur- 

 face of the state (at jjresent Virginia) was at all occu- 

 pied, is however a very striking proof of the decline of 

 its agriculture. What is now the productive value of 

 an estate of land and negroes in Virginia? We state 

 as the result of extensive inquiry, embracing the last 

 fifteen years, that a very great proportion of the larger 

 23lantations, with from fifty to one hundred slaves, actu- 

 ally bring their proprietors in debt at the end of a short 

 term of years, notwithstanding what would once in Vir- 

 ginia have been deemed very sheer economy ; that 

 much the larger part of the considerable landholders 

 are content, if they barely meet their plantation ex- 

 penses without a loss of capital ; and that, of those who 

 make any profit, it v.-ill in none but rare instances ave- 

 rage more than one to one and a half per cent, on the 

 capital invested. The case is not materially varied 

 with the smaller pro^jrietors. Mr. Randolph of Roa- 

 noke, whose sayings have so generally the raciness and 

 the truth of proverbs, has repeatedly said in Congress, 

 that the time was coming when the masters would run 

 away from the slaves and be advertised by them in the 

 public papers. A decided improvement in the Virginia 

 system is taking place in some parts of the state, which 

 consists in the abandonment of the culture of tobacco 

 for that of wheat, Indian corn, &c. which can be pro- 

 duced on soil too poor for tobacco, requires fewer labor- 

 ers, and will not be so apt to reduce the fertility of the 

 soil still lower. This is a judicious thing in itself, but 

 here again recurs the truth we have already set forth ; 

 plantations with such products as these never can be 

 profitably managed with slave labor. Wheat and corn 

 will not do for this ; let the planter turn his sons in to 

 work his lands, and then these products will sufiice. — 

 Tobacco was the only article which ever could by pos- 

 sibility justify the expense of slave labor in Virginia ; 

 and now we see that the wiser planters ai-e to a great 

 degree withdrawing their lands from it. 



" There is however one way in which capital invested 

 in slaves may be said to be productive. We will now 

 let the reader into a secret of slave-holding economy. — 

 The only form in which it can safely be said that slaves 

 on a plantation are profitable in Virginia, is in the mul- 

 tiplication of their number by births. If the proprie- 

 tor, beginning with a certain number of negroes, can 

 but keep them for a few years from the hands of the 

 sheriff or the slave trader, though their labor may have 

 yielded him not a farthing of nett revenue, he finds that 

 gradually but surely, his capital stock of negroes multi- 

 plies itself, and yields, if nothing else, a palpable inte- 

 rest of young negroes. While very young tliey occa- 

 sion small expense, but they render none or small ser- 

 vice ; when grown up, their labor, as we have already 

 seen, hardly does more than balance the expense they 

 occasion. The process of multiplication will not in this 

 way advance the master towards the point of a nett 

 revenue ; he is not the richer in income with the fifty 

 slaves than with t^venty. Yet Jthese young negroes 

 have their value : and what value ? The value of the 

 slaves so added to his number is the certain price for 

 which they will at any time sell to the southern trader. 

 Should the humanity of the proprietor, however, and 



his rare fortune of keeping out of debt, prevail on him 

 never to treat his slaves as hve stock for traffic, he finds 

 himself incumbered with the same unproductive burden 

 as before. That master alone finds productive value in 

 his increase of slaves, who chooses to turn the increase 

 of his capital, at regular intervals, into money at the 

 highest market price ! There arc, we make haste to 

 say, very many masters with whom it is a fixed rule 

 never to sell a slave, except for incorrigibly bad cha- 

 racter, so long as the pressure of necessity does not 

 compel it. There are some who v.ould feel it to be the 

 wanton breach of a tie next in sanctity to the most sa- 

 cred of the domestic relations. But such sensibility 

 cannot be supposed to be universal. Accordingly, the 

 state does not derive a tangible profit from its slaves: 

 this is true to the heart's content of the adversaries of 

 abolition, and that by means of yearly sales to the negro 

 traders. An account, on which we may rely, sets down 

 the annual number of slaves sold to go out of the state 

 at six thousand, or more than half the number of births ! 

 The population returns show only a yearly addition of 

 four thousand eight hundred to the slaves remaining in 

 the state. If all these sales were the result of the ne- 

 cessities of the masters, while it must forever be la- 

 mented, it would at the same time be the most porten- 

 tous proof of the financial ruin of the planters of tlic 

 state. But if otherwise, if but a common course of 

 business regularly gone into for profit, what volumes 

 does it speak of the degradation to which slavery may 

 reduce its supporters! And will ' the aspiring blood of 

 Lancaster' endure it to be said that a Guinea is still to 

 be found in America, and that Guinea is Virginia? — 

 That children are reared with the express object of sale 

 into distant regions, and that in numbers but little less 

 than the whole number of annual births? * * 



* * Shall the profits to Virginia, from this 

 contaminated source, be alleged as an economical argu- 

 ment to magnify the sacrifice involved in the abolition 

 of slavery, and this too by statesmen who profess to 

 execrate the African slave trade? For ourselves, we 

 can see but little diflTerence between this form of the in- 

 ternal slave trade and the African trade itself. But we 

 have too deep a stake ourselves in the good name of the 

 land of Washington and Jeflferson, to be willing to ad- 

 mit that this form of profit from slaves is cherished by 

 any but a very few persons. This is not then an in- 

 come which Virginia loves to reap. She scorns those 

 who resort to it, and will count lightly of the sacrifice 

 which the extinction of this fountain of impure wealth 

 would involve. 



" Banishing this then out of view, there is no pro- 

 ductive value of slaves in Virginia. Shut up all outlet 

 into the southern and southwestern states, and the price 

 of slaves in Virginia would sink down to a cypher. — 

 Without the possibility of deriving from slave labor any 

 of the benefits, by which in some countries it seems to 

 compensate (whether adequately or not) for its perni- 

 cious moral effects, Virginia is cursed with an institu- 

 tion unproductive of good to her, and potent in mis- 

 chiefs beyond all her fears. If ever there was a specific, 

 which failing of its possible good effects, would induce 

 irremediable pains, it is slavery. We check the strug- 

 gling inclination to paint the woes Virginia has suftered 

 from its miscarriage, in their true colors, but the truth 

 would seem exaggeration. Take then the following 

 temperate detail from the speech of Mr. Marshall, every 

 word of which is true by the experience of Virginia: 



" ' Wherefore, then, object to slavery ? Because it 

 is ruinous to the whites — retai-ds improvement — roots 

 out an industrious population — banishes the yeomanry 

 of the country — deprives the spinner, the weaver, the 

 smith, the shoemaker, the carpenter, of employment and 

 support. This evil admits of no remedy ; it is increas- 

 ing and will continue to increase, until the whole coun- 

 try will be inundated with one black wave covering its 

 whole extent, with a few white faces here and there 

 floating on the surface The master has no capital but 

 what is vested in [slaves;] the father, instead of being 



