FARMERS' REGISTER— AGRICULTURAL REVIEW. 



43 



ocean.' We may with truth affirm, that an attempt to 

 prevent a circulation of this kind of property through 

 tli3 slave-lioldiiig states of our confederacy, would be 

 equally if not more impracticable. But there is a most 

 striking illustration of this now exhibiting before our 

 eyes — the Southampton massacre produced great ex- 

 citement and ajipreliension throughout tlie slave-holding 

 states, and two of them, hitherto the largest pin-chasers 

 of Virginia slaves, have interdicted their iniroduction 

 under severe penalties. Many in our state looked for- 

 ward to an immediate fall iu the price of slaves from this 

 cause — and what has been the result ? Why, wonder- 

 ful to relate, Virginia slaves are now higher than they 

 have been for many years past — and this rise in price 

 has no doubt been occasioned by the number of south- 

 ern purchasers who have visited our state, under the 

 •belief that Virginians had been frightened into a deter- 

 mination to get clear of their slaves at all events ; 'and 

 from an artificial demand in the slave purchasing stales, 

 caused by an apprehension on the pavt of the farmers 

 in those states, that the reguhir supply of slaves would 

 speedily be discontinued by the operation of their non- 

 importation regulations;'* and we are, consequently, at 

 this moment exporting slaves more rapidly, through the 

 operation of the internal slave trade, than for many 

 years past. 



" Let us now examine a moment into the object propos- 

 ed to be accomplished by this scheme. It is contended 

 that free labor is infinitely superior to slave labor in 

 every point of view, and therefore that it is highly desi- 

 rable to exchange the latter for the former, and that this 

 ■will be gradually accomplished by emancipation and 

 deportation ; because the vacuum occasioned by the ex- 

 portation of the slaves will be filled up by the influx of 

 freemen from the north and other portions of the union ; 

 and thus, for every slave we lose, it is contended we shall 

 receive in exchange a free laborer, much more productive 

 and more moral. If we arc not greatly mistaken, this, on 

 analysis, will be found to be a complete specimen of that 

 arithmetical school boy reasoning, which has ever proved 

 so deceptive in politics^ and so ruinous in its practical 

 consequences; and first, let us see whether any thing- 

 will be gained in point of productiveness, by this ex- 

 change of slave labor for free, even upon the avowed 

 principles of the abolitionists themselves. The great 

 objections to slave labor, seem to be — First, that it is 

 unproductive, or at least, not as productive as free la- 

 bor ; and Secondly, that it is calculated to rejiiel free 

 labor from the sphere in which it is exercised. This 

 latter effect has been briefly and more ingeniously urg- 

 ed by a writer in the Richmond Enquirer of the 3d of 

 iNlarch 1832, over the signatiu'c of 'York,' than by 

 any one who is known to us, and we shall consequently 

 introduce an extract from his essay. 



" ' Society naturally revolves itself,' says this writer, 

 ' into three classes. The first comprehends professional 

 men, capitaHsts and large landed proprietors ; the se- 

 cond, embraces artizans and small proprietors ; and the 

 third, is composed of common laborers. Now we are a 

 society placed in the anomalous predicament of being 

 totally without a laboring class ; for all our labor is per- 

 formed by slaves, who constitute no part of that society, 

 and who quo ad that society, may be regarded as brutes 

 or machines. This circumstance ojjerates directly as a 

 check upon the increase of white population. For, as 

 some intelligence cr property is required to enable a 

 man to belong to either of the two first classes above 

 enumerated, (and which I have remarked ate the only 



* From Louisiana, many of the farmers themselves, have 

 come into our state, for the purpose of purchasing their otcn 

 slaves, and thereby evading the laics. There are in fact, 

 so 7nany plans which will effectually defeat all these preven- 

 tive regulations, that we may consider their rigid enforce- 

 ment, utterly impracticable ; and moreover, as the excite- 

 ment produced by the late insurrection in Virginia, dies 

 away, so will these laws be forgotten, and remain as dead 

 letters upon the statute bocks. 



classes which we have,) and as no one with ordinary 

 self-respect, can submit to sink below them, and become 

 outcasts, the immediate tendency of the supernumei-ary 

 members is to emigration.' We will not for the pre- 

 sent, dispute the premises of the very intelligent and 

 graceful writer, from whom we have copied "the above 

 extract; we have endeavored throughout this review, to 

 show that our adversaries are not justified in their con- 

 clusions, even if we admit the truth of their premises. 

 Now, what is the conclusion arrived at by our adversa- 

 ries, from the premises just mentioned ? That we must 

 deport our slaves as fiist as possible, and leave the va- 

 cuum to be filled by free labor. In the first place, then, 

 we say upon their oicn principles even, they cannot expect 

 free labor to take the place of slave, for every one ac- 

 knowledges it utterly impossible to send away, at once, 

 all our slaves — there is scarcely we presume, a single 

 abolitionist in Virginia, v.ho has ever supposed, that we 

 can send away more than the annual increase. Now, 

 then, we ask, how can any one reasonably expect that 

 the taking away of two or three negroes from a body 

 of one himdred, (and this is a much greater proportion 

 than the abolitionists hope to colonize,) can destroy that 

 prejudice against laboring with the blacks, which is re- 

 presented as preventing the whites from laboring, and 

 as sending them in multitudes to the west. If we are 

 too proud to work in a field with fifty negro men this 

 year, we shall surely be no more disposed to do it next 

 year, because one negro, the increase of the fifty, has been 

 sent to Liberia ; and consequently the above reason- 

 ing, if it prove any thing, proves that we must prevent 

 our laboring classes (the blacks) from increasing, be- 

 cause whites will not work with them — although the 

 whites will be just as averse to working with them af- 

 ter you have checked their increase as before ! 



" But let us suppose, that by some kind of logical le- 

 gerdemain, it can be proven that free labor will supply 

 the place of slave labor, which is deported to Africa — even 

 then, we think they will fail upon their other great prin- 

 ciple, that free labor is better than slave, the truth of 

 which principle for the present, we are willing to allow — 

 and tlieir whole argument fails, for this plain and palpa- 

 ble reason, that lice labor by association with slave 

 labor, must inevitably be brought down to its level and 

 even below it, — for the vices of the slave you may cor- 

 rect, by means of your authority over him, but those of 

 the associate free laborer you cannot. Every farmer in 

 Virginia, can testify to the truth of this assertion. He 

 knows full well, that if he employs a white laborer to 

 work with a black one, even at job ivork, where of course 

 the inducement to labor is greatest — he will not do more 

 than the negro, and perhaps in a majority of cases, he 

 will not do as much, V\^hat then might we expect of 

 him, if he should enter the field with fifty fold his num- 

 ber of blacks, to work along v,'ith them regularly through 

 the four seasons of the year? We hazard little in say- 

 ing, he would be a more unproductive laborer than the 

 black, for he would soon have all his idle propensities, 

 without beingsubjected to the same salutary restraint. 



"It is a well known general fact, to all close observers 

 of mankind, that if two dift'erent grades of labor as to 

 productiveness be associated together in the same occu- 

 pation, tlie higher has a tendency to descend to the level 

 of the lower. Schmalz, in his Political Economy, says, 

 that the indolence and carelessness of the serfs in the 

 north of Europe, corrupt the free laborers who come in- 

 to contact with them. Jones, in his volume on Rents, 

 says, ' a new road is at this time (1S31) making, which 

 is to connect Hamburg and the Elbe with Berlin ; it pass- 

 es over the sterile sands, of which so much of the north of 

 Germany consists, and tlie materials for it arc supplied 

 by those isolated blocks of granite, of which the pre- 

 sence on the surface of those sands forms a notorious 

 geological puzzle. These blocks, transported to the 

 line of road, are broken to the proper size by workmen, 

 some of whom are Prussian free laborers, others Lei- 

 beigeners of the Mecklenburg territory, through a part of 

 winch the road passes. They are paid a stipulated sum 



