84 COLOURED DOMESTICS. [CHAP. XXV. 



ary to Liberia. If it were an object in the South to 

 elevate the blacks, he might be far more instrumental 

 in forwarding the cause of civilisation and Chris 

 tianity by remaining at home, for the negroes like a 

 preacher of their own race. 



The coloured domestic servants are treated with 

 great indulgence at Tuscaloosa. One day some of 

 them gave a supper to a large party of their friends 

 in the house of a family which we visited, and they 

 feasted their guests on roast turkeys, ice-creams, 

 jellies, and cakes. Turkeys here cost only seventy- 

 five cents, or about three shillings the couple, pre 

 pared for the table ; the price of a wild turkey, an 

 excellent bird, is twenty-five cents, or one shilling. 

 After calculating the interest of the money laid out 

 in the purchase of the slaves, and the price of their 

 food, a lawyer undertook to show me that a negro 

 cost less than an English servant ; &quot;but, as two blacks 

 do the work of only one white, it is a mere delusion,&quot; 

 he said, &quot; to imagine that their labour is not dearer.&quot; 

 It is usual, moreover, not to exact the whole of their 

 time for domestic duties. I found a footman, for 

 example, working on his own account as a bootmaker 

 at spare hours, and another getting perquisites by 

 blacking; the student s shoes. 



O 



That slave labour is more expensive than free, is 

 an opinion which is certainly gaining ground in the 

 higher parts of Alabama, and is now professed openly 

 by some Northerners who have settled there. One 

 of them said to me, &quot; Half the population of the 

 South is employed in seeing that the other half do 

 their work, and they who do work, accomplish half 



