84 
SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR 
ion now regards the buying and selling of mules as right 
and proper ; while it regards the buying and selling of 
negroes as wrong and improper. If it is right to hold per- 
sons as slaves in Africa and America at all, then it can- 
not be worse to transport slaves from the Niger to Savan- 
nah than from the Potomac to Savannah for sale, as is 
now done. Every slaveholder who opposes free trade in 
slaves diS property, strikes a deadlier blow against the in- 
stitution than any abolitionist possibly can strike; for he 
has the object of his attack entirely within his reach. 
Let us carefully arialyse this problem a little farther. It 
will not be denied that a large majority of Southern voters 
own no slaves ; and that, under our republican system, 
a poor man’s vote counts just as much as the vote of a 
man who is worth a million, and holds a thousand slaves. 
A large majority of these non-slaveholders are friendly to 
the institution, and would bfe glad to buy a few negroes 
from Africa to lighten the labor of their own hands. Free 
trade in this kind of Southern property would enable them 
to become slaveholders. 
But to allow them to import slaves as freely as cattle 
are imported from England, might interfere a little with 
slaveholding as a close monopoly; and, therefore, this 
right to purchase negro laborers where they can be had on 
the best terms is denied them. What, now, are these non- 
slaveholding voters to do to obtain their rights in this 
matter? Clearly, one of two things: Either to carry out 
the principle of free trade in slaves in spite of the hos'ility 
of the very selfish monopolists, by using their power at 
the ballot box for that purpose; or join the anti-slavery 
sentiment of the free States, and invite the monopolists to 
emigrate with their “peculiar institution” out of the re- 
public. It cannot be wise and proper for one-fourth of the 
citizens of any State to hold slaves, and at the same time 
unwise and improper for the other three-fourths to do like- 
wise. If to add ten thousand more slaves to those al- 
ready in Mississippi would injure the State by “wearing 
out more land” as is suggested by Mr. Miller; then the 
removal of a like number of those already there, to Central 
America or Africa, will lesson by so much the damage 
now done to its virgin soil. Our esteemed correspondent 
must see that this argument against free trade in slaves 
proves quite too much. Slaveholders have unwittingly 
done the institution great harm by asserting that, if an at- 
tenipt is made to cultivate one-fifth of the five hundred 
million acres of wild land in the South by a corresponding 
addition of slave labor, it will inflict on the planting States 
a great and lasting injury. When the owner of a tree de- 
liberately affirms that it bears such poisonou.s fruit as to 
be dangerous to all that come near its shade, and that to 
increase this fruit will be fatal to the whole neighborhood, 
his statement, proves conclusively that such a tree 
ought to be cut down and extirpated root and branch. If 
the tree of slavery bears such fruit, then slaveholders are 
right in preventing, ifthey can,the bringing of another seed 
from Africa; but if the fruit is such as really sells high in 
Southern markets, then let all have a seed to plant and 
cultivate who desire it. To drop the figure, the people of 
the South appear to us as having made up their minds to 
have one of two things; either all the benefits of free 
trade in slaves, or all the benefits of free labor without 
slaves. This alone will dispose of every thing like mo- 
nopoly in Southern labor. With free trade in slave labor, 
every man can buy according to his means, or not bay 
at all, if he prefers. With free labor and no slavery, al 
will then stand on an equality to prosecute whatever busi- 
ness shall be thought most profitable. But a system that 
talks turkey for one man’s dinner, and talks buzzard for 
another man’s dinner is not quite the system to suit the 
party expected to dine on buzzard. Non-slaveholders 
have, or easily can have, a plenty of land to cultivate; 
and what they most need is cheap and reliable labor. 
This is their turkey which is not yet caught. They can 
neither buy nor hire negroes at a fair price, and, there- 
fore, they are compelled to look to Africa, or Europe, few: 
laborers. Their system of farming and farm economy 
will be less commercial than that of cotton growers, and, 
consequently, less injurious to the land. They will na- 
ttwally keep more stock, make and apply more manure; 
and thus improve rather than impoverish the soil of the 
South. 
The State of Georgia now contains about thirty million 
acres of wild land ; and the handful of negroes (some 
400,000) within its empire dimensions, only stand in the 
way of its proper cultivation Increase their number to 
a million, and then the industrial force of the State would 
do fora beginning. The single county in New York from 
which the writer came, produced in 1849, 350,000 bush- 
els of wheat more than was raised in all the “Empire 
State of the, South.” With labor suited to the work, 
Georgia might easily grow twenty million bushels of 
wheat a year on less than one- thirtieth part of her territory. 
We are willing to allow twenty million acres for wilder- 
ness, in which to rear up wild hogs, wild cattle and wild 
children, and think that ought to satisfy anything short of 
total wildness. L 
Treatment of Asthma.— A writer in the Boston Medi- 
cal Journal describes what he has found to be an efficaci- 
ous remedy for the asthma, the administering of the hy- 
drate of potassa. Employed in five-grain doses three 
times a day, the effect is immediate and marked. The 
administration of it is soon followed by a slight expector- 
ation of the viscid mucus, attended with an amelioration 
of al! the most urgent symptoms. In hay asthma — caused 
by certain perfumes, vapors, &c. — this remedy produce* 
the same relief. The writer add: “That hydrate of potas- 
sa possesses a specific influence upon the air passages 1 
think is undoubted, and I am prepared to learn that it wil 
be found one of our most efficacious remedies in ‘pseudo- 
membranous’ croup, to disengage the false membrane aftw 
the inflammatory action has been reduced.” 
All subscriptions to the Southern CultivatoT coai- 
mences with the January number. 
I^^Rise early to your business, learn good things aad 
oblige good men ; these are three things you shall neT«r 
repent. 
