SOUTHERN CULTIVATOR. 
133 
excessive heat of our summers, and would leave us on the 
whole, nothing to gain by an exchange with any other 
climate whatever. Apart from those portions of the State 
v/hich are confessedly sickly, yet where land is still high- 
est priced, if we remember the rheumatisms, and colds, 
and consumptions of the North, and the lake fevers and 
chills of the North West, we shall be satisfied with the 
measure of health, with which the Almighty has blessed 
us, and will conclude that our climate, as a whole, instead 
of depreciating, should appreciate the value of our lands 
Does the sparseness of our white population diminish 
the value our lands 1 This cannot be the case, for in 
those portions of the South in which the population is 
most dense, the land is least valuable, and where it is most 
sparse the lands are most valuable. Our population in 
Georgia is sufficiently dense, and capital has sufficiently 
accumulated to give land a higher price, if it were a good 
investment. It is not so considered, and hence the heavy 
investments in Railroads, Factories, and the Mechanic 
Arts. 
The money is here, but there is either a deficiency in 
the land or in the system of managing it, which makes 
other investments more lucrative than in land even at its 
ruinously low prices. 
Can the low price of our lands be attributed to the want 
of value in our products 1 There is no Agricultural pro- 
duct of the North, which cannot be raised and with as 
large a yield in some parts of the South. This remark is 
not made hastily, but after careful reflection. The prices 
of some of these products are higher there than here, and 
with others the reverse, so as to equalize the whole. We 
have in addition our most valuable staples, rice and cot- 
ton, which are peculiar to the South. It is no deficiency 
in the value of products, which occasions the low price ol 
land at the South. 
If the comparative worthlessness of our landed proper- 
ty, be not owing to the cheap fresh lands at the West, to 
slavery, to defective climate, to sparseness of population 
or a deficiency in the value of our products, to what is it 
owing'? 
So much space has already been occupied by this article 
that the answer to this question must be reserved for our 
next number. — South Countryman. 
RE-OPENING OF THE SEAVE TRADE. 
Editors Southern Cultivator— The fairness and 
liberality you have exhibited in publishing the views and 
arguments of your correspondents adverse to your own 
on the subject of re-opening the Slave Trade, encourage 
me to hope that you will permit me to express^ to your 
readers some objections which, I think, may be reason- 
ably made to positions taken by you in your article on 
that subject in the March number of the Cultivator, re- 
plying to a query propounded by Mr. Miller, in a former 
number. 
That gentleman asked what warrant we had that the 
‘'additional labor,” proposed by you to be introduced, 
would be employed in reclaiming our exhausted lands, 
and not in “cutting down and wearing out more land V' 
You reply, in substance, that the re-opening of the 
slave trade, by cheapening slaves, would place that 
species of property within the reach of non slaveholders, 
who are now unable to purchase, by reason of the high 
prices at wnich slaves are held ; that “the system of 
farming and farm economy” of such “would be less com- 
mercial than that of cotton growers, and, consequently, 
less injurious to the land ;” that “they would naturally 
keep more stock, make and apply more manure.” 
This reply, if I have rightly understood you, is hardly 
satisfactory ; for 1 cannot see what there is in the circum 
stance of a man’s becoming the owner of a “lew slaves,” 
which would “naturally” incline him to adopt a system 
ot farming less commercial than that of cotton growers. 
There are a number of non-slaveholders around us here — 
all desirous to own slave property. Every one of them 
who owns land (with one exception) is engaged in rais- 
ing cotton. Some have rented land to grow that staple. 
None of them keep any more stock, in proportion, than 
the large slaveholders. They do not make and apply as 
much manure. 
Now, what reason have we to suppose that these per- 
sons, when they shall have become the owners of a few 
slaves, will adopt a different system of caltivation 7 Is 
there not very strong ground for believing to the contrary! 
When a non-slaveholder becomes possessed of a negro or 
two does he usually turn his attention to raising “stock,” to 
making and applying manures 7 No, sirs! In nine cases 
out of ten he puts his newly acquired slaves to raising 
cotton to get more money to buy more slaves. The “ad- 
ditional labor” is nearly always employed, as Mr Miller 
says, in “cutting down and wearing out more land.” 
Not that I believe this “wear and tear” system to be a 
necessary concomitant of negro slavery. I believe to tha 
contrary. No other species of labor is so controllable — 
none more efficient when properly directed — to none, is 
the saving and application of manures better suited. And 
when the planters shall turn their attention in earnest to 
this important branch of agriculture, they will excel in that 
as they have in many other things. 
The truth is, that the system of culture which has 
been adopted at the South is due in part to the fact that 
the j'rincipal crops are those which require the labor ef 
the whole year to make ar>d save them. But the maia 
cause of this “cutting down and wearing out” system is 
to be found fn the circumstance that, up to this time, we 
have always had an abundance of fertile land, whick 
could be bought low prices. 
And the planters will continue to practice this system 
until there are no more cheap, fertile lands to “wear out,” 
unless they shall be convinced by the arguments of the 
Cultivator and other agricultural journals, that their true 
interests require a different mode of culture. 
The re-opening of the slave trade, by adding io the 
wearing'' force, will hasten the coming of the period 
when planters will be forced to devote a portion of their 
labor to the improvement of their lands. But that ii will 
in any other way, or at any earlier period bring about a 
change of system, I do not believe. 
You think tnat the safety of the “institution” depends, 
in some degree, on the reduction of the present high 
prices of slaves, thereby placing them within the ability 
to purchase of the non-slavtholders. You say, “A iargs 
majority of Southern voters own no slaves” — '■'’o.poor man't 
vote counts just as much as the vote of a man who is - 
worth a million and holds a thousand slaves” — “the peo- 
ple of the South appear to us as having made up their 
mind to have one of two things; either the benefit of 
free trade in slaves, or all the benefits of free labor withoui 
slaves.” I 
Now, Messrs. Editors, I think you are mistaken as to 
the relative voting strength of the two classes. A fair 
enumeration will show that slaveholders have a majority, 
I know I shall be confronted with the Census 'Tables^ 
which make the number of slaveholders a small minority 
of the total white population. But if we recur to the man- 
ner in whi- h the census was taken, we shall find reason 
to believe that, instead of “slave holders” in the census 
we should read ''•slave owners” and that a large class dt 
persons, connected, m various ways, with these owners 
who are slo.veholders to all intents and purposes, stq counts 
e.'i in the residue of white population along with the othet 
class. Let me illustrate. I he white population of a plan- 
tation may consist of an owner, his wife, six sons, four 
daughters, the oveiseer w'lh a family ot five — total, 
eighteen. The census report for such a plantation wo«iid 
