254 
LETTERS FROM ALABAMA, 
pensable in Alabama, while the present condition 
endures. A man may have a thousand acres of 
land, but if he have no slaves to cultivate his 
cotton and corn, his acres are a mere waste, for 
free labour is out of the question. I know of 
planters in this neighbourhood, who possess from 
one hundred to two hundred slaves, valued at from 
two hundred to one thousand dollars each (not 
including children, who are commonly sold by 
w^eight, at from seven to ten dollars per pound),- — 
a property which may, perhaps, be worth 100,000 
dollars, or about 20 , 000 ?. sterling. The greatest 
portion of this has come down to the present pos- 
sessor by inheritance ; he has not been trained to 
habits of personal industry, but has always looked 
to his slaves as the means of his livelihood. Now, 
to expect a man voluntarily to throw up such 
an estate as this^ — reducing himself by one act, 
from affluence to absolute poverty and helpless- 
ness-™ is to expect a miracle of disinterested 
benevolence, such as the world does not see once 
in a century. 
Nor is the case much altered, on the supposition 
of legislative emancipation ; for the men who are 
to make the law are the very planters in question, 
or their delegates : and it is vain to expect them 
to do that for themselves collectively, which they 
would not do individually. 
Besides, this aspect of the matter touches only 
the pecuniary interest of the possessors. There is 
another subject which, perhaps, involves a yet 
grander difficulty: What is to become of the 
slaves, if they be emancipated? To throw two 
millions of persons, uneducated and uncivilized, 
smarting under a sense of accumulated wrongs, at 
