tal upon the land. Either additional slaves must be purchased, or else a certain portion of the labor now employed in producing a small crop, must be diverted from immediate production, and employed in operations undertaken with a view to distant returns. But this is an expenditure which the greater number of planters cannot afford. As it is, with all their slaves employed in scourging out of the land the greatest immediate produce, their expenses exceed their incomes, and they are running into debt every year. They are in no condition to risk the loss or curtailment of a single crop by changing the established method of cultivation, and attempting the introduction of improvements.

More yet, it is positively bad economy for a Virginia planter to undertake the improvement of his estate. Labor is the only means of resuscitating the exhausted lands of Virginia. Slave labor is the only kind of labor which in the present condition of things can be employed for that purpose. But in the slave market, the Virginia planter, even though he has money at command-which is a case sufficiently unusual,-cannot afford to compete with the slave traders from the South west. The profits which he can possibly derive from slave labor will not warrant him in paying so high a price. Of course he does not purchase; the slaves are driven off to be employed upon cotton plantations, while the lands of Virginia are left unimproved, and still declining in value. Even as regards the labor of slaves already in the planter's possession, it is a much more profitable operation to emigrate with these slaves to Mississippi or Louisiana, and there to employ their labor in raising cotton, and killing land, than to attempt the improvement of the worn out lands at home.

That high price of slaves in the south western market, which the Virginians regard as a fortunate addition to their diminishing resources, is likely to prove in its ultimate results, the greatest curse with which the state could be visited. If it were not for the do

mestic slave trade, slaves would scarcely have an exchangeable value in Virginia; the great cheapness of labor would facilitate agricultural improvements, and the total impossibility of going on any longer in the old way, would lead to important changes in the existing system. As it is, the laboring population of the country, that population upon which all its wealth. and consequence depends, is daily drained away. The state is bleeding at every pore, and a fatal lethargy must be the consequence. The richest soil, the most exuberant fertility without labor is unproductive and worthless. What will be the condition of a state which has sold to the slave traders, the only laborious part of her population, whose most enterprising citizens have deserted their homes, and whose exhausted lands hold out no temptation to emigrants from abroad?

In addition to the obstacles already pointed out in the way of agricultural improvement at the South, there is one yet to be mentioned, of a still more permanent and decisive nature. It is a well established doctrine, that a rotation of crops, a variety and a very considerable variety in the articles cultivated, is essential to a highly improved state of agriculture. Butsuch a rotation and variety is impossible in a country which is exclusively agricultural, and which must necessarily confine itself to some crops that will pay the expense of distant transportation. The number of these crops is exceedingly few, and they are all of a very exhausting character. The greater number of vegetable productions are only of use to be consumed on the spot; and such a consumption cannot take place to any considerable extent, except there be in the neighborhood a manufacturing population to take off the extra supply. Agricultural improvements have ever kept pace with the extension of manufacturing industry. The reasons have been already given why the creation of a manufacturing population under existing circumstances, is impossible at the south, and that subject will be further considered in the following section.

The condition of agriculture in Eastern Virginia, is in a greater or less degree its condition in Maryland, in North Carolina, in South Carolina, and in the older parts of Georgia. In the two latter states the cultivation of cotton has been attended by consequences exactly similar to those produced in Virginia, by the culture of tobacco. After pouring in upon those states a momentary flood of wealth, which glittered and disappeared, it has left the soil in a state of exhaustion and barrenness, for which no present remedy appears.

The south-western states, Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana are now the El Dorado of the slave-holders. In those states, cotton at present prices is a very profitable crop. The demand for slaves is brisk. Good field hands sell for eight hundred, or a thousand dollars. The slaves of Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina are purchased up in droves for this market, and numbers equally large are moved off to the southwest by emigrating planters. But these slaves, if they are lucratively employed in cultivating cotton, are employed at the same time, in killing land. Slavery will presently visit the south-west with the same blight of exhaustion and barrenness, which has already" alighted upon Virginia and the Carolinas. In proportion to the rapidity with which the apparent immediate prosperity of the south-western states is now advancing, will be hastened the era of their decay.

In the free states of the Union, the wealth of the west promotes the wealth of the east. The more prosperous are the new states, the more prosperous are the old. At the south it is not so. The new states are aggrandized at the expense of the old ones. But this aggrandizement has nothing in it, solid or permanent. For a short time a great annual income is obtained; but it is obtained only by the annual consumption of a portion of that natural fertility, in which consists the only real capital of those communities, and this capital being presently exhausted, their short lived prosperity vanishes like a shadow.

SECTION IV.

Manufactures and Commerce in the Slave-holding States.

No merely agricultural nation ever yet attained a high degree of prosperity, or civilization. To attain that result it is necessary that manufacturing and commercial industry should combine with agriculture. All these three branches of industry are so sympathetically connected, that neither of them alone can be carried to any great degree of perfection.

There have already been suggested several reasons why manufactures cannot prosper in the slave-holding states. It is necessary here to recapitulate them and to bring them together in a single point of view.

1. Skill in the greater part of the mechanic and manufacturing arts, is not consistent with the state of total ignorance and barbarism in which it is judged the best policy that the unprivileged class should be kept. Skilled laborers are and must be, more intelligent and better informed, than those of an ordinary kind.

2. Such skill is still less consistent with that social condition which deprives those subjected to it, of all motive to acquire that degree of expertness, on which the success of most mechanical operations so essentially depends.

3. With respect to the laboring part of the free population, the acquisition of manufacturing skill is little to be expected from the state of ignorance, indolence and depression which are to them the natural results of the existence of slavery in the community of which they form a part.

These three reasons go to cut off the supply of that kind of labor essential to the prosecution of manufacturing operations. But besides labor, there is needed knowledge, tact, skill and judgment in the oversight and direction of labor, and capital to set it in operation.

1. With regard to the oversight and direction of manufacturing operations, persons are very rarely to be found among the native population of the southern states, possessed of the necessary qualifications. The whole course of their education and habits is averse to that system of order, economy, and minute and exact attention, which such a business requires.

2. As regards capital, it has been shown in a previous section, under what disadvantages all industrious operations labor at the south, from the comparatively large amount of it, necessary to set them in operation. In any manufacturing business for example, it is necessary to have capital enough over and above all that is required for the fixtures and stock, to purchase the laborers who are to carry it on.

From the combined operation of these several causes it results, both in theory and in fact, that manufacturing processes, on any large scale, are almost unknown at the south, and that even the commonest mechanical arts are at a very low ebb.

It is obvious at once, when the condition of the various classes of the population at the south is considered, and when regard is had to the state of manufactures, that trade must be at a low ebb. The unprivileged class have nothing to sell except what they steal, and of course they have but little to buy. The laboring freemen, produce but little, and of course are able to purchase but little. The class of wealthy slave-holders is very limited in number, and a large part of their income is often spent at a distance from home. The principal mercantile operations consist in the purchase and shipment of the great agricultural staples, a business which is carried on for the most part by means of English or northern capital, and at the same time by English or northern agents, and English or northern shipping.

Neither manufactures nor commerce can be regarded as adding any thing considerable to the wealth of the slave-holding states.