corn; and on the rice plantations, broken or damaged rice furnishes the chief supply of food; but whether it be corn, potatoes, or rice, the allowance is often scanty enough; and the starved, shriveled, peaked condition of the children upon many plantations, are too evident proofs how cruelly they are stinted.

With respect to this subject, the following observation is worthy of attention. A certain quantity of food may suffice to sustain life, and even strength, yet not be enough to appease the cravings of appetite, nor to stay or prevent the torments of hunger. Most laboring men at the North, might probably live and enjoy health, though their daily food were diminished in quantity one half, or even more; yet this is a sacrifice they would very reluctantly make; and the certainty of life and health would be no sufficient consolation for the gnawings of hunger, and the disquietudes of an unsatisfied appetite.

It happens very unluckily, that the slaves in that part of the country where they are worst supplied with food and clothing, are yet subjected to the severest and most unremitting labors.

In Missouri, Kentucky, North Carolina, Virginia and Maryland, except in those limited tracts in which the culture of tobacco is pursued, there are considerable intervals in every year, when the labor of the slaves is little needed, and when the tasks imposed are sufficiently light. But the cultivation of tobacco, and still more, that of rice, sugar and cotton, is an incessant round of labor, from one year's end to the other. These plants are a long time in coming to perfection. The labor of securing the crop, and preparing it for market, is very great; and one year's work is hardly ended, before it is time to begin upon the next. Winter or Summer, there is no rest nor relaxation from constant, steady toil.

On the whole, it may be stated that the physical condition of the slaves throughout the southern states, is far inferior in every respect, to that of the unfortunate men, confined for the punishment of their crimes

in our Northern prisons and penitentiaries. Their food is less savoury, less abundant, and far less various, and a certain variety of diet seems as essentia to health as it is agreeable to the taste. The work demanded of them is far more fatiguing and severe, the time of labor is longer, the clothing with which they are supplied is far less comfortable; and their exposure far more trying. That sort of discipline which we have fixed upon as the most terrible and exemplary punishment of crime,--or rather a discipline much more severe than that, is the regular, constant, perpetual condition of a large proportion of our fellowcountrymen at the south.

What has been observed with respect to food, applies with equal force to physical condition in general. That which is sufficient to sustain existence, is by no means sufficient for comfort, or for pleasure. Life may be supported, and protracted under such a series of privations that it ceases to be any thing but a continuity of suffering.

That the physical condition of the slaves is far inferior on an average to that of the free, may be made evident by some statistical considerations. During the forty years, preceding 1830, the average annual increase of the white population of the United States amounted to 3,04 per cent.; while the average annual increase of the slave population, during the same period, amounted to 2,67 per cent. Emigration from abroad contributed to swell the increase of the white population. Let us suppose, and it will be a very liberal allowance, that the annual increase of the white population by this means, amounted to,37 per cent. Making this allowance, it would follow, that the domestic white population, and the slave population have increased in the same ratio.*

*The foreign slave trade was not abolished till 1808. Up to that year, the proportional increase of the slave population by that means, was in all probability, fully equal to the increase of the free population by emigration from abroad. The great influx of foreign emigration into the United States, is quite recent in its origin.

Now it is to be recollected that there are certain prudential checks, as they are denominated, constantly operating to retard the increase of the white population. The extent to which these checks operate, even in those parts of the country in which the white population increases with the greatest rapidity, will be obvious, when it is considered, that in the state of New York, as appears from the results of the State census, in 1825 and in 1835, out of all the women in the state between the ages of sixteen and forty-five, that is, of an age to bear children, two fifths are unmarried.

Among the slaves, these prudential checks are totally unknown. There is nothing to prevent them from yielding to the instincts of nature. Child-bearing is stimulated and encouraged by the masters, and so far as it depends upon the mere production of children, the slave population ought to increase, two fifths faster than the free. Instead of doubling once in twenty-five years, it ought to double once in fifteen. years. If the increase is kept down to the former level, it is only because disease and death are busier among the slaves than among the free; and as the slaves escape all those kinds of disorders which spring from luxury and over-indulgence, this greater mortality can only be ascribed to greater severity of labor, and to destitution of the physical supports of life.

It is often argued that self-interest alone is enough to make the master attentive to the lives and health of his slaves; on the same principle that he provides corn for his horses, and fodder for his cattle. But that provident and enlightened economy which makes a present sacrifice for the sake of avoiding a future greater loss, however it may be generally recommended and applauded, is but seldom practised; and he who is familiar with the domestic management of the southern states, must know that of all places in the world, it is least practised there.

An anecdote is related of a Virginian planter, who discharged his overseer, because sufficient cattle had

not died during the winter to furnish leather enough to supply the slaves with shoes. This story though perhaps a little exaggerated, will serve to give an idea of the domestic economy of the south; and he who knows how many mules and horses yearly drop in the furrow, through starvation, over-work, and the abusive treatment which the slaves, emulous of their masters, heap upon the only creatures in their power; he who has seen the condition of southern cattle in the month of March, hundreds actually starved to death, and those which are alive, a mere anatomy of skin and bones, with hardly substance enough to cast a shadow, searching with feeble steps, and woeful countenance, for a spear or two of withered grass, wherewith to protract their miserable existence; he who has seen these things, would not much care to have his life or his sustenance dependent upon the good economy of a management so utterly thriftless and unfeeling.

SECTION VII.

The treatment of American slaves, considered as men.

There are some people whose sympathies have been excited upon the subject of slavery, who if they can only be satisfied that the slaves have enough to eat, think it is all very well, and that nothing more is to be said, or done.

If slaves were merely animals, whose only or chief enjoyment consisted in the gratification of their bodily appetites, there would be some show of sense in this conclusion. But in fact, however crushed and brutified, they are still men; men whose bosoms beat with the same passions as our own; whose hearts swell with the same aspirations,—the same ardent desire to im

prove their condition; the same wishes for what they have not; the same indifference towards what they have; the same restless love of social superiority; the same greediness of acquisition; the same desire to know; the same impatience of all external control. The excitement which the singular case of Casper Hauser produced a few years since, in Germany, is not yet forgotten. From the representations of that enigmatical personage, it was believed that those from whose custody he declared himself to have escaped, had endeavoured to destroy his intellect, or rather to prevent it from being developed, so as to detain him forever in a state of infantile imbecility. This supposed attempt at what they saw fit to denominate, the murder of the soul, gave rise to great discussions among the German Jurists; and they soon raised it into a new crime, which they placed at the very head of social enormities.

It is this very crime, the murder of the soul, which is in the course of continuous and perpetual perpetration throughout the southern states of the American Union; and that not upon a single individual only, but upon nearly one half the entire population.

Consider the slaves as men, and the course of treatment which custom and the laws prescribe, is an artful, deliberate, and well-digested scheme to break their spirit; to deprive them of courage and of manhood; to destroy their natural desire for an equal participation in the benefits of society; to keep them ignorant, and therefore weak; to reduce them if possible to a state of idiocy; to crowd them down to a level with the brutes.

A man, especially a civilized man, possessed of a certain portion of knowledge, and well skilled in some art or science, is a much more valuable piece of property, and capable of producing for his master a far greater revenue, than a mere, two-legged human animal, with all the failings and defects, and none of the virtues of a savage. But if such a slave is more valuable, he is far more dangerous, and far more dif