blooded" now, and consequently have gained
some of the intellectual development of the
race mingled with their own. Deaths, old
age, sickness, sulks, taking to the swamp,
theft— often of most valuable property,
many dollars' worth, to sell to a chicken-trader
(a dealer in stolen goods) for a dram—
all these casualties lessen materially the
wealth of a slave-owner. And all these are
chances which the employer of free labour
does not run. Children are the great sources
of a slave owner's wealth. One man calculated
his at, "every nigger-baby worth two hundred
dollars the instant it drew breath."
There does not seem to be much difficulty in
rearing them, at least, not in Virginia, the
nursery of the slave states. Slave-women are
not chosen nor esteemed so much for their
working qualities as for their health, strength,
symmetry, and aptness of maternity. A
woman with children is worth one-sixth or
one-fourth more than one without. But, in
spite of all this care, the slave-population
is yearly on the decrease, and slaves are
becoming more expensive as labourers.
When once free-labour can be proved to be
cheaper and more productive than slave-labour,
the question of emancipation, going
then to the depth of the pocket, will
approach nearer a solution than all the
preachings of philanthropists could hope to
effect.

Down in the swamp, where slaves are
employed as lumbermen on wages, instances
of sulkiness, or rascality, are very rare. The
men's manners are changed. Frank, manly,
straightforward, they lose all the cringing
servility or the downcast sullenness of the
plantation slaves. Neither overseer nor
driving is needed. The stimulus of partial
freedom is sufficient to awaken energies and
ambition which slavery crushes to the dust.
Among the swamp lumbermen, forethought,
industry, and economy, are general; all
because they are quasi freemen, and their
conduct reacts on their destiny. They
answer somewhat to the serfs à l'abrok of
Russia: each having to pay a certain sum
to his master, keeping the remainder of his
wages to himself. It is strange how, with
such examples before their eyes— and others
yet more striking of emancipated negroes
amassing large fortunes and obtaining high
social positions— the partisans of slavery dare
still persist in declaring that a negro left to
himself, would starve for very laziness.
Advocates of the like doctrine at home
should examine personally the effects of freedom
on the character of a slave, before they
countenance the monstrous untruth, that it
is by God's ordinance that one race of a lower
type of organisation is made the slave of
another, higher; or that the earth and
the good of humanity demand labour which
this lower type will not give of freewill.
A negro with freedom and education
will have artificial wants, like other
men; and will labour, like others, to gratify
them.

These swamps are near the Dismal Swamps
where runaway slaves hide, to be famished,
hunted out, or shot, as the case may be.
"But some on 'em would rather be shot than
took," said a negro, simply, speaking of the
runaways. When asked how they were
distinguished from the lumbermen, if met by
chance, the negro answered, "It was very
easy: they were strange and skeered, and
not decent" (starved, frightened, and
badly-clothed). What a volume in these three
words!

A certain Dr. Cartwright has written on
negroes and their diseases. Amongst others,
he particularises one as drapetomania, a
malady like that which cats are liable to,
manifested by an unrestrainable propensity
to run away. His symptoms are sulk and
dissatisfaction; his remedy— the lash. Another
disease, under the learned head of dysæsthesia,
hebetude of mind, and obtuse sensibility of
body, vulgarly called rascality, is also put
down as a negro ailment. But for this, and
its sequence, negro consumption, a disease
unknown to the medical men of the Northern
United States and of Europe, he recommends
care and kindness, and the removal of the
original cause of the dissatisfaction and
trouble. Mr. Olmsted speaks of the well-known
malady nostalgia, and observes that
Dr. Cartwright's last piece of advice is very
suggestive. It must not be thought that
there is the slightest ridicule or conscious
quackery in this pseudo-pathology. It is put
forth as genuine science dealing with
recognised forms of disease.

Virginian out-of-sight life and byeway
travelling are none of the smartest. But
Virginia is a model of care and correctness
compared to other states. Farther towards
the south, where slavery has a darker skin
and wears a heavier chain than in Washington
and Virginia, the necessary consequence of
unthrift and neglect become very glaring.
In North and South Carolina whatever is
decently done is done by a northman; the
natives themselves can do nothing but raise
rice and grow cotton. The white men here
are very religious; talking scripturally, and
undergoing spiritual experiences with
tremendous activity. But they flog their slaves,
and sell the child from under the mother's
hand; break marriage-vows, and disregard
maidenly virtue. A barkeeper sells his stock
in trade and goodwill, and sets out with the
following advertisement:

FAITH WITHOUT WORKS IS DEAD.

ln order to engage in a more honourable business,
I offer for sale, cheap for cash, my stock of Liquors,
Bar Fixtures, Billiard Table, &c. &c. If not sold
privately, by the twentieth day of May, I will sell the
same at public auction. "Shew me thy faith without
thy works, and I will shew thee my faith by my
works."

E. KEYSER.