Brothers, of New York. You will there find the fact set forth by closest
observation that the negroes in part are indeed lazy vagabonds, but that
the majority, when allowed to work for themselves, and when free, _do_
work, and that right steadily. In the Virginia tobacco factories slaves
can earn on an average as much money for themselves, in the 'over hours'
allowed them, as the manufacturer pays their owner for their services
during the day. There are cases in which slaves, hired for one hundred
dollars a year, have made for themselves three hundred.[A]

[Footnote A: 'If the slaves be emancipated, what with their own natural
ability and such aids and appliances as the government and 20,000,000 of
people in the North can furnish, I do not believe but that they will get
employment, and pay, and, of course, subsistence.'--HON. GEORGE S.
BOUTWELL.]

But the vagabond surplus,--the minority? Is it possible that with Union
or disunion before us we can hesitate as to taking on this incumbrance?
In a hard-working land vagabonds must die off,--'tis a hard case, but
the emergency for the white men of this and a coming age is much harder.
After all, there are only some fifteen hundred or two thousand lazy free
negroes in New York city,--the climate, we are told, is too severe for
them,--and this among well-nigh a million of inhabitants. We think it
would be possible to find one single alderman in that city who has
wasted as much capital, and injured the commonwealth quite as much, in
one year, as all the negroes there put together, during the same time.
It would be absurd to imagine that the emancipation of every negro in
America to-morrow would add one million idlers and vagabonds to our
population. _But what if it did?_ Would their destiny or injury to us be
of such tremendous importance that we need for it peril our welfare as a
nation? The standing armies of Germany absorb about one-fifth of the