the owners and to themselves. Men, when well fed, well clothed, well
lodged, and otherwise well cared for, always increase rapidly in
numbers, and in such cases labour always increases rapidly in value;
and hence it is that the average price of the negro slave of this
country is probably four times greater than that which the planters of
the West Indies were compelled to receive. Such being the case, it
would follow that to pay for their full value would require probably
four hundred millions of pounds sterling, or nearly two thousand
millions of dollars.

It will now be seen that the course of things in the two countries has
been entirely different. In the islands the slave trade had been
cherished as a source of profit. Here, it had been made the subject of
repeated protests on the part of several of the provinces, and had
been by all but two prohibited at the earliest moment at which they
possessed the power so to do. In the islands it was held to be cheaper
to buy slaves than to raise them, and the sexes were out of all
proportion to each other. Here, importation was small, and almost the
whole increase, large as it has been, has resulted from the excess of
births over deaths. In the islands, the slave was generally a
barbarian, speaking an unknown tongue, and working with men like
himself, in gangs, with scarcely a chance for improvement. Here, he
was generally a being born on the soil, speaking the same language
with his owner; and often working in the field with him, with many
advantages for the development of his faculties. In the islands, the
land-owners clung to slavery as the sheet-anchor of their hopes. Here,
on the contrary, slavery had gradually been abolished in all the
States north of Mason & Dixon's line, and Delaware, Maryland,
Virginia, and Kentucky were all, at the date of emancipation in the
islands, preparing for the early adoption of measures looking to its