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MARYLAND.

servants with us receive from 5 to 7 dollars a month, whichaverages 72 a year. Children we would not have if theywere given to us. The south, then, cannot stand for anylength of time this competition of labour. The cost ofnegroes must come down, decidedly down. Hence we givethe warning, stand from under.”

In Maryland, an able-bodied slave is hired out hy hismaster to work in the fields at from 120 to 150 dollars a year,and of course the person who employs him gives board, whichis no doubt greatly inferior to what the free labourer receives.A common Irish labourer employed on the railway near Boston,had a dollar a day throughout the year. He paid 12 dollarsa month for board, but bad coffee at breakfast, meat at dinner,wheaten bread, butter, cheese, and tea at supper. Farmservants at Burlington, Vermont, had 150 dollars a year, andtheir meals at their master’s table. In the Genesee district,the wages of farm servants were 16 dollars a month for eightmonths, and 12 dollars a month for the other four. Thenominal hire of a slave engaged in agricultural operations istherefore rather less than that of a free labourer. The costof maintaining the slave is also less than of boarding the free-man, a difference which will so far assist in compensating theplanter for the inferior work of the slave. These facts tendto show that slave labour cannot be materially dearer thanfree, even in those States where the two admit of being fairlycompared. This opinion is further borne by* the circumstancethat after many inquiries among the farmers of the Free Stateof Ohio and the Slave State of Kentucky, I failed to satisfymyself that there is any difference in the value of land adaptedfor grazing and raising grain in the two States; for had slavelabour been so much inferior to free, as is commonly supposed,it should have lessened the value of property in the SlaveState.

But it is generally believed that the chief profits of theKentucky or Maryland slave owners arise from breeding slavesand selling them to the cotton and sugar planters in theSouthern States. It appears to me, however, that the breed-ing of slaves could, under no conceivable circumstances, beprofitable on its own account. We must remember that the