maintenance of the slaves.
In thickly peopled countries, where the great towns are at hand, the
fertility of such soils may be recovered and even improved by manuring,
but over the tracts of country I now speak of, no such advantages are
within the farmer's reach."--_Captain Hall_.

"Many, very many, with whom I met, would willingly have released their
slaves, but the law requires that in such cases they should leave the
state; and this would mostly be not to improve their condition, but to
banish them from their home, and to make them miserable outcasts. What
they cannot at present remove, they are anxious to mitigate, and I have
never seen kinder attention paid to any domestics than by such persons
to their slaves. In defiance of the infamous laws, making it criminal
for the slave to be taught to read, and difficult to assemble for an act
of worship, they are instructed, and they are assisted to worship
God."--_Rev Mr Reid_.

"The law declares the children of slaves are to follow the fortunes of
the mother. Hence the practice of planters selling and bequeathing
their own children."--_Miss Martineau_.

The return at present is very great in these western states; the labour
of a slave, after all his expenses are paid, producing on an average 300
dollars (65 pounds) per annum to his master.

VOLUME THREE, CHAPTER FORTY THREE.

REMARKS--RELIGION IN AMERICA.

In theory nothing appears more rational than that every one should
worship the Deity according to his own ideas--form his own opinion as to
his attributes, and draw his own conclusions as to hereafter. An
established Church _appears_ to be a species of coercion, not that you
are obliged to believe in, or follow that form of worship, but that, if
you do not, you lose your portion of certain advantages attending that
form of religion, which has been accepted by the majority and adopted by
the government. In religion, to think for yourself wears the semblance
of a luxury, and like other luxuries, it is proportionably taxed.

And yet it would appear as if it never were intended that the mass
should think for themselves, as everything goes on so quietly when other
people think for them, and everything goes so wrong when they do think
for themselves: in the first instance where a portion of the people
think for the mass, all are of one opinion; whereas in the second, they
divide and split into many molecules, that they resemble the globules of
water when