population of 3,200,000. I think,
if I estimate their marketable value at 80_l_ a head, I shall be
considerably below the truth. That gives us in human flesh,
250,000,000l. Secondly, let us take the product of their labour. The
Slave States raise annually--

Rice 215,000,000 lbs.
Tobacco 185,000,000 "
Sugar 248,000,000 "
Cotton 1,000,000,000 "
Molasses 12,000,000 gallons.
Indian Corn. 368,000,000 bushels.

Estimating these at a lower value than they have ever fallen to, you
have here represented 80,000,000l. sterling of annual produce from
the muscle and sinew of the slave.[BW] Surely the wildest enthusiast,
did he but ponder over these facts, could not fail to pause ere he
mounted the breach, shouting the rabid war-cry of abolition, which
involves a capital of 250,000,000_l_, and an annual produce of
80,000,000l.

The misery which an instantaneous deliverance of the slave would cause
by the all but certain loss of the greater portion of the products above
enumerated, must be apparent to the least reflecting mind. If any such
schemer exist, he would do well to study the history of our West India
islands from the period of their sudden emancipation, especially since
free-trade admitted slave produce on equal terms with the produce of
free labour. Complaints of utter ruin are loud and constant from the
proprietors in nearly every island; they state, and state with truth,
that it is impossible for free labour at a high price, and which can
only be got perhaps for six hours a day, to compete with the steady
slave work of twelve hours a day; and they show that slaveholding
communities have materially increased their products, which can only
have been effected by a further taxing of the slave's powers, or a vast
increase of fresh human material.[BX] But they further complain that the
negro himself is sadly retrograding. "They attend less to the
instruction of their religious teachers; they pay less attention to the
education of their children; vice and immorality are on the increase,"
&c.--_Petition to the Imperial Parliament from St. George's, Jamaica,_
July, 1852.

I might multiply such statements from nearly every island, and quote the
authority of even some of their governors to the same effect; but the
above are sufficient for my purpose. They prove three most important
facts for consideration, when treating the question of Slavery. First,
that