HN J.H. GUNNELL."

"NEGROES FOR HIRE, (PRIVATELY.) About twelve servants, consisting of
men, women, boys, and girls, for hire privately. Apply to the
subscriber at Col. Smith's in Battletown. JOHN W. OWEN."

A volume might easily be filled with advertisements like the
preceding, showing conclusively that _hired_ slaves must be a large
proportion of the whole number. The actual proportion has been
variously estimated, at 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/2, &c. if we adopt the last
as our basis, it will make the number of hired slaves, in the United
States, FIVE HUNDRED AND FORTY THOUSAND!

6th. _Slaves under overseers whose wages are a part of the
crop_.--That this is a common usage; appears from the following
testimony. The late Hon. John Taylor, of Caroline Co. Virginia, one of
the largest slaveholders in the state, President of the State
Agricultural Society, and three times elected to the Senate of the
United States, says, in his "Agricultural Essays," No. 15. P. 57,

"This necessary class of men, (overseers,) are bribed by
agriculturalists, not to improve, but to impoverish their land, _by a
share of the crop for one year_.... The _greatest_ annual crop, and
not the most judicious culture, advances his interest, and establishes
his character; and the fees of these land-doctors, are much higher for
killing than for curing.... The most which the land can yield, and
seldom or never improvement with a view to future profit, is a point
of common consent, and mutual need between the agriculturist and his
overseer.... Must the practice of hiring a man for one year, by a
share of the crop, to lay out all his skill and industry in killing
land, and as little as possible in improving it, be kept up to
commemorate the pious leaning of man to his primitive state of
ignorance and barbarity? _Unless this is abolished_, the attempt to
fertilize our lands is needless."

Philemon Bliss, Esq, of Elyria, Ohio, who lived in Florida, in 1834-5,
says,

"It is common for owners of plantations and slaves, to hire overseers
to take charge of them, while they themselves reside at a distance.
_Their wages depend principally upon the amount of labor which they
can exact from the slave_. The term "good overseer," signifies one who
can make the greatest amount of the staple, cotton for instance, from
a given number of hands, besides raising sufficient provisions for
their consumption. He has no interest in the life of the slave. Hence
the fact, so not