expedient for them. Let us take twenty-five years
for its accomplishment, within which time they will be doubled. Their
estimated value as property, in the first place, (for actual property
has been lawfully vested in that form, and who can lawfully take it from
the possessors?) at an average of two hundred dollars each, young and
old, would amount to six hundred millions of dollars, which must be paid
or lost by somebody. To this, add the cost of their transportation
by land and sea to Mesurado, a year's provision of food and clothing,
implements of husbandry and of their trades, which will amount to three
hundred millions more, making thirty-six millions of dollars a year
for twenty-five years, with insurance of peace all that time, and it is
impossible to look at the question a second time. I am aware that at
the end of about sixteen years, a gradual detraction from this sum will
commence, from the gradual diminution of breeders, and go on during
the remaining nine years. Calculate this deduction, and it is still
impossible to look at the enterprise a second time. I do not say this to
induce an inference that the getting rid of them is for ever impossible.
For that is neither my opinion nor my hope. But only that it cannot be
done in this way. There is, I think, a way in which it can be done; that
is, by emancipating the after born, leaving them, on due compensation,
with their mothers, until their services are worth their maintenance,
and then putting them to industrious occupations, until a proper age for
deportation. This was the result of my reflections on the subject five
and forty years ago, and I have never yet been able to conceive any
other practicable plan. It was sketched in the Notes on Virginia, under
the fourteenth query. The estimated value of the new-born infant is
so low (say twelve dollars and fifty cents), that it would probably
be yielded by the owner gratis, and would thus reduce the six hundred
millions of dollars, the first head of expense, to thirty-seven millions
and a half: leaving only the expenses of nourishment while with the
mother, and of transportation. And from what fund are these expenses to
be furnished? Why not from that of the lands which have been ceded by
the very States now needing this relief? And ceded on no consideration,
for the most part, but that of the general good of the whole. These
cessions already constitute one fourth of the States of the Union. It
may be said that th