advertisement this morning in the paper, which occasioned me much
thought. Mr. J---- C---- and a Mr. N----, two planters of this
neighbourhood, have contracted to dig a canal, called the Brunswick canal,
and not having hands enough for the work, advertise at the same time for
negroes on hires and for Irish labourers. Now the Irishmen are to have
twenty dollars a month wages, and to be 'found' (to use the technical
phrase,) which finding means abundant food, and the best accommodations
which can be procured for them. The negroes are hired from their masters,
who will be paid of course as high a price as they can obtain for
them--probably a very high one, as the demand for them is urgent--they, in
the meantime, receiving no wages, and nothing more than the miserable
negro fare of rice and corn grits. Of course the Irishmen and these slaves
are not allowed to work together, but are kept at separate stations on the
canal. This is every way politic, for the low Irish seem to have the same
sort of hatred of negroes which sects, differing but little in their
tenets, have for each other. The fact is, that a condition in their own
country nearly similar, has made the poor Irish almost as degraded a class
of beings as the negroes are here, and their insolence towards them, and
hatred of them, are precisely in proportion to the resemblance between
them. This hiring out of negroes is a horrid aggravation of the miseries
of their condition, for, if on the plantations, and under the masters to
whom they belong, their labour is severe, and their food inadequate, think
what it must be when they are hired out for a stipulated sum to a
temporary employer, who has not even the interest which it is pretended an
owner may feel in the welfare of his slaves, but whose chief aim it must
necessarily be to get as much out of them, and expend as little on them,
as possible. Ponder this new form of iniquity, and believe me ever your
most sincerely attached.

* * * * *

Dearest E----. After finishing my last letter to you, I went out into the
clear starlight to breathe the delicious mildness of the air, and was
surprised to hear rising from one of the houses of the settlement a hymn
sung apparently by a number of voices. The next morning I enquired the
meaning of this, and was informed that those negroes on the plantation who
were members of the Church, were holding a prayer-meeting. There is an
immensely strong de