ofitable to the owner, if well
fed, well clothed, and worked lightly, or if made the most of _at
once_, and exhausted in some eight years. The decision was in favor of
the last alternative. That decision will perhaps make many shudder.
But to my mind this is not the chief evil. The greater and original
evil is considering the _slave as property_. If he is only property
and my property, then I have some right to ask how I may make that
property most available."

"Visit to the American Churches," by Rev. Drs. Reed and Mattheson.
Vol. 2 p. 173.

REV. JOHN O. CHOULES, recently pastor of a Baptist Church at New
Bedford, Massachusetts, now of Buffalo, New York, made substantially
the following statement in a speech in Boston.

"While attending the Baptist Triennial Convention at Richmond,
Virginia, in the spring of 1835, as a delegate from Massachusetts, I
had a conversation on slavery, with an officer of the Baptist Church
in that city, at whose house I was a guest. I asked my host if he did
not apprehend that the slaves would eventually rise and exterminate
their masters.

"Why," said the gentleman, "I used to apprehend such a catastrophe,
but God has made a providential opening, a _merciful safety valve_,
and now I do not feel alarmed in the _prospect_ of what is coming.
'What do you mean,' said Mr. Choules, 'by providence opening a merciful
safety valve?' Why, said the gentleman, I will tell you; the slave
traders come from the cotton and sugar plantations of the South and
are willing to buy up more slaves than we can part with. We must keep
a stock for the purpose of _rearing_ slaves, but we part with the most
valuable, and at the same time, the most _dangerous_, and the demand
is very constant and likely to be so, for when they go to these
southern states, the average existence Is ONLY FIVE YEARS!"

Monsieur C.C. ROBIN, a highly intelligent French gentleman, who
resided in Louisiana from 1802 to 1806, and published a volume of
travels, gives the following testimony to the over-working of the
slaves there:

"I have been a witness, that after the fatigue of the day, their
labors have been prolonged several hours by the light of the moon; and
then, before they could think of rest, they must pound and cook their
corn; and yet, long before day, an implacable scold, whip in hand,
would arouse them from their slumbers. Thus, of more than twenty
negroes, who in twenty years should have doubled, the number _was
reduced