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 notorious at the south, that negroes are driven harder
and fare worse under overseers than under their owners."

William Ladd, Esq. of Minot, Maine, formerly a slaveholder in Florida,
speaking, in a recent letter of the system of labor adopted there,
says; "The compensation of the overseers _was a certain portion of the
crop_."

Rev. Phineas Smith, of Centreville, Allegany Co. N.Y. who has
recently returned from a four years' residence, in the Southern slave
states and Texas, says,

"The mode in which _many_ plantations are managed, is calculated and
_designed_, as an inducement to the slave driver, to lay upon the
slave the _greatest possible burden, the overseer being entitled by
contract, to a certain share of the crop_."

We leave the reader to form his own opinion, as to the proportion of
slaves under overseers, whose wages are in proportion to the crop,
raised by them. We have little doubt that we shall escape the charge
of wishing to make out a "strong case" when we put the proportion at
_one-eighth_ of the whole number of slaves, which would be _three
hundred and fifty thousand_.

Without drawing out upon the page a sum in addition for the reader to
"run up," it is easily seen that the slaves i