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CHAPTER XIX.

SLAVERY.

THE evils of slavery are felt and acknowledged in the slave States, but I fear that habit, early preju-, dice, and other concurring causes, have produced a torpor on the subject amongst the inhabitants who are free. It is true that few or none will advocate slavery abstractedly, but most are willing to defend it under existing circumstances. So obvious are the evils of slavery, that in passing from Pennsylvania into Maryland, the former a free, the latter a slave State, I was struck with the difference between them almost at first entering. Instead of neat farm-houses with spacious substantial out-buildings, and surrounding cottages with small gardens attached, where the poor might be supposed to reside in comfort, a different scene presented. The farm-houses large but of slovenly appearance; the barns of rude structure; and the negro huts no better than pigstyes: these were the objects I was obliged to see. As a proof how great is the contrast between Pennsylvania and Maryland, I may mention that as we were in the stage-coach, one of

the passengers suddenly remarked that we had passed the boundary line. I asked him how he knew it as he had never been that road before. He directed my attention to a barn, and said that he knew by that we must have entered Maryland, as Pennsylvania he was sure had nothing so shabby. This was his own spontaneous remark, no part of our previous conversation having been on slavery, or the comparative merits of the two States. In Virginia, I found that the farm-houses had an aristocratical appearance in comparison with the other houses, some of them being not only large, but approaching to splendour. The roads were so bad, as to be in some parts nearly impassable for carriages, and where crossed by a brook or small creek, without even the accommodation of a foot-bridge; a deficiency, which to a pedestrian like me, was a most troublesome inconvenience. On several occasions, I was beholden to persons for the use of a horse for getting over; on others, I had to make circuitous routes to find a ford, or avail myself of the trunk of a tree placed across for the general accommodation. At one place where I crossed, the water was about four feet deep, and the log so unsteady that I had to crawl on hands and knees to avoid the chance of a ducking. If these things had occurred on the newly formed

roads in the western wilderness, I should have passed them as matters of course. But after the good roads and bridges of Pennsylvania, to find such things in a part of the country of older date in settlement, I was led to the belief that the existence of slavery was the main cause of the inferiority.

In New York and Pennsylvania, the work of improvement was evidently rapidly proceeding. Villages were rising up in various places in which I observed many good houses and some elegant ones. The churches were numerous, displaying considerable beauty of architecture. The whole appearance of the new villages was exceedingly comfortable; and every where life, bustle and improvement were apparent. But in Virginia how dismal was the look of things! Few, very few villages attracted the eye. From Richmond to Charlottesville, a distance of eighty miles, there was hardly one deserving the name in other parts I remarked the same circumstance. The places for worship were small frame houses, built in the plainest manner, having poor accommodations for the frequenters of them. The loghouses of the poor white and free coloured people were little adapted to exclude cold and wet. All seemed dormant. Gangs of negro slaves un

der the eye of an overseer were at work in the fields; but there was none of that lively, improving aspect so conspicuous in districts where slavery does not prevail.

From these particulars it will be inferred, and with truth, that the injurious effects of slavery are not confined to its victims: they extend throughout society. The masters are indolent, the poor whites are much worse off than the same class in the free States, and the free blacks are horribly degraded. Leaving the situation of the latter for the present, let me glance at that of the whites. When a person is accustomed from early youth to see every description of work performed by slaves, and by slaves of a different colour from himself, he imbibes an opinion which is not to be wondered at, that labour is deroga

When he is taught in

tory to a free white man. addition to this, to consider the blacks as an inferior race to the whites, he acquires not only the greatest reluctance to work, but habits of indolence from which he seldom recovers. And though many of the Virginians are persevering in mental pursuits, neither reason nor common sense is sufficiently powerful to break the trammels of early formed prejudice against manual labour. To show how far this prejudice prevails,

I

may mention that as I was walking in Virginia, I was overtaken by a farmer on horseback with whom I got into conversation. He pointed out to me a farm near where we were, the owner of which kept a house of entertainment for travellers, and asked me if I did not admire it. I replied in the affirmative, it being nearly the neatest I had seen for many days. "That farm," said he, "was brought into its present state by the man and his sons who are all whites." I replied that it did them great credit. He assented to this, but added a hint on the impropriety of white men doing the work of blacks, mentioning that it was not till lately that they had a black man for ostler. The alteration in that particular was, he said, very proper. I enquired his reason for preferring the black. Why," said he, "I think it is degrading to a white man to be an ostler." I told him that I saw nothing degrading in it. Why then," he replied, "I reckon you are a Methodist parson." I assured him I was neither a Methodist nor a parson; and he rode on, puzzled to make out what I could be, and where I had been raised. As I was travelling on the road which runs alongside that beautiful river the Mohawk in New York, I had as fellow passenger in the stage coach, a Virginian lady who had never been in that State

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