A SLAVEOWNER'S CALCULATIONS AS TO THE COST OF SLAVERY.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume I, Issue 52, 4 March 1843, Page 208

A SLAVEOWNER'S CALCULATIONS AS TO THE COST OF SLAVERY.

In the course of the protracted conversation to which these topics led, a gentleman from Kentucky, engaged in the growing of corn and grazing of cattle, himself a slaveholder to a considerable extent, and joining in all the denunciations of the Abolitionists, undertook to show that, after all, slavery was a much greater curse to the owners than it was to the slaves, as it absorded their capital, ate up their profits, and proved a perpetual obstacle to their progressive prosperity. He said he had not only made the calculation, but actually tried the experiment, of comparing the labour of the white man and the negro slave; and he found the latter always the dearest of the two. It took, for instance, 2,000 dollars to purchase a good male slave. The interest of money in Kentucky being ten per cent., here was 200 dollars a year of actual cost ; but to insure his life it would require at least five per cent, more, which would make 300 dollars a year. Add to this the necessary expenses of maintenance while healthy, and medical attendance when sick, with wages of white overseers to every gang of men to see that they do their duty, and other incidental charges; and he did not think that a slave could .cost less, in interest, insurance, subsistence, 'and watching, than 500 dollars, or £100 sterling a year ; yet, after all, he would not do more than half the work of a white man, who could be hired at the same sum, without the outlay of any capital or the incumbrance of maintenance while sick, and was therefore by far the cheapest labourer of the two.

The same gentleman told us of two instances that had happened on his own estate, of ingenious evasions of labour. One man took medicine which he stole from the dispensary, purposely to make himself sick to avoid work ; and when examined by the doctor, he was detected in having spread powdered mustard on his tongue to give it a foul appearance. A female slave, to avoid working for her master, produced such swellings in her arm as to excite the compassion of those who thought it to be some dreadful disease ; but the same person, who lay a bed groaning with agony all day, being detected in the act of washing clothes at night for some person in the neighbourhood, for which she was to be paid (and to effect which in secrecy she was found standing nearly to her middle in a pond, concealed under the trees), afterwards confessed, in order to avoid a flogging, that she had produced the swelling in her arms by thrusting them into a beehive, and keeping them there till they were thoroughly bitten and stung. I inquired, " Why, if this were the state of things, they did not cure it by giving freedom to their slaves ? " and the answer was this — " That, up to a very recent period, the feeling was almost universal in Kentucky, that it would be better to do so, especially as the neighbouring state of Ohio, without slayes/^wtfs" making so much more rapid strides in prosperity than Kentucky with them; and that probably in a few years their emancipation would have been agreed upon, but that the Abolitionists of the North wounded their pride ; and they determined that they would not submit to interference or dictation in the regulation of their ' domestic institution.'" To this feeling was added another, that of " standing by " the other Slave States of the South, and making common cause with them in a determination not to do anything by coercion or by threat, but to abide their own time, and act independently of all fear or intimidation. — Buckingham's Slave States in America.

Alcohol and the Gastric Juice. — Professor Silliman, in the course of a lecture recently delivered at New Haven, gave a chemical analysis of alcohol, and performed some interesting experiments, going conclusively to show that, although alcohol was an indispensable agent in science and the arts, it was no more adapted to the wants or condition of the human stomach than most of the powerful acids used in a chemical laboratory. The professor exhibited a vial of highly concentrated alcohol, some that he had made himself, and which, he said, if a man was to drink about half of (about two gills), he probably would not be able to get out of the room alive. A wine glass full of it, he said, would probably very soon destroy life. To show that alcohol in any form did not promote digestion, but prevented the healthy action of the stomach, he gave a brief account of some of the wonderful experiments of Dr. Beaumont with Alexis St. Martin, a young Canadian, who was wounded by the discharge of a musket, in 1822. The charge tore away a portion of his left side, lacerating the lungs and perforating the stomach. The wound healed, but the orifice never became closed. The perforation into the stomach was two and a half inches in circumference. Through this orifice a piece of meat tied to a string could be let down into the stomach and pulled out again at any time, and in this manner the precise length of time required for the digestion of any kind of food could be ascertained. The gastric juice, which is the great agent of production, would pour into the stomach when any food or other substance was placed there. This juice, the professor stated, was easily taken from the stomach, and he had a bottle of it now at the college. The liquid was at the present time as apparently pure as it was ten years ago. It had the peculiar property of self preservation or of resisting putrefaction. It would, if warmed to blood heat, dissolve meat in a wine glass. He stiff he had never come to any satisfactory condhisions as to its character from his attempts at analysing it, and he had sent a portion of it to one of the most learned and skilful chemists of Europe, but he was able to throw but very little fight upon the subject. But this Professor Silliman said he did know, that it had no affinity with alcohol, and that they were in their nature and attributes totally diverse, and possessed counteracting qualities.— New York Exprete.

Graceful Philosophy.— The true greatness of mind consists m valuing men apart from their ft,™ W- wording to their behaviour iA them. Wealth is a distinction only in traffic, but it must not be allowed as a recommendation in any other particular, but only just as it is applied. It was very prettily said, that we may les&i the little value of fortune by the persons on whom Heaven is pleased to bestow it. However, there -•«?♦s.* a part in human life ' lhan becoming wealth and greatness, He must be very well stocked with merit who ia not wiUin to draw some superiority over his friends from his fortune, for it is not every man that can « entertain with the air of a guest," and do good offices with the mien of one who receives them.— Steele. Annoyances in A Swedish Forest.— We now plunged again into the forests: not a breath off wind was stirring, and nature herself seemed^, languish under the searching rays. As soonSt S.J LTf d ?• Shadc ' m y" ads of musquitoes? ri?LS H n i! yUISh ambush ' sa^d forth in clouds to attack our unfortunate horses ; and a S?W ? "■' in Particular, pursued us with SnnT^\ Pc^ eVenns vi Bour8 our - Thisl afterwards found to be theaatrus tarandi, the greatest enemy S vf r ? aV ,t t0 contend *&to* » Lapland; and which actually compels them to undertake, severy summer, a journey of some miles to the sea-coasts, to avoid its attacks. In vain did we. by exerting the speed of our horses, endeavour to get rid of our merciless tormentors, they continued to assail us, till at length a fresh breeze sprung up, which dispersed them. Amid the pines, the anthills were of an unusual size and height, exceeding sometimes four feet, and tenanted by millions of the large black aat— BrooHes's Travels in Stoeaen,