Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from Address to the Virginia State Agricultural Society: On the Effects of Domestic Slavery on the Manners, Habits and Welfare of the Agricultural Population of the Southern States; And the Slavery of Class to Class in the Northern States; Read at the First Annual Meeting, in the Hall of the House of Delegates
The free labor system, if exclusively in operation from the beginning of a newly settled country (which, however, was not the case with Massachusetts or any of the older northern States, ) would subj eet all employers and proprietors to great straits in the general scarcity and high price of free and hired labor. Hence, every economy of labor would be induced, and employers and proprietors would necessarily be themselves laborious, and frugal to the extent of parsimony. Their children, from an early age, would be trained to the industrious and frugal habits of their parents. N 0 available means for gain would be neglected, nor any expensive indulgence, be permitted. Such circumstances would per mit farming only on a small scale - se that the farmer, his wife, and sons and daughters, would constitute the greater number, if not all, of his permanent laborers and servants, for the farm or the house. Thus, every one is always at work, and helping to increase. Both private gains and the public wealth. But, on this account, none of the hard work ing rural population will have leisure for a high degree of mental culture, or for the im proving pleasures of extended social inter course. The very long and severe winters of Massachusetts, when scarcely any out door labor can be performed, more than any thing else, have permitted and invited every person to acquire the lowest branches of school instruction. But this benefit does not prevent a general and increasing want of higher and more useful knowledge, for ac quiring which the lower branches of school education are but the useful means.
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