flooded, and was, much of the year, too wet for cultivation. He was draining and clearing it, and it now brought good crops.
He had had an Irish gang draining for him, by contract. He thought a negro could do twice as much work, in a day, as an Irishman. He had not stood over them and seen them at work, but judged entirely from the amount they accomplished: he thought a good gang of negroes would have got on twice as fast. He was sure they must have "trifled" a great deal, or they would have accomplished more than they had. He complained much, also, of their sprees and quarrels. I asked why he should employ Irishmen, in preference to doing the work with his own hands. "Its dangerous work [unhealthy?], and a negro's life is too valuable to be risked at it. If a negro dies, it's a considerable loss, you know."
He afterwards said that his negroes never worked so hard as to tire themselves—always were lively, and ready to go off on a frolic at night. He did not think they ever did half a fair days work. They could not be made to work hard: they never would lay out their strength freely, and it was impossible to make them do it.
This is just what I have thought when I have seen slaves at work—they seem to go through the motions of labour without putting strength into them. They keep their powers in reserve for their own use at night, perhaps.
Mr. W. also said that he cultivated only the coarser and lower-priced sorts of tobacco, because the finer sorts required more painstaking and discretion than it was possible to make a large gang of negroes use. "You can make a nigger work," he said, "but you cannot make him think."
Although Mr. W. was so wealthy (or, at least, would be considered anywhere at the North), and had been at college, his style of living was very farmer-like, and thoroughly Southern. On their plantations, generally, the Virginia gen-
