while they rapidly adapt themselves to these habits and customs. Thus it is questionable if as yet they do not add more to the general demand for labour than they supply to reduce it.
Still, it is where slaves remain in the greatest numbers, proportionately to the whites, that the scarcity of labourers, or what is practically the same thing, the cost of getting desirable work done, is most obvious. Schools, churches, roads, bridges, fences, houses, stables, are all more frequent, and in better repair, where the proportion of whites to slaves is large, than in the "negro counties," as some are popularly designated, from the preponderance of the slave population in them. I find this observation confirmed by an examination of the Census returns and other documents.
In the North-western counties, Cabell, Mason, Brooke, and Tyler, in or adjoining which there are no large towns, but a free labouring population, with slaves in ratio to the freemen as one to fifteen only, the value of land is over seven dollars and three quarters an acre.
In Southampton, Surrey, James Town and New Kent, in which the slave population is as 1 to 2·2, the value of land is but little more than half as much—$4.50 an acre.
The value of land of course rises with its availability to contribute to the wants of men, and it can only be made available as labour can be applied to it.
In Surrey, Prince George, Charles City, and James, adjoining counties on James River, and originally having some of the most productive soil in the State, and now supplied with the public conveniences which have accrued in two hundred years of occupation by a civilized and Christian community, the number of slaves being at present, to that of whites as 1 to 1·9, the value of land is but $6 an acre.
In Fairfax, another of the first settled counties, and in
