than the whole white population. There are also 250 free negroes in the county.
From a Correspondent of the 'American Agriculturist,' Feb. 14, 1855.
"As to labourers, we work chiefly slaves, not because they are cheaper, but rather because they are the only reliable labour we can get. The whites here engage to work for less price than the blacks can be got for; yet they will not work well, and rarely work out the time specified. If any of your friends come here and wish to work whites, I would advise them by all means to bring them with them; for our white labourers are far inferior to our blacks, and our black labour is far inferior to what we read and hear of your labourers.
"C. G. G.
"Albemarle Co., Virginia."
In Albemarle there are over thirteen thousand slaves to
less than twelve thousand whites.
Among the native Virginians I find most intelligent men, very ready to assert that slavery is no disadvantage to Virginia, and, as necessary to the maintenance of this assertion, that slave-labour is no clearer than free-labour, that is, than free-labour would be, if slavery did not exist. It is even said—and, as I have shown, it is practically true, at least wherever slavery has not in a great measure withdrawn from the field—that white labour cannot live in competition with slave-labour. In other words, the holder of slave-labour controls the local market for labour, and the cost of slave-labour fixes the cost of everything which is produced by slave-labour. But it is a mistake which the Virginians generally make, when they jump from this to the conclusion that slave-labour is therefore cheaper under all circumstances than free-labour. It is evident that slaves are valuable for another purpose than to supply the local demand for their labour, namely, to supply the demand of the cotton planter; consequently those slaves which are employed to supply the local demand, must be employed either at a loss, or at what they are worth to the cotton planter. Whether this is more or less than free-
