boarded, but not to be clothed by his employer. The opinion is universal in Virginia, that the slaves are better fed than the Northern labourers. This is, however, a mistake, and we must consider that the board of the Northern labourer would cost at least as much more as the additional cost of clothing to the slave. Comparing man with man, with reference simply to equality of muscular power and endurance, my final judgment is, that the wages for common labourers are twenty-five per cent. higher in Virginia than in New York.
Loss from disability of the labourer.—This to the employer
of free labourers need be nothing. To the slave-master it
is of varying consequence: sometimes small, often excessively
embarrassing, and always a subject of anxiety and suspicion.
I have not yet made the inquiry on any plantation
where as many as twenty negroes are employed together, that
I have not found one or more of the field-hands not at work,
on account of some illness, strain, bruise, or wound, of which
he or she was complaining; and in such cases the proprietor
or overseer has, I think, never failed to express his suspicion
that the invalid was really as well able to work as anyone else
on the plantation. It is said to be nearly as difficult to form
a satisfactory diagnosis of negroes' disorders as it is of infants',
because their imagination of symptoms is so vivid, and because
not the smallest reliance is to be placed on their accounts of
what they have felt or done. If a man is really ill, he fears
lest he should be thought to be simulating, and therefore
exaggerates all his pains, and locates them in whatever he
supposes to be the most vital parts of his system.
Frequently the invalid slaves neglect or refuse to use the remedies prescribed for their recovery. They conceal pills, for instance, under their tongue, and declare that they have swallowed them, when, from their producing no effect, it will
