present times, cannot. In the English colonies, of which the principal produce is corn, the far greater part of the work is done by freemen. The late resolution of the Quakers in Pennsylvania to set at liberty all their negro slaves, may satisfy us that their number cannot be very great. Had they made any considerable part of their property, such a resolution could never have been agreed to. In our sugar colonies, on the contrary, the whole work is done by slaves, and in our tobacco colonies a very great part of it. The profits of a sugar plantation in any of our West Indian colonies are generally much greater than those of any other cultivation that is known either in Europe or America: And the profits of a tobacco plantation, though inferior to those of sugar, are superior to those of corn, as has already been observed. Both can afford the expense of slave cultivation, but sugar can afford it still better than tobacco. The number of negroes accordingly is much greater, in proportion to that of whites, in our sugar than in our tobacco colonies.[1]
To the slave cultivators of ancient times, gradually succeeded a species of farmers known at present in France by the name of Metayers. They are called in Latin, Coloni Partiarii. They have been so long in disuse in England that at present I know no English name for them. The
- ↑ Adam Smith admirably points the moral, in advance, of the Negro Emancipation movement and its success. Slavery came to be recognized as less profitable than wage labor, and hence it was given up. "Philanthropy" got the credit of what was at bottom a purely economic revolution. The example of the Quakers of Pennsylvania, cited in the text, was gradually followed by all the North American colonies. Had economic conditions not favored them, the eloquence of a Fox or a Wilberforce would have been expended in vain. The resistance of the Southern States of the Union to emancipation was simply due to an economic shortsightedness, which the force of circumstances must soon have cured in any case. The victory of the North merely precipitated by a few years a change which in the nature of things was inevitable in the near future.—Ed.
