-from week to week--from month
to month, _corn_. In South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida, the sweet
potato is, to a considerable extent, substituted for corn during a
part of the year.

2d. The preceding testimony proves conclusively, that the _quantity of
food_ generally allowed to a full-grown field-hand, is a peck of corn
a week, or a fraction over a quart and a gill of corn a day. The legal
ration of North Carolina is _less_--in Louisiana it is _more_. Of the
slaveholders and other witnesses, who give the fore-going testimony,
the reader will perceive that no one testifies to a larger allowance
of corn than a peck for a week; though a number testify, that within
the circle of their knowledge, _seven_ quarts was the usual allowance.
Frequently a small quantity of meat is added; but this, as has already
been shown, is not the general rule for _field-hands_. We may add,
also, that in the season of "pumpkins," "cimblins," "cabbages,"
"greens," &c., the slaves on small plantations are, to some extent,
furnished with those articles.

Now, without entering upon the vexed question of how much food is
necessary to sustain the human system, under severe toil and exposure,
and without giving the opinions of physiologists as to the
insufficiency or sufficiency of the slaves' allowance, we affirm that
all civilized nations have, in all ages, and in the most emphatic
manner, declared, that _eight quarts of corn a week_, (the usual
allowance of our slaves,) is utterly insufficient to sustain the human
body, under such toil and exposure as that to which the slaves are
subjected.

To show this fully, it will be necessary to make some estimates, and
present some statistics. And first, the northern reader must bear in
mind, that the corn furnished to the slaves at the south, is almost
invariably the _white gourd seed_ corn, and that a quart of this kind
of corn weighs five or six ounces _less_ than a quart of "flint corn,"
the kind generally raised in the northern and eastern states;
consequently a peck of the corn generally given to the slaves, would
be only equivalent to a fraction more than six quarts and a pint of
the corn commonly raised in the New England States, New York, New
Jersey, &c. Now, what would be said of the northern capitalist, who
should allow his laborers but _six quarts and five gills of corn for a
week's provisions?_

Further, it appears in evidence, that the corn given to the slaves is
often _defective_. T