t profitably employ them the rest of the year."

It is not only true of the sugar planters, but of the slaveholders
generally throughout the far south and south west, that they believe
it for their interest to wear out the slaves by excessive toil in
eight or ten years after they put them into the field.[4]

[Footnote 4: Alexander Jones. Esq., a large planter in West Feliciana,
Louisiana, published a communication in the "North Carolina True
American," Nov. 25, 1838, in which, speaking of the horses employed in
the mills on the plantations for ginning cotton, he says, they "are
much whipped and jaded;" and adds, "In fact, this service is so severe
on horses, as to shorten their lives in many instances, if not
actually kill them in gear."

Those who work one kind of their "live stock" so as to "shorten their
lives," or "kill them in gear" would not stick at doing the same thing
to another kind.]

REV. DOCTOR REED, of London, who went through Kentucky, Virginia and
Maryland in the summer of 1834, gives the following testimony:

"I was told confidently and from _excellent authority_, that recently
at a meeting of planters in South Carolina, the question was seriously
discussed whether the slave is more profitable to the owner, if well
fed, well clothed, and worked lightly, or if made the most of _at
once_, and exhausted in some eight years. The decision was in favor of
the last alternative. That decision will perhaps make many shudder.
But to my mind this is not the chief evil. The greater and original
evil is considering the _slave as property_. If he is only property
and my property, then I have some right to ask how I may make that
property most available."

"Visit to the American Churches," by Rev. Drs. Reed and Mattheson.
Vol. 2 p. 173.

REV. JOHN O. CHOULES, recently pastor of a Baptist Church at New
Bedford, Massachusetts, now of Buffalo, New York, made substantially
the following statement in a speech in Boston.

"While attending the Baptist Triennial Convention at Richmond,
Virginia, in the spring of 1835, as a delegate from Massachusetts, I
had a conversation on slavery, with an officer of the Baptist Church
in that city, at whose house I was a guest. I asked my host if he did
not apprehend that the slaves would eventually rise and exterminate
their masters.

"Why," said the gentleman, "I used to apprehend such a catastrophe,
but God has made a providential opening, a _merciful safety valve_,
and no