e interest in it.

Mr. John Adams observed, that the numbers of people were taken by this
article, as an index of the wealth of the state, and not as subjects of
taxation; that, as to this matter, it was of no consequence by what name
you called your people, whether by that of freemen or of slaves; that
in some countries the laboring poor were called freemen, in others
they were called slaves; but that the difference as to the state
was imaginary only. What matters it whether a landlord employing ten
laborers on his farm, give them annually as much money as will buy them
the necessaries of life, or gives them those necessaries at short hand?
The ten laborers add as much wealth annually to the state, increase its
exports as much, in the one case as the other. Certainly five hundred
freemen produce no more profits, no greater surplus for the payment of
taxes, than five hundred slaves. Therefore the state in which are the
laborers called freemen, should be taxed no more than that in which are
those called slaves. Suppose, by an extraordinary operation of nature
or of law, one half the laborers of a state could in the course of one
night be transformed into slaves; would the state be made the poorer or
the less able to pay taxes? That the condition of the laboring poor
in most countries, that of the fishermen particularly of the Northern
states, is as abject as that of slaves. It is the number of laborers
which produces the surplus for taxation, and numbers, therefore,
indiscriminately, are the fair index of wealth; that it is the use of
the word 'property' here, and its application to some of the people
of the state, which produces the fallacy. How does the Southern farmer
procure slaves? Either by importation or by purchase from his neighbor.
If he imports a slave, he adds one to the number of laborers in his
country, and proportionably to its profits and abilities to pay-taxes;
if he buys from his neighbor, it is only a transfer of a laborer from
one farm to another, which does not change the annual produce of the
state, and therefore should not change its tax: that if a Northern
farmer works ten laborers on his farm, he can, it is true, invest the
surplus of ten men's labor in cattle; but so may the Southern farmer,
working ten slaves; that a state of one hundred thousand freemen can
maintain no more cattle, than one of one hundred thousand slaves.
Therefore, they have no more of that kind of property; that a slave may,