y to health and contentment, they
abscond, and passing over the lines into a
non-slaveholding State, are there concealed and
protected. The number and the success of elopements
leave no doubt of the establishment of a regular chain
of posts, accessary to, and of systematic plans,
deliberately organized, for their seduction and
concealment. In these escapes, the free negroes are, for
the most part, undoubtedly instrumental, as they are to
most of the robberies committed by slaves. While at
Easton, two weeks since, the slaves of two gentlemen
made their escape, being each, if not recovered, a loss
of one thousand dollars; and the firm persuasion was,
that, in both cases, the runaways were furnished with
passes by a free negro barber. Even if apprehended,
these gentlemen will have been put to an expense of not
less than three hundred dollars, and this without the
slightest pretext of ill usage or unkindness.

"'The usual process is, when the owner is supposed to
have despaired of his recovery, for some abolition or
free negro lawyer to open a correspondence with the
owner, representing the runaway to be in Canada, or
otherwise beyond apprehension--coolly adding, with a
highwayman's impudence, "take that or nothing;" and the
owner has to put up with a total loss, or compromise for
a third of the value of his property--the result in
either case, proving an incentive to others to be off in
like manner"'

* * * * *

"'There is not an interest that is not impaired, by the
proximity of the free States, and the protection there
afforded to slaves, and by the presence and
intercommunion of the free with the slave negro. Even
the value of land is diminished by it. Maryland suffers
the disadvantages, without the advantages of a slave
State. The disadvantage consists in the reputation, (the
odium, north of the Delaware,) of being a slave State.
_The capitalists of the North refuse, on that account,
to invest in Maryland lands, though they could buy land
in Maryland for twenty dollars an acre, which is
intrinsically worth more than theirs, which they could
sell for an hun