ing in slaves is practised become reasons for racking to the utmost the
toil of the slave; for when his place can at once be supplied from foreign
preserves the duration of his life becomes a matter of less moment than
its productiveness while it lasts. It is accordingly a maxim of slave
management in slave-importing countries, that the most effective economy is
that which takes out of the human chattel in the shortest space of time the
utmost amount of exertion it is capable of putting forth."[18]

[Footnote 16: Ibid., p. 60.]

[Footnote 17: Ibid., p. 83.]

[Footnote 18: First American edition (New York, 1862), p. 73.]

The force of circumstances gave this book a prodigious and lasting vogue.
Its confident and cogent style made skepticism difficult; the dearth of
contrary data prevented impeachment on the one side of the Atlantic, and
on the other side the whole Northern people would hardly criticise such a
vindication of their cause in war by a writer from whose remoteness might
be presumed fairness, and whose professional position might be taken as
giving a stamp of thoroughness and accuracy. Yet the very conditions and
method of the writer made his interpretations hazardous. An economist,
using great caution, might possibly have drawn the whole bulk of his data
from travelers' accounts, as Cairnes did, and still have reached fairly
sound conclusions; but Cairnes gave preference not to the concrete
observations of the travelers but to their generalizations, often biased
or amateurish, and on them erected his own. Furthermore, he ignored such
material as would conflict with his preconceptions. His conclusions,
accordingly, are now true, now false, and while always vivid are seldom
substantially illuminating. His picture of the Southern non-slaveholders,
which, be it observed, he applied in his first edition to five millions
or ten-elevenths of that whole white population, and which he restricted,
under stress of contemporary criticism, only to four million souls in the
second edition,[19] is merely the most extreme of his grotesqueries. The
book was, in short, less an exposition than an exposure.

[Footnote 19: Ibid., second edition (London, 1863), appendix D.]

These criticisms of Cairnes will apply in varying lesser degrees to all of
his predecessors in the field. Those who sought the truth merely were in
general short of data; those who could get the facts in any fullness were
too filled with partisan purpose.