s therefore no crowding to the hospitals.
This constituted a _second source of saving_; for they who were in the
hospitals were maintained by Mr. Steele without earning any thing, while
they who were working in the field left to their master in their work,
when they went home at night, a value equal at least to that which they
had received from him for their day's labour. But there was another
saving of equal importance, which Mr. Steele calls a saving of _time_,
but which he might with more propriety have called a saving of _season_.
This saving of season, he says, was worth _more than double the
premium_; and so it might easily have been. There are soils, every
farmer knows, which are so constituted, that if you miss your day, you
miss your season; and, if you miss your season, you lose probably half
your crop. The saving, therefore, of the season, by having a whole crop
instead of half an one, was _a third source of saving of money_. Now let
us put all these savings together, and they will constitute a great
saving or profit; for as these savings were made by Mr. Steele in
consequence of _his new plan_, and _were therefore not made by others_,
they constituted an _extraordinary_ profit to him; or they added to the
profit, whatever it might have been, which he used to receive from the
estate before his new plan was put in execution.

But I discover other ways in which Mr. Steele was benefited, as I
advance in the perusal of his writings. It was impossible to overlook
the following passage: "Now," says he (alluding to his new system),
"every species of provisions raised on the plantations, or bought from
the merchants, is charged at the market-price to the copyhold-store, and
discharged by what has been paid on the several accounts of every
individual bond-slave; whereas for all those species heretofore, I never
saw in any plantation-book of my estates any account of what became of
them, or how they were disposed of, nor of their value, other than in
these concise words, _they were given in allowance to the Negroes and
stock_. Every year, for six years past, this great plantation has
bought several hundred bushels of corn, and was scanty in all
ground-provisions, our produce always falling short. This year, 1790,
_since the establishment of copyholders, though several less acres were
planted_ last year in Guinea corn than usual, yet we have been able to
sell _several hundred bushels_ at a high price, and _we have still