a
great stock in hand_. I can place this saving to no other account, than
that there is now an exact account kept by all produce being paid as
cash to the bond-slaves; and also as all our watchmen are obliged to pay
for all losses that happen on their watch, they have found it their
interest to look well to their charge; and consequently that we have
had much less stolen from us than before this new government took
place."

Here then we have seen _another considerable source of saving_ to Mr.
Steele, viz. that _he was not obliged to purchase any corn for his
slaves as formerly_. My readers will be able to judge better of this
saving, when I inform them of what has been the wretched policy of many
of our planters in this department of their concerns. Look over their
farming memoranda, and you will see _sugar, sugar, sugar_, in every
page; but you may turn over leaf after leaf, before you will find the
words _provision ground_ for their slaves. By means of this wretched
policy, slaves have often suffered most grievously. Some of them have
been half-starved. Starvation, too, has brought on disorders which have
ultimately terminated in their death. Hence their masters have suffered
losses, besides the expense incurred in buying what they ought to have
raised upon their own estates, and this perhaps at a dear market: and in
this wretched predicament Mr. Steele appears to have been himself when
he first went to the estate. His slaves, he tells us, had been reduced
in number by bad management. Even for six years afterwards he had been
obliged to buy several hundred bushels of corn; but in the year 1790 he
had sold several hundred bushels at a high price, and had still a great
stock on hand. And to what was all this owing? Not to an exact account
kept at the store (for some may have so misunderstood Mr. Steele); for
how could an exact account kept there, have occasioned an increase in
the produce of the earth? but, as Mr. Steele himself says, _to the
establishment of his copyholders_, or to the _alteration of the
condition_ of his slaves. His slaves did not only three times more work
than before, in consequence of the superior industry he had excited
among them, but, by so doing, they were enabled to put the corn into the
earth three times more quickly than before, or they were so much
forwarder in their other work, that they were enabled to sow it at the
critical moment, or so as _to save the season_, and thus secure a full
c