om your
entire capital.'

'I never looked at the matter in that light. But I have given you my
profits as they _now_ are; some years I make more; six years ago I made
twenty-five thousand dollars.'

'Yes; and six years hence you may make nothing.'

'That's true. But it would cost me more to live at the North.'

'There you are mistaken. What do you pay for your corn, your pork, and
your hay, for instance?'

'Well, my corn I have to bring round by vessel from Washington (North
Carolina), and it costs me high when it gets here,--about ten bits (a
dollar and twenty-five cents), I think.'

'And in New York you could buy it now at sixty to seventy cents. What
does your hay cost?'

'Thirty-five dollars. I pay twenty for it in New York,--the balance is
freight and hauling.'

'Your pork costs you two or three dollars, I suppose, for freight and
hauling.'

'Yes; about that.'

'Then in those items you might save nearly a hundred per cent.; and they
are the principal articles you consume.'

'Yes; there's no denying that. But another thing is just as certain: it
costs less to support one of my niggers than one of your laboring men.'

'That may be true. But it only shows that our laborers fare better than
your slaves.'

'I'm not sure of that. I _am_ sure, however, that our slaves are more
contented than the run of laboring men at the North.'

'That proves nothing. Your blacks have no hope, no chance to rise; and
they submit--though I judge not cheerfully--to an iron necessity. The
Northern laborer, if very poor, may be discontented; but discontent
urges him to effort, and leads to the bettering of his condition. I tell
you, my friend, slavery is an expensive luxury. You Southern nabobs
_will_ have it; and you have to _pay for it_.'

'Well, we don't complain. But, seriously, my good fellow, I feel that
I'm carrying out the design of the Almighty in holding my niggers. I
think he made the black to serve the white.'

'_I_ think,' I replied, 'that whatever He designs works perfectly. Your
institution certainly does not. It keeps the producer, who, in every
society, is the really valuable citizen, in the lowest poverty, while it
allows those who do nothing to be "clad in fine linen, and to fare
sumptuously every day."'

'It does more than that, sir,' said Madam P----, with animation; 'it
brutalizes and degrades the _master_ and the _slave_; it separates
husband and wife, parent and child; it sacrifices virtuous wome