The profits of slave farming enure chiefly to the advantage of Western Europe and our North. Practical men, therefore, at the North, so far from going to work to abolish slavery, are bringing daily a larger supply of slaves into the slave market, than ever was brought before. Add the Coolies of Asia and apprentices from Africa to the old negro slave trade, and the annual supply of new slaves exceeds by far that of any other period.
The Abolitionists will probably succeed in dissolving the Union, in involving us in civil and fratricidal war, and in cutting off the North from its necessary supply of food and clothing; but they should recollect that whilst they are engaged in this labor of love, Northern and English merchants are rapidly extending and increasing slavery, by opening daily new markets for the purchase and sale of Coolies, apprentices and Africans.
The foreign slave trade is not necessary for the supply of the slave markets. The increase of the present slaves, if humanely treated, would suffice to meet that demand. But Africans and Coolies cost less than the rearing of slaves in America, and the trade in them, whenever carried on, induces masters to work their old slaves to death and buy new ones from abroad.
The foreign slave trade, especially the Cooley trade, is the most inhuman pursuit in which man ever engaged. Equally inhuman to the victims which it imports, and to the old slaves, whose treatment and condition it renders intolerably cruel. By directing philanthropy and public opinion in a false direction, the Abolitionists have become the most efficient propagandists of slavery and the slave trade. And slavery, such as it exists in pursuance of the foreign slave trade, shocks our sense of humanity quite as much as that of the most sensitive Abolitionists.
Since writing thus far, we met with the following in the Charleston Mercury:
"WHEAT IN MASSACHUSETTS.--The deficiency in the production of wheat in Massachusetts alone, in 1855, for the consumption of her inhabitants, was 3,915,550 bushels; and of Indian corn, 3,420,675 bushels, (_without allowing any thing for the consumption of corn by cattle_.)
"In 1850, the deficiency in the production of wheat in all the New England States, was equal to 1,691,502 barrels of flour; and to 3,464,675 bushels of corn, (_without allowing any thing for the consumption by cattle_.)