marked by his neighbour as a mean man; and, feeling this blighting judgment in all his intercourse, he alters this treatment as he would avoid any other act which would bring upon him public reprobation.

It was the writer's fortune to have been born a slave-owner in one of the most densely-populated slave districts of the Roanoke, and a twenty years' acquaintance in the Southern slave portion of the United States has convinced him of the truth of these remarks. He believes that he hazards nothing in the assertion that the general condition of the Southern slaves is infinitely superior to that of the free people of colour in the North. He will extend his remarks to Texas, and, from an eight years' [426] residence in this republic, assert, from positive knowledge, that the condition of her slaves are incomparably superior to the free negroes of the North, and better than any other portion of the slaves of the South. And why? Because here is a climate better suited to their constitutions, and a soil more capable of a free and abundant produce, which makes the necessaries of living cheaper.

The truth of this remark will not be difficult of comprehension when we state the fact that a beeve weighing from seven hundred to one thousand pounds can be raised in Texas at a less expense to the owner than a chicken can in Virginia, in which its owner finds his profits in raising and selling at one dime, The last season, in a large portion of Texas, a market could not be had for pork at one cent per pound, and corn at twelve cents per bushel. In illustration of this subject, one other fact may not be out of place here - that in most any portion of Texas, the best beeves may be purchased at an amount which the hides and tallow will bring in market, leaving the large amount of flesh without cost to the consumer. It may be asked with propriety by a person unacquainted with this fact, Why does not the raiser butcher his own beeves, and thereby save the flesh? There are good reasons why he does not. It is his business to rear cattle, and not to butcher them. Large stocks are owned by persons who have but little else, and whose occupation it is to brand the calf when [427] young, and look after the herd sufficiently, while raising, to keep them together. He consequently has neither time nor means to prepare the hides or tallow for market, and sells the beeves on foot at his cow-pen.

With these facts before us, how worthless should be that specious but mistaken fanaticism which dwells with such eloquence about slavery, which excites such false sympathies about the "traffic in human blood," and which seeks to level three millions of human beings to the wretched misery and wants of the free negroes of the North, or the freed cast of Mexico.

I am justified in my observations while in Mexico by all late writers, that the boasted freedom of that country is a slavery in its horrid realities which attaches nowhere to the descendants of Englishmen; that their freedom is only