Any Comparison Between The Material Comfort Of A Kentucky Slave And An English Ditcher And Delver Would Be Preposterous.

The Kentucky slave never wants for clothing fitted to the weather.

He eats meat twice a day, and has three good meals; he knows no limit but his own appetite; his work is light; he has many varieties of amusement; he has instant medical assistance at all periods of necessity for himself, his wife, and his children. Of course he pays no rent, fears no baker, and knows no hunger. I would not have it supposed that I conceive slavery with all these comforts to be equal to freedom without them; nor do I conceive that the negro can be made equal to the white man. But in discussing the condition of the negro, it is necessary that we should understand what are the advantages of which abolition would deprive him, and in what condition he has been placed by the daily receipt of such advantages. If a negro slave wants new shoes, he asks for them, and receives them, with the undoubting simplicity of a child. Such a state of things has its picturesquely patriarchal side; but what would be the state of such a man if he were emancipated to-morrow?

The natural beauty of the place which I was visiting was very great. The trees were fine and well scattered over the large, park-like pastures, and the ground was broken on every side into hills. There was perhaps too much timber, but my friend seemed to think that that fault would find a natural remedy only too quickly. "I do not like to cut down trees if I can help it," he said. After that I need not say that my host was quite as much an Englishman as an American. To the purely American farmer a tree is simply an enemy to be trodden under foot, and buried underground, or reduced to ashes and thrown to the winds with what most economical dispatch may be possible. If water had been added to the landscape here it would have been perfect, regarding it as ordinary English park-scenery. But the little rivers at this place have a dirty trick of burying themselves under the ground. They go down suddenly into holes, disappearing from the upper air, and then come up again at the distance of perhaps half a mile. Unfortunately their periods of seclusion are more prolonged than those of their upper-air distance. There were three or four such ascents and descents about the place.

My host was a breeder of race-horses, and had imported sires from England; of sheep also, and had imported famous rams; of cattle too, and was great in bulls. He was very loud in praise of Kentucky and its attractions, if only this war could be brought to an end. But I could not obtain from him an assurance that the speculation in which he was engaged had been profitable.

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