Page:A dissertation on slavery - with a proposal for the gradual abolition of it, in the state of Virginia. (IA dissertationonsl00tuckrich).pdf/16

 assisted in multiplying the blacks in those parts, no less than in diminishing their numbers in the more rigorous climates of the north; this influence of climate moreover contributed extremely to increase or diminish the value of the slave to the purchasers, in the different colonies. White labourers, whose constitutions were better adapted to the severe winters of the New England colonies, were there found to be preferable to the Negroes, who, accustomed to the influence of an ardent sun, became almost torpid in those countries, not less adapted to give vigour to their laborious exercises, than unfavourable to the multiplication of their species; in those colonies, where the winters were not only milder, and of shorter duration, but succeeded by an intense summer heat, as invigorating to the African, as debilitating to the European constitution, the Negroes were not barely more capable of performing labour than the Europeans, or their descendants, but the multiplication of the species was at least equal; and, where they met with humane treatment, perhaps greater than among the whites. The purchaser therefore calculated not upon the value of the labour of his slave only, but, if a female, he regarded her