Page:Twelfth annual report of the Association for the Religious Instruction of the Negroes, in Liberty County, Georgia.djvu/15

15 home and abroad, indicates this increased care and attention oil the part of their owners.

There are several causes which have contributed largely to this happy result, and which we trust will continue to operate favourably in time to come.

The first is, the permanency of the majority of our plantation settlements. The disposition to change and removal, while it has had its votaries, has never been very prevalent with our citizens. They have, therefore, considered the county their home; and their desire has been to educate their children to the extent of their means, give them settlements in life as near themselves as possible, and to sustain all the means of grace, without which no society of men can hope for permanent prosperity. Considering themselves permanently settled, they have been induced to pay greater attention to the improvement of their plantations and to the comfort of their people. Few men will do more than put up the cheapest and frailest houses, and make the easiest provision for themselves and their people, who are contemplating a removal to some ether more favoured region as soon as Providence shall put it in their power. This spirit of removal is the bane of all improvement, and it has been, and continues to be, one grand cause of the desolate and dilapidated appearance of large districts and hundreds of plantations in the Southern country. Hurried away by a desire for accumulation, great numbers of planters have commenced a system of removals that has resulted in the loss of their comfort, and the ruin of their fortunes: not considering that the same energy perseverance and industry essential to success wherever they go, would make them prosperous at home. Hence, have we seen whole families broken up and removed far away to better their fortunes, and others have come in and bought up their plantations upon which they grew poor, and have gone to work amassing wealth as fast as the seasons make their round. There is more in the man himself than in the place at which he lives. Another idea which has contributed largely to the increase of this spirit of removal, is, that our system of domestic slavery can maintain itself only by feeding upon immense bodies of new land. Confine it to old lands and it will die. This is somewhat a mistake. Every permanent community must in time require an enlargement of territory for the support of its increased