Page:Twelfth annual report of the Association for the Religious Instruction of the Negroes, in Liberty County, Georgia.djvu/16

16 and increasing population. The increase of the coloured population of the Southern States is in equal ratio with the whites, and of course must require enlargement of territory for its support. This population, becoming redundant in the older slave States, must be removed to the newer ones. But while this is plain to every man, it does by no means follow that there may not remain on the old lands an amount of population sufficient for their cultivation, and a population which, under good and efficient and economical management, may not improve and prosper in a high degree. Our own county, one of the oldest in the State, dating its first settlements as far back as the days of Oglethorpe, is an evidence of the fact that old lands, under good management, may be cultivated with success without limit of time, by slave labour. The county never was in a more prosperous condition than it is at present, and the lands generally are becoming better under improv ed modes of manuring and cultivation; and if planters do not relax their energy and enterprise, will continue to improve in time to come. There is, and we are happy to observe it, an increasing desire to remain permanently on their estates, in the minds of planters in the Southern country, and to give themselves up more fully to the idea of home; and to make that home a home indeed, in respect to all its necessary and pleasant fixtures and comforts. The moral improvement of every people depends much upon their being in a good degree stationary.

Another cause is the increased prosperity of our planters. This cannot be doubted. They have generally become more industrious, more attentive to their business, more economical, more experienced in the cultivation of provisions and market crops: their incomes are more regular. They are consequently able  to do more for their people, both within themselves and by employment of extra labour : and all they do for their people is so much clear gain in preserving their capital and rendering it more efficient and productive.

It has been the policy of some to lay out as little capital and time in improving their places, and increasing the comforts of their people, as possible, supposing that it is but so much capital and time wasted. This is certainly a great mistake, for besides the real satisfaction which one feels in the prevalence of order and neatness and hapiness about him, and in a consciousness of discharging just obligations to his people, there is an increased value