' This same
gentleman thus compared the foreign with the domestic traffic: 'The
trader (African) receives the slave, a stranger in aspect, language and
manner, from the merchant who brought him from the interior. But _here_,
sir, individuals whom the master has known from infancy,--whom he has
seen sporting in the innocent gambols of childhood,--who have been
accustomed to look to him for protection,--he tears from the mother's
arms, exiles into a foreign country, among a strange people, subject to
cruel task-masters. In my opinion, it is much worse.'--Mr. Gholson, of
Virginia, in his speech in the legislature of that State, January 18,
1831, says: 'The master forgoes the service of the female slave, has her
nursed and attended during the period of her gestation, and raises the
helpless and infant offspring. The value of the property justifies the
expense; and I do not hesitate to say, that in its increase consists
much of our wealth.'--Professor Dew, now President of the College of
William and Mary, Virginia, in his review of the debate in the Virginia
legislature, 1831-3, speaking of the revenue arising from the trade,
says: 'A full equivalent being thus left in the place of the slave, this
emigration becomes an advantage to the State, and does not check the
black population as much as at first view we might imagine; because it
furnishes every inducement to the master to attend to the negroes, to
_encourage breeding_, and to cause the greatest number possible to be
raised.
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