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opposed * Moreover , its very protection injures the protected party ,- — as when a rebellious slave is hanged . Human labour is more valuable than brute labour , only because actuated by reason ; for human strength is inferior to brute strength . ' The origin of labour , human and brute , is the Will . * The Reason of slaves is not subjected to exercise , nor their Will to more than a few weak motives . * The labour of slaves is therefore less valuable than that of brutes , inasmuch as their strength is inferior ; and less valuable than that of free labourers , inasmuch as their Reason and Will are feeble and alienated * Free and slave labour are equally owned by the capitalist . Where the labourer is not held as capital , the capitalist pays for labour only . _ Where the labourer is held as capital , the capitalist not only pays a much higher price for an equal quantity of labour , but also for waste , negligence , and theft , on the part of the labourer . * Capital is thus sunk , -which ought to be reproduced . * As the supply of slave-labour does not rise and fall with the wants of the capitalist , like that of free labour , he employs his occasional surplus on works which could be better done by brute labour or machinery . By rejecting brute labour , he refuses facilities for convertible husbandry , and for improving the labour of his slaves by giving them animal food .
* By rejecting machinery , he declines the most direct and complete method of saving labour . * Thus , again , capital is sunk which ought to be reproduced . * In order to make up for this loss of capital to slave-owners , bounties and prohibitions are granted in their behalf by government ; the waste committed by certain capitalists abroad being thus paid for out of the earnings of those at home . * Sugar being the production especially protected , everything is sacrificed by planters to the growth of sugar . The land is exhausted by perpetual cropping , the least possible portion of it is tilled for food , the slaves are worn out by overwork , and their numbers decrease in proportion to the scantiness of their food , and the oppressiv V eness of their toil . When the soil is so far exhausted as to place its owner out of reach of the sugar bounties , more food is raised , less toil is inflicted , and the slave population increases . * Legislative protection , therefore , not only taxes the people at home , but promotes ruin , misery , and death , in the protected colonies . 'A free trade in sugar would banish slavery altogether , since competition must induce an economy of labour and capital ; i . e ., a substitution of free for slave labour . 4 Let us see , then , what is the responsibility of the legislature in this matter * 4 slave system inflicts an incalculable amount of human suffering * for the eake of making a wholesale waste of labour and capital . * Since the slave system is onl y supported by legislative protection , the legislature i « responsible for the misery caused by direct infliction , and for the injury indirectly occasioned by the waste of labour and capital /
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480 Critical Notices . — Demerara .
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), June 2, 1832, page 430, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct1814/page/70/
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