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A house and store were pointed out to me in Baltimore, in the principal commercial street, which about 1816 were let for 2000 dollars per annum, but are now let at only 600. This is an extreme case; but taking the city generally, it would probably be correct to estimate the decline in rents at from 40 to 50 per cent. Real estate has fallen from 33 to 50 per cent; the interruption to the intercourse between the United States and the West Indies, having raised the calamities of this town to a level with the general distress-a distress in which it might otherwise have participated less deeply than some of its neighbours, from having been visited less severely with those worse than Egyptian plagues, bank discounts of accommodation notes, renewable ad infinitum.

Labour here, as in all Slave States, falls almost exclusively on the slaves; and the porterage of the town, the loading and discharging of ships, &c. are performed by those who are either hired out by their masters by the week, or allowed, on paying their masters a certain sum, generally about two dollars per week, to find work for themselves and retain the surplus.

Allowing for the different effects of a system of this kind and a system of free labour, and fully aware how slowly, though certain ly, the price of labour follows the price of provisions, I was surprized to find that while the latter has fallen two thirds, the former has declined less than a fourth. This is owing partly to the circumstance of the owners of the Coloured labourers being able to hold out on any particular occasion against an attempt to reduce their wages; an attempt which can seldom be effectually resisted by persons whose daily labour must obtain their daily bread; partly to conscientious scruples, which deter inany holders of hereditary or domestic slaves from trafficking in human flesh, and others from buying their fellowCHRIST, OBSERV, No. 245.

creatures to hire them out like cattle; but principally to such an irregularity of demand as renders it impossible to adjust the supply to its casual fluctuations, and induces a necessity of including in the remuneration for the hours employed some compensation for those lost in waiting for employment.

Slaves, who in Norfolk are now worth on an average from 300 to 400 dollars each, receive from the merchant who engages their services, seventy-five cents per day, and their food. These are enormous wages where turkeys, weighing five or six pounds, will sell for 1s. 9d. sterling, and wild ducks at 2s. per couple; and where flour is four dollars per barrel, Indian corn, their favourite food, forty cents per bushel, and beef and mutton five to' eight cents per pound. As sailors," the masters can obtain for their slaves ten dollars per month: and there are many families in Norfolk, especially many widows and orphans, whose property consists entirely of hereditary slaves whom they hire out as the only means of obtaining an income.

New York, Dec. 24, 1820. I wrote to you two long letters from Norfolk, which have not yet found a conveyance; and on the 22d I addressed to your care a long letter to

with an account

of our visit to Norfolk and return to Baltimore. We left that city on the 18th, at three o'clock in the morning, in an open stage waggon, having decided to return to Philadelphia through York and Lancaster, instead of the old steamboat route, as it would occupy no more time. The morning was bitterly cold; and as the roads were a sheet of ice, and our horses unprepared, we advanced only three miles an hour, for several hours, when we arrived at a German's, where we procured breakfast and fresh horses.

The face of the country, the thirty miles we continued in Maryland, presents, like almost every 2 P

other part of that State which I have seen, a beautiful specimen of hill and dale, of which from one third to one-half is woodland, young vigorous trees of second growth, so nearly of the same size, and so regularly disposed, that they perpetually suggest the idea that they have been planted by the hand of man. I know no part of England which would give you a precise idea of Maryland hill and dale. Sometimes the scenery reminded me of the forest lands near Loughborough; but the undulations are bolder, and succeed each other in interesting variety, as far as the horizon: sometimes of Derbyshire-Ashbourne for instancebut the hills are less frequently broken by abrupt and precipitous cliffs, or the dales contracted into deep romantic valleys. About thirty miles from Baltimore, we entered York county, in the State of Pennsylvania. For the first few miles the houses were of hewn log and plaster, like those of Maryland; afterwards of stone and brick. As we advanced, the face of the country, still beautiful, principally hill and dale, began to exhibit a much higher state of cultivation, and the houses assumed a more comfortable and prosperous appearance. We now obtained a sight of the fine barns for which the Germans are celebrated, and of which we had heard much. The land was worth from 10 to 50 dollars per acre, in farms of from fifty to two hundred acres, occupied almost exclusively by German proprietors. The instances of land being rented were rare; and in those cases the landlord usually received half the gross produce for rent. I was told, (and although I do not vouch for the entire accuracy of all the" on dits" I send you on subjects like this, I seldom give them unless I have had an opportunity of cross examination,) that the less opulent farmers in this neighbourhood expend scarcely any money in articles of consump

tion, either vesting their property in land or hoarding it in a safe place, They are stated to make their own cotton and woollen clothes, their stockings, shirts, and sheetings,exchanging wool with the hatter for hats, leather with the tanner for, shoes, substituting rye for coffee, (now partially employed even in some of the cities, where it is sold in the shops,) using no tea, aud very little sugar, which little they procure in exchange for the produce of their fine orchards. The best informed of them teach their children in the evenings; and sometimes they agree to board a schoolmaster at their houses gratuitously, and in succession, thus enabling him to reduce his terms to a mere trifle. They are said to be sociable, and very sensible of the comfort and independence of their condition.

Our driver on this part of the road had emigrated from Maccles field, in Cheshire, where he drove a chaise, and knew many of our friends there. For some time he drove the Lancaster mail from Preston. He came out, he said, in kis "uniformal dress of an English coachman," with a broad hat, long great coat, woollen cord breeches, and jockey boots; ail which he has discarded for uncharacteristic, shabby, yet pretending, blue coat, black waistcoat, and blue pantaloons. He procured employment in two days; and his gains have averaged for the last two years 26 dollars per month, with part of his board. I told him that I hoped, when he made his bargain, he did not count upon any money from the passengers: he said, Oh no!

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Please to remember the coachman' would not do here; it would be degrading to ask; although genteel people sometimes press me to take something, which I do not refuse." After this hint, I did not hesitate to follow the natural impulse I felt to give an old Lancaster driver some refreshment. As he seemed a scarcely seemed a very decent, sensible man, I asked him various ques

tions, in such a way as to give no particular direction to bis answers, and found his ideas of the country and people were very similar to my own. To a question whether he found the Americans more or less civil than the English, he replied, "I think they are more accommodating and friendly, and more ready to oblige either a stranger or one another; but, to be sure, they have always been in the habit of helping a neighbour, and have never known the depravity like of a condition which made them obliged to look to themselves. I was surprized to see them so friendly to every body."

He quite agreed with me that labourers, generally speaking, have no reasonable prospect of improv ing their condition, however uncomfortable, by coming bither, I mean to the Atlantic States: in the Western country industry and selfdenial will force their way. Very superior merit, or singular good fortune, may still raise some to independence; but five out of ten may wander about for weeks, or months, in the agricultural districts of Pennsylvania, without finding regular employment, or the means of supporting themselves by their labour. One of our passengers, a respectable looking man, said that a friend of his had been applied to by a good labourer of character, whom he had long known, offering to work till the Spring for his food, which offer was declined. In the neighbourhood of Philadelphia, I heard of many instances of less skilful labourers making similar applications in vain.

About 3 o'clock we stopped to dine at York, a town not unlike Loughborough at a distance. We were not expected; and though there were only two passengers who dined, the landlord made many apologies for producing only a beefsteak, veal cutlet, and tart, instead of the turkey, ham, and two or three joints of meat usually set on the table, even for a small party. Immediately on leaving York, we

entered a beautiful and interesting valley called "Creek Valley," where the land is said to be as good as in almost any part of the United States. On each side of the road were fine large fields, in a high state of cultivation. One of the passengers, well acquainted with the neighbourhood, mentioned to me the value of the several estates as we passed. The first, rather more than three hundred acres in extent, with a house, and large and extensive barns and stabling, which together cost erecting about 10,000 dollars, was sold two years since at 260 dollars per acre. It would, even now, bring 200, the fatal effects of the paper system having been almost entirely averted from this district, either by the prudence of the Bank Directors, or, what is more likely, the inveterate habits of the German farmers, which did not readily become reconciled to a flimsy substitute for gold. The next farm consisted of twenty-five acres, with a new brick house, and a decent frame barn, which together would cost erecting, my informant thought, more than 4000 dollars. A gentleman, whom he pointed out to me, had just offered 7000 dollars for the whole, which were refused. The next farm was one of a bundred and fifty acres, without buildings, but in high cultivation, onefitth woodland. It had been sold the preceding week at 140 dollars per acre. In this well settled country, woodland is dearer than cleared land. The next was a large estate, which a German had just sold to his sons at 105 dollars per acre, that they might give their sisters as a marriage portion their equal share, as is usual with them. The sons in law thought the sale too low. All these estates are within fifty-five miles of Baltimore, which the farmers consider their market, and speak of as very near.

Ten miles from York we passed the beautiful and classical Susquehanna, on a fine bridge, a mile and

a quarter broad; but the night was closing in, and the clouds, which obscured the moon, prevented our seeing the scenery of this noble river distinctly. We had been frequently gratified during the day by the view of a distinct chain of the Blue Mountains in the horizon. We reached Lancaster, a fine old town, (all things are by comparison,) at nine o'clock, having been eighteen hours in completing the seventy miles from Baltimore. We left Lancaster at four o'clock the next morning, and proceeded in the dark fourteen miles to breakfast. To my great mortification, it was so cloudy and misty during a great part of the day, that my view was circumscribed. We still continued, however, to see handsome barns, substantial houses, and beautifully cultivated fields. From the time we left Lancaster, we were on the great Pittsburgh road, which leads us to Philadelphia, through the "Great Valley," as it is called: the land is for the most part excellent, yielding from twenty-five to thirty bushels of wheat, and thirty to forty of Indian corn to the acre. The farmers in the county of Lancaster, unlike those of York, are, I was told, deeply in debt; the treacherous paper system having been incautiously admitted.

The country through which we passed during the day's ride, as far as we could see on each side of the road, (the fog contracting our view within narrow limits,) might be compared with the richest part of England, reminding me sometimes of Craven-sometimes of Warwickshire-sometimes of Gloucestershire. The best houses and barns are of stone, the largest being generally taverns; and the buildings on the farms (which are from two to three or five hundred acres in extent) are perhaps from 4,000 to 20,000 dollars in value. There were few, (till we reached Philadelphia scarcely any,) that could be called gentlemen's houses, or

which give one the idea of being in the vicinity of educated, or well bred society. One, between thirty and forty miles from Philadelphia, exhibited traces of taste and elegance in the front of the house and garden: the out-buildings seemed complete and extensive. My companion said, the whole of the buildings might cost, with the house furnished, 7,000 dollars; and one hundred acres of land, in high cultivation, in the vicinity, 5000 dollars more. Now, I think, with good management on the farm, a family might live comfortably with 18,000 dollars in addition; not with less than that sum, nor with so little, if there were boarding-school expenses to pay, or any charges except those strictly domestic. Now, let us suppose that Mr. Birkbeck had settled there :-his family, except as regards society, would scarcely have been conscious that they were transplanted: he would have felt at home in a cultivated country, instead of a novice in the prairies, and his agricultural skill might have been profitably exerted in a congenial sphere: 30,000 dollars, out of the 35,000 which he is said to have brought with him, would have been disposed of in a form at least as convertible as at present. I much doubt whether his whole property at the end of ten years, including the 5000 dollars left to accumulate with compound interest, would not have been of more value than it will now prove, and have commanded as many cultivated and uncleared acres in Illinois, as he will possess at the expiration of that period. If he should not be benefited, or be only partially so, by the remissions of price proposed by the Government to be afforded to purchasers of public lands (which will depend on the state of his instalments,) or if his settlement continue unpopular, he may actually lose by his lands, the reduction from one and a quarter to two dollars by the Government for vacant lands of

course, reducing the value of those he has entered. This, however, is a speculation for which I have no sufficient data; but I was led to think a little on the subject on passing these fine Pennsylvanian farms. It appears to me that the " aliquid immensum infinitumque," which played round the youthful imagination of Cicero, and conducted that celebrated orator into regions of truth and beauty, had taken possession of the mind of Mr. Birkbeck, and led him, less courteously, into the prairies of Illinois, where I have no doubt it has long since va nished, like an Ignis fatuus, leaving the agriculturalist not a little mortified at having been beguiled by an insidious phantom, which beckoned him to fame and fortune in the Western wilds.

We reached Philadelphia, 60 miles from Lancaster, at four o'clock in the afternoon, and found our party at the boarding-house increased by the arrival of a gentleman and lady and three daughters from Lexington, Kentucky, who having hastily left a comfortable estate in the vicinity of London, had become tired of the Western wilderness, and had returned to the Atlantic States, beginning to think that, to persons in their easy circumstances at least, there was no place like old England after all.

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New York, Feb. 1821. A longer residence in the principalities of the United States, and a more intimate acquaintance with their inhabitants, have given me a better opportunity than I had previously enjoyed, of forming the estimate you request from me of the present state of religion and morals on this side of the Atlantic. You must, however, make great allowance for errors in so difficult and delicate an undertaking, and will receive with peculiar caution, on such a subject, any general conelusions deduced from the observations of an individual traveller. You may, however, consider the

favourable representations which I made, in a letter from Boston last autumn, with respect to opportunities of public worship, and the prevalence of evangelical preaching, as applicable to all the principal towns and cities from Portland to Savannah.

But churches are not religion; nor are the ministrations of a pastor an unerring criterion of the piety of his hearers. In a country, however, in which contributions to places of public worship are for the most part voluntary, a liberal dissemination of sacred edifices is a very favourable symptom; while the number of faithful ministers, and the frequent occurrence of large congregations listening attentively to unwelcome truths from pastors appointed by their own election and dependent on them for sup port, afford something more than a vague presumption of the existence of no inconsiderable degree of vital piety in the community.

My favourable impressions were strengthened as I proceeded, by noticing the attention generally paid on the Atlantic coast to the external observance of the Sabbath; by meeting continually with Bibles, and other religious books, in the steam-boats and houses of entertainment; and by witnessing the efforts every where apparent for the extension of Christian piety.

Theological institutions for the education of ministers, extensive, well-endowed, and respectable, frequently arrest the attention of the traveller as he passes along the road; while a very little intercourse with society convinces him that associations of a more private nature, for preparing indigent young men for missionary services, together with Bible Societies, Missionary Societies, and Sunday School and Tract Societies, are liberally scattered.

I felt neither disposed nor called upon to deprive myself of the pleasure I derived from these favourable indications, by reflecting that

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