In this gradual reduction of the wages of labor, when population is checked neither by the self-restraining prudence of individuals nor by great public calamities, what is the lowest point to which those wages can descend without lessening the numbers of the community?

Until those numbers have reached the level of the means of subsistence, the lowest wages to which competition can reduce the laborer will be enough to support himself and a family of an average number in the ordinary mode of subsistence. But when that level is reached, as in China, then the limit may descend still lower, until the wages become barely sufficient to support the laborer himself. In such a -community, incapable of further increase, the loss by death is repaired principally by the richer classes, whose natural multiplication may be the same, or nearly the same, as where population was thin; and from this stock the laboring class will be ever receiving fresh supplies. It thus appears that, while the maximum of the wages of agricultural labor is all the raw produce which the laborer can make after paying the expense of cultivation, but no rent, the minimum is no more than is necessary for his subsistence. At this meagre rate it is believed that labor can always be procured in China, Hindostan, and other parts of Asia.

In treating of agricultural labor, it is proper to notice Slavery, which prevails in nearly one-half of the States of this Union, and which is viewed with very different sentiments by those two great local divisions.

By one party it is thus impugned: a most obvious consequence of this condition is, that where ordinary labor is performed by slaves, such labor, by a natural association, is regarded as beneath the dignity of free men, and they are consequently thus rendered indolent and idle. Nor is this all: the slave, not being stimulated to industry by the expectation of receiving the fruits of his own labor, is likely, from the love of ease so natural to man, to work less willingly, with less energy, and to avoid toil when he can. To counteract this propensity, superintendents are necessary, who sometimes resort to punishment to compel that labor, which with freemen is readily and voluntarily exerted from self-interest. The cost of such superintendence is therefore a charge on agriculture from which free communities are exempt; and compulsion, moreover, can scarcely ever make the labor of a slave as productive as that of the free man.

The instinctive feelings of the slave, it is further urged, also impel him to extraordinary expense and waste. He is therefore generally thievish, careless, and improvident. Slavery has thus been said to consign one-half of the community in the Southern States to unwilling labor, and the other half either to idleness, or, for preventing ennui, to vicious indulgences.

Such are the theoretical objections to domestic slavery; and yet there are many facts which are at variance with this theory, so as to compel those who are in pursuit of truth to make large deductions from the conclusions to which the mere speculators on this subject have been generally conducted.

Thus, as to the unproductiveness of slave labor: after the emancipation of the slaves in the English West Indies, the labor of that class was greatly diminished, and the confident predictions of the abolitionists were completely falsified, as the products of those islands, when cultivated by freemen, was far less than when cultivated by slaves. In Jamaica, much the largest island, the falling off was the greatest. The negroes, finding it practicable to procure the small patches of ground which, in that genial soil and climate, are sufficient for their support, have mainly withdrawn themselves from the toilsome and irksome labor of making sugar, and can be tempted to continue it only by working at high wages, a few hours of the day, and certain days of the week; so that an able-bodied laborer now produces scarce a third or a fourth of what he formerly earned In Barbadoes, indeed, where the population is very dense, necessity compels the mass of the negroes to work on the plantations as formerly, and the produce of this island has not diminished, but has even increased. Between these extremes the other islands were found, some yielding far less than their former product, and others approaching it. Of late, by the aid of the Coolies, whom the Government has introduced into its sugar colonies at a great expense, the present product of all of them except Jamaica is equal to what it formerly was.

In the slaveholding States of this Union there are some persons who, brought up among slaves, have acquired so much skill in managing them, that the products of their Labor are scarcely inferior to those of freemen. Proprietors of this description excite emulation among the slaves, and make use of small indulgences and rewards as incentives to their industry, which are more efficient than those of punishment, inasmuch as the former make them identify their master's interest with their own, and consider themselves, in fact, as members of the same patriarchal family. These cases of the judicious and successful management of slaves are not, indeed, of common occurrence, but they are sufficient to show how much the evils of slavery are capable of mitigation.

There are also some social benefits growing out of this institution which it is proper to state, to pass for what they are worth. The habit of command, to which the master of slaves has been familiarized from his infancy, peculiarly fits him for many of the higher duties of civilized life. He is thus likely to be better qualified for exercising authority both in the army and navy, and even in the civil department. It is, perhaps, thus that the Southern States have furnished more than their proportion of those who have held the higher offices of the government.

The institution seems to be also favorable to manners, by giving that quiet ease which the habitual self-respect of the slaveholder is so likely to bestow; so that the manners of the cultivated classes in the slaveholding States differ little or nothing from those of people of rank in Europe.