Monsieur C.C.  ROBIN, a highly intelligent French gentleman, who resided in Louisiana from 1802 to 1806, and published a volume of travels, gives the following testimony to the over-working of the slaves there: 

“I have been a witness, that after the fatigue of the day, their labors have been prolonged several hours by the light of the moon; and then, before they could think of rest, they must pound and cook their corn; and yet, long before day, an implacable scold, whip in hand, would arouse them from their slumbers.  Thus, of more than twenty negroes, who in twenty years should have doubled, the number was reduced to four or five.”

In conclusion we add, that slaveholders have in the most public and emphatic manner declared themselves guilty of barbarous inhumanity toward their slaves in exacting from them such long continued daily labor.  The Legislatures of Maryland, Virginia and Georgia, have passed laws providing that convicts in their state prisons and penitentiaries, “shall be employed in work each day in the year except Sundays, not exceeding eight hours, in the months of November, December, and January; nine hours, in the months of February and October, and ten hours in the rest of the year.”  Now contrast this legal exaction of labor from CONVICTS with the exaction from slaves as established by the preceding testimony.  The reader perceives that the amount of time, in which by the preceding laws of Maryland, Virginia, and Georgia, the convicts in their prisons are required to labor, is on an average during the year but little more than NINE HOURS daily.  Whereas, the laws of South Carolina permit the master to compel his slaves to work FIFTEEN HOURS in the twenty-four, in summer, and FOURTEEN in the winter—­which would be in winter, from daybreak in the morning until four hours after sunset!—­See 2 Brevard’s Digest, 243.

The other slave states, except Louisiana, have no laws respecting the labor of slaves, consequently if the master should work his slaves day and night without sleep till they drop dead, he violates no law!

The law of Louisiana provides for the slaves but TWO AND A HALF HOURS in the twenty-four for “rest!” See law of Louisiana, act of July 7 1806, Martin’s Digest 6. 10—­12.

III.  CLOTHING.

We propose to show under this head, that the clothing of the slaves by day, and their covering by night, are inadequate, either for comfort or decency.

Hon. T.T.  Bouldin, a slave-holder, and member of Congress from Virginia in a speech in Congress, Feb. 16, 1835.

Mr. Bouldin said “he knew that many negroes had died from exposure to weather,” and added, “they are clad in a flimsy fabric, that will turn neither wind nor water.”

George Buchanan, M.D., of Baltimore, member of the American Philosophical Society, in an oration at Baltimore, July 4, 1791.