circumstances.  On the one point that an average slave might be expected to accomplish less in an hour’s work than an average free laborer, agreement was unanimous; on virtually every other point the views published were so divergent as to leave the public more or less distracted.  Adam Smith, whose work largely shaped the course of economic thought for a century following its publication in 1776, said of slave labor merely that its cost was excessive by reason of its lack of zest, frugality and inventiveness.  The tropical climate of the sugar colonies, he conceded, might require the labor of negro slaves, but even there its productiveness would be enhanced by liberal policies promoting intelligence among the slaves and assimilating their condition to that of freemen.[3] To some of these points J.B.  Say, the next economist to consider the matter, took exception.  Common sense must tell us, said he, that a slave’s maintenance must be less than that of a free workman, since the master will impose a more drastic frugality than a freeman will adopt unless a dearth of earnings requires it.  The slave’s work, furthermore, is more constant, for the master will not permit so much leisure and relaxation as the freeman customarily enjoys.  Say agreed, however, that slavery, causing violence and brutality to usurp the place of intelligence, both hampered the progress of invention and enervated such free laborers as were in touch with the regime.[4]

[Footnote 3:  Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, various editions, book I, chap. 8; book III, chap. 2; book IV, chaps. 7 and 9.]

[Footnote 4:  J.B.  Say, Traite d’Economie Politique (Paris, 1803), book I, chap. 28; in various later editions, book I, chap. 19.]

The translation of Say’s book into English evoked a reply to his views on slavery by Adam Hodgson, an Englishman with anti-slavery bent who had made an American tour; but his essay, though fortified with long quotations, was too rambling and ill digested to influence those who were not already desirous of being convinced.[5] More substantial was an essay of 1827 by a Marylander, James Raymond, who cited the experiences of his own commonwealth to support his contentions that slavery hampered economy by preventing seasonal shiftings of labor, by requiring employers to support their operatives in lean years as well as fat, and by hindering the accumulation of wealth by the laborers.  The system, said he, could yield profits to the masters only in specially fertile districts; and even there it kept down the growth of population and of land values.[6]

[Footnote 5:  Adam Hodgson, A Letter to M. Jean-Baptiste Say, on the comparative expense of free and slave labour (Liverpool, 1823; New York, 1823).]

[Footnote 6:  James Raymond, Prize Essay on the Comparative Economy of Free and Slave Labor in Agriculture (Frederick [Md.], 1827), reprinted in the African Repository, III, 97-110 (June, 1827).]