ABSTRACT
It has been interesting to read the remarkable book of J. E. Cairnes, The Slave Power. Though dealing with slavery in the American States, the book is really of wider interest; for it tries to determine from observation of the working of slavery there the peculiar circumstances which must be present to make slavery economically practicable, and to discover the laws to which the destiny of slave-owning States is necessarily subject. The investigation includes a few pages comparing ancient and modern slavery, but actually comparison is invited on every page. Slave-labour needs a rich soil, no matter what crop it is engaged in raising. Elaborate cultivation, the exploitation of a poor soil to its utmost, require intelligence, delicate machinery, enthusiasm—in other words, a love of work and a love of the soil. The simultaneous existence of slave and free labour, and the consequent absence of the race of ‘mean whites,’ is a feature peculiar to ancient society.
