450              JOURNAL OF PROCEEDINGS [Feb. 19,

jails are crowded with them. It is not unfrequently the
case, that one half the time of our regular jury terms of Court
is consumed in the trials of these free negroes. Arson, bur-
glary, and larceny, together with graver felonies, such as rape
and murder, are fearfully on the increase with them. Almost
every week we read in the newspapers where some poor, de-
fenceless white female has been assaulted, her person abused,
and then murdered. These developments are but indices to a
more general eruption of their base passions, when some un-
toward event shall embarrass the State.

Nor do they contribute any thing towards the expenses of
meeting out justice to themselves. The taxable white popu-
lation have these burdens all to bear. As a class, free negroes
are not to be depended upon for any field or out-door labor.
They leave the country, where labor is greatly needed and
full prices offered, and congregate in the villages and cities.
Fond of a gregarious life, the single handed toil of the farmer
has no attractions for them. No matter what the emergency
or inducements, agriculture gets little or no aid from the free
negro. If entirely dependent on them for labor, the farmer
would soon find his fields going to waste, and Maryland would
sink into bankruptcy and pauperism.

In the cities they fill such offices as house and hotel ser-
vants, boot-blacks, barbers, coachmen, steamboat servants,
etc.; in the villages they keep small shops of edibles; deal in
poultry, eggs, oysters and fish, and sell small wares. We are
informed that all the large hotels in Baltimore city (except one)
are supplied with this class of servants. Baltimore city con-
tains nearly 30,000 free negroes.

Those of our farmers who have to depend upon hired la-
bor to cultivate their farms find it impossible to hire the free
negro by the year, and any less term would prove hazardous
to his crops. His only reliance is to employ slave or white
labor, both of which are becoming scarcer every year. Laws
have been passed to. compel them to hire by the year, but
their execution has never been enforced, either because of
their details, or a want of proper officers to execute them.

. While our white population are removing to the West and
South in proportion to the increase, thereby keeping their
numbers almost stationary in most of the counties, the free
negro cannot be induced to leave the State. And notwith-
standing the loud professions of Abolitionists at this time,
when the negro mania is sweeping over the North, it is re-

*Gov. Ligon in his last Message says, that out of 415 convicts in the State
Penitentiary "nearly one half are negroes." According to the last census the
free negroes amounted to one-seventh of the entire population, and that one-
seventh supplies us with one-half of all the convicts.