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much liberty, holiday &c, only to learn, at the close of the year, with regret, that he has been duped by the wiles of a person who pays & leaves him penniless, by telling him that he did not work as he should have done, that his crop is short or a failure, that he will be able, perhaps, at some future day to pay him something- Hence the cause that so many (or one cause) are now in a state of great privation & suffering. Such occurrences (not a few) are now occurring & have occurred within my knowledge, and several within this immediate neighborhood- Some have had a good organization of hands, have made their arrangements, incurred the usual expense of outlay &c., and commisioned their crops, &, by the interfirence of unscrupulous men & their disaffecting influence, have been denuded or striped [[stripped]] of their force or entire hands, at a period too late to reorganize & employ other hands, and have ruinously failed to make crops of a remunerative character the present year. And these persons hass themselves, as secure from all legal penalty, on the grounds that the Civil R. Bill has repealed, in toto, the aforsaid statute of Miss, passed in .65, penalty and allI 
I feel, sir, as if stultifying myself by asking the interpretation of a law, which, to me, seems so obvious- But as an opinion, different from that which I, in common with some profound jurists, entertain (I may be wrong) is held by many here - about & some, who, it would seem, ought to judge