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0039

The resources of The County are exhausted.  The majority of our people are literally "paupers".  The prospects of agriculture are gloomy in the extreme, from the almost entire suspension of work last year. The refusal of the negroes now to make yearly contract, the exhaustion of stock, protraction of credit &c. Unless some great change takes place, this state of things will continue - and the negroes themselves will furnish far more than their due proportion of paupers.  In no event can the produce of The County reach one half of its proper yield for several years.  The "disposition" of the Board will be, I imagine, to do justice, and perform faithfully the duties assigned to it.  Coloured paupers have always received the same attention as white ones, according to their necessities.  We have never been troubled with many of them as a public charge, because every master took care of his own slaves.   Many of us have them now on our hands, that have been an expensive burden for years. 

My opinion is that those negroes who left the 

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