For diet, the slaves shared jointly the garden-stuff, fruits and milk of the master's plantation and garden. But their essential and preferred food was a certain daily or weekly allowance of corn meal and bacon, issued in addition to the above. The common rule in Virginia, where these were given in the form of rations, was to allow each adult a half-pound of bacon, and two quarts of meal per day. The meal of Indian corn, when uninjured by the mustiness of a sea-voyage, and properly baked at a bright wood-fire, is an excellent and nutritious food, as is shown by the fact that it fills more than an equal place with bread of wheat, on the tables of the richest planters. In many other families, the allowance of meal was unlimited; and the bacon was not issued in formal rations, the servants living at a common board. The supply laid in was then usually according to the following rule: one hundred and fifty pounds of pork per year, for every soul, white and black. When it is remembered that the sucklings and the white females used almost none of this supply, a simple calculation will show that it is equivalent to at least a half-pound per day for each adult. Such were the customary usages in Virginia. There were probably as many cases where the above rules were exceeded, as where the allowances fell below them. In the new States of the South West, where agriculture is still more profitable, it is said that the allowances were more liberal than in the old slave States. It happens that the census returns of the United States for 1860, published by our enemies themselves, more than confirm this view of the abundant and comfortable living of our labouring population. According to those returns the free States had in 1860, not quite nineteen millions of people, and the slave States twelve and a quarter millions. Of the cereals used by Americans for human food, the free States raised five hundred and sixty-one millions bushels; and the slave States four hundred and ninety-four millions bushels. That is, while the people of the free States had about _thirty_ bushels each of these cereals, those of the slave States had _forty-one_ bushels per head. Moreover, the North boasts that breadstuffs are her great export crops, while cotton and tobacco were ours. Our people, including our slaves, must therefore have used more than four bushels each, to their three. In neither country does each person eat either thirty or forty-one bushels per year; because horses and other live stock eat a part, which it is impossible accurately to estimate. Again: of the animals used for human food, (horned cattle, sheep, and swine,) then free States had about _forty_ millions, or a little more than _two_ per head to each inhabitant; while the slave States had forty and a half millions, or about _three and a half_ to each inhabitant. But as bacon or pork is the flesh most commonly consumed by Americans, and especially by farm labourers, the proportion of