4. _Slaves should be well fed._ The quality, the quantity of food, and reasonable time to eat it and refresh themselves, are the ideas which enter into this duty. A sufficient quantity of good substantial food, well prepared, should be furnished. Meat should form a fair proportion of the diet of a laboring African. The Irish, it is true, eat but little meat, and do well,--that is, such as do not perish,--but the African constitution in this climate requires meat, and they must have it if they do full labor. Their food should be well prepared. To secure this, it should be prepared by a cook, and eaten at a common table. To put laboring farm-hands off with an allowance of meat and meal, to prepare it or seek its preparation as they may, is too obviously wrong to require argument. The force of habit is exceedingly stubborn in the African. To eat a piece of meat exhausted of its nutriment by being crisped on the coals, is very much to the taste of those accustomed to it: they will yield with great reluctance. But still, this plan should give place to the better preparation of the public table. An excellent habit of the slaves is to eat slowly. Usually something like two hours in the long days is allowed them to eat and refresh themselves at noon. It is not too much to allow. An hour’s repose after a meat dinner should be allowed to all laborers in the heat of summer. Again, they are entitled to such variety as the season affords. The early roasting ear, the ripe fruit, the melons, the potatoes, the fat stock, all enter of right in due season and limited proportions into their bill of fare. Better do all this than pay doctors’ bills, or tempt them to steal. Nor do I fall out with the custom of some of our better families, to supply their tables with a portion of all the delicacies of the “great house,” on particular occasions. Some may think this too much for slaves! But the attachment of Southern slaves to the families in which they were born and brought up is proverbial. And let Northern fanatics believe and prate what they will, it is still true that the practical workings of the system generally, on the basis of the duties here inculcated, is in a good degree the cause of this attachment. Every right-minded master contemplates the _physique_ of his servants with emotions of pride and pleasure. Their looks reflect his character. A gang of half-starved, meanly-clad, overworked slaves, with no heart to laugh or sing, and even without that attachment for their owners which the ox and the ass have for theirs, is a disgusting spectacle, and as revolting to every feeling of humanity as it is in violation of every principle of economy.