A law of Mississippi reads thus: "When any sheriff or other officer shall serve an attachment upon slaves, horses, or _other live stock_," etc. "Being property, slaves may be bought and sold by persons capable of buying and selling other property." (_Hon. J. K. Paulding._) Henry Clay said--"I know that there is a visionary dogma which holds that negro slaves cannot be the subject of property. I shall not dwell on the speculative abstraction. _That is property which the law declares to be property._ Two hundred years of legislation have sanctified and sanctioned negro slaves as property." Any one who will take up a southern newspaper will soon discover from the manner in which slaves are advertised for _sale_, that the laws which reduce them to chattels are not _dead_ statutes. An advertisement in the Richmond (Va.) Whig, is headed thus: "Large sale of negroes, horses mules and cattle." Among the articles to be sold are, 175 negroes, among whom are some carpenters and blacksmiths, 10 horses, 33 mules, 100 head of cattle, 100 sheep and 200 hogs. "The negroes will be sold for cash, the _other property_ on a credit of nine months."[3] Whole volumes of such advertisements might be collected from the most respectable and widely circulated southern journals, and I have seen a few advertisements for the sale of men women and children, hogs, corn and cattle promiscuously, in respectable religious papers, sustained by churches whose leading avowed object is, to "spread scriptural holiness over these lands." And slaves are not only advertised but actually _sold as property is sold_. Raising slaves for the market, selling them, speculating upon them and driving them from one State to another, creates an extensive and lucrative trade. The _Virginia Times_ estimated that in 1836 the number of slaves exported from Virginia alone was _forty thousand_--worth $24,000,000. The _Natchez Courier_ estimated that in 1836 two hundred and fifty thousand slaves had been imported into Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Arkansas, from the more Northern States. The _Baltimore Register_ said, "Dealing in slaves has become a large business; establishments are made in several places in Md. and Va. at which they are sold like cattle." Prof. Dew said in 1831; "Virginia is in fact a negro raising State for the other states." _Judge Upshur_ of Va. said in the Va. Convention, 1831; "The value of slaves as an article of property, depends much on the state of the market abroad. If it should be our lot, as I trust it will be, to acquire the country of Texas, their price will rise again." "From the single port of _Baltimore_," says Mrs. Stowe "in the last two years, a thousand and thirty slaves have been shipped to the southern market." Slaves now bring a very high price in cash. Only the other day a _brick-layer_ in S. C. sold for $1,905; three others at the same sale brought over $1000 each.