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overburdened people. Akbar, the best and most considerate of Indian emperors, is said to have kept in his stables 12,000 horses and 8,000 elephants, the numbers are, very likely, rounded in the Eastern fashion; but the tradition of lavish luxury remains to show how the revenues of his territories were expended. "If we omit three names," says Sir Henry Elliott, in his valuable work on the Historians of Mahommedan India, "if we omit three names in the long line of Delhi emperors, we shall find that the comfort and happiness of the people were never contemplated by them; and, with the exception of a few serais and bridges, and those only on roads traversed by the imperial camps," we shall "see nothing in which purely selfish considerations did not prevail."

Whatever may have been the mistakes and the faults of the East India Company's government in India, and they have been very many, there can be no question of the fact that it has been, on the whole, of incalculable benefit to the people. Were it to come to an end to-morrow, the works that we have described would remain as a monument of its regard for its subjects, and of the sincerity with which it sought their improvement. It is true that these works are not less important to the revenue of the state, than to the harvests of the husbandmen; but it does not detract from the merit of a government that its interests should be so far identical with those of the governed, as to be promoted by the same means. These canals are, indeed, one of the clearest examples of the truth, that to improve the condition of its people is not only the highest duty, but the most obvious policy of every govern

ment.

We will not enter here upon the question how far the East India Company has made this the rule of their policy. But there can be no doubt that this has been the spirit with which many of its servants have labored. It is, indeed, to the members of the civil and military services in India that the gradual improvement in the country is chiefly due. Their position is often one of great power and great responsibilities. In the preceding pages we have shown one instance of the manner in which they have used this power and met these responsibilities. Honoring what they have already done, believing

that this is but the earnest of what they will hereafter do, we heartily adopt the words with which Mr. Raikes, addressing the fellow-members of his service, closes his book:

"To raise up a degraded race; to cure the plagues of past bad government and bad morals; to prepare if you may be so blessed the way for real virtue and true religion: to this you are called; and look round the world as you may, you will never find a more glorious vocation."

ART. VII.-1. Uncle Tom's Cabin, or Life among the Lowly. By HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. Boston: J. P. Jewett & Co. 2 vols. 12mo.

2. A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin, presenting the Original Facts and Documents upon which the Story is founded, together with Corroborative Statements verifying the Truth of the Work. By HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. Boston: J. P. Jewett & Co. 1850. 8 vo. pp. 262.

Ir is quite too late in the day to review Uncle Tom's Cabin ; but it is not too late to speak of the subject to which it relates, and from which it derives much of its interest. Upon the discussion of this subject, surrounded as it is with difficulties, and hedged about with sensitive and vehement passions, the publication of Mrs. Stowe's work has exerted an important influence. It has not merely fanned the excitement of parties; it has induced many sober and reflecting people, who had hitherto stood aloof from a controversy which had too much the aspect of a bitter political feud, managed on both hands with equal indiscretion and acrimony, to turn their thoughts towards it again, in the hope of finding some middle course, or of suggesting some plan which might have an effect to alleviate the evil which it seemed impossible to eradicate. It is for this class of persons only that the present article is in

tended.

The enthusiastic reception of Mrs. Stowe's novel is the ult of various causes. One is the merit of the book itself.

It is, unquestionably, a work of genius. It has defects of conception and style, exhibits a want of artistic skill, is often tame and inadequate in description, and is tinctured with methodistic cant; but, with all its blemishes, thought, imagination, feeling, high moral and religious sentiment, and dramatic power shine in every page. It has the capital excellence of exciting the interest of the reader; this never stops or falters from the beginning to the end. The characters are drawn with spirit and truth. St. Clare is a person of talents and education, high-minded, generous, and impulsive; the influences of his position and circumstances on his character are well developed. Ophelia is an admirable picture of a conscientious, practical, kind-hearted, energetic New England woman. St. Clare's wife is well imagined, but somewhat overdrawn. The Shelbys are worthy, amiable, commonplace people, soberly and truly sketched. Legree is a monster, and is painted in strong colors; but the picture wants truth and minuteness of detail to bring out the conception, for no woman's hand could properly describe him. The pencil that drew Front de Bœuf, Dick Hatteraick, and William de la Marck would have made him start from the canvas. We fear he is not exaggerated. There are many such at the North and South; only, in the North, we do not give them so much power, and they sometimes, when not saved by the "ingenuity of counsel," or an executive pardon, or the sympathy of a jury, or the lenity of an elected judge, meet their reward in the dungeon or on the gallows. Eva and Tom are dreams; the one is a saint, the other an angel. But dreams are founded on realities, and "we are all such stuff as dreams are made of." These characters are both exaggerated; but to color and idealize is the privilege of romance, provided the picture does not overstep the modesty of nature or contradict nature. There are no Evas or Uncle Toms, but there are some who possess, in a lower degree, their respective virtues. Many a home has been blessed by the presence, and darkened by the departure, of a child, whose early intelligence seemed inspired, and whose purity, sweetness, and love were too delicate to mingle with the coarse passions of the world; and many an old family servant in the South is distinguished

for probity, fidelity, truthfulness, and religious feeling, and, slave though he be, is the object of respect and attachment.

But whatever may be the literary merits of Uncle Tom, they do not account for its success. It exhibits by no means the highest order of genius or skill. It is not to be named in comparison with the novels of Scott or Dickens; and in regard to variety of knowledge, eloquence, imaginative power, and spirited delineations of life and character, manners and events, it is inferior even to those of Bulwer, or Currer Bell, or Hawthorne. Yet none of these have been read and talked of, for months together, by Europe and America, or have sensibly influenced a great moral movement, or have disturbed whole communities by the dread of a social revolution. It is true, that, were Uncle Tom not well written, it would not have produced these effects; but the result is so disproportioned to its merit as a work of art, that we must look to other causes. The book has one idea and purpose to which it is wholly devoted. Its sole object is to reveal to the world the nature of American slavery, and thus to promote the cause of abolition.

Now this subject of slavery is one in which the world, or at least the reading and thinking part of it, which has become a very large part, just now takes a very lively interest. In Europe, the dream of political liberty, in the sense of the French Revolutionary school, has vanished. It has been discovered, after repeated and most disastrous experiments, that it means the absolute power of the mob and its demagogues; that equality means plunder, and fraternity, massacre. The people of France have discovered, by bitter experience, that there, at least, democracy is inconsistent with freedom, property, and civilization; and they have acquiesced quietly and cheerfully in a strong government, supported and guided by the public opinion of the rich and educated, and surrounded by bayonets to protect property and order, and keep the dangerous classes in subjection.

Disenchanted on the subject of political liberty, disgusted with Kossuth, and Mazzini, and Louis Blanc, tired and out of humor with Poles and Hungarians, with French Revolutions, Chartist movements, and Irish rebellions, which have ended in

nothing but sound and fury, because destitute of truth and reason, adequate cause, virtuous motive, or definite purpose; their sympathies have found an object in the condition of the negro slave. Political liberty, in the democratic sense, they have found a delusion; but personal liberty is quite another thing. They can understand why it is dangerous to the security of society to give political power to the ignorant and reckless mob; but they cannot understand why it is necessary for any community to deprive a portion of its people of all civil rights whatever, and reduce them to the condition of property. They see a great, prosperous, and civilized democracy, advancing with rapid strides to the position of a formidable power, rivalling them not only in wealth but in refinement, boasting of liberty, advocating liberty, openly and avowedly giving countenance and support to every revolutionary movement among their discontented classes, — yet all the while, holding four millions of its own people in abject slavery, and defending with warmth and defiance its right so to hold them. This strange inconsistency provokes comment and discussion. The subject is not a new one in Europe; late events have revived it there. Constant intercourse with us has brought it closer to their minds and feelings. They see in it an incongruity, a contradiction to the advanced culture, the enlightened intelligence, of the age, a stain and blemish on the common humanity and civilization of the world. They have got rid of it themselves; personal slavery with them is matter of history. It lies behind them, among the barbarisms of the past. They regard it as a wrong and an evil which ought not to exist, and which, therefore, the good, the wise, and the gifted should endeavor to remove by those means which have dispelled so much moral evil from the world, by truth and reason, by argument and persuasion, by the keen arrows of invective and scorn. Mixed with these sentiments, there is, doubtless, something of national jealousy and fear, something of dislike to republican government, and of triumph at being able to point to such a blot on its mantle. But these feelings only add to the excitement of the subject, and prepare the public mind of Europe to receive, with the greater eagerness and interest, the animated pictures,

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