the heart-stirring scenes, the passionate appeals of Uncle Tom.

With us, the subject is of far deeper concern. It comes home closely and immediately to our firesides and altars, to our honor and prosperity, to our peace and union. On it hang the issues of life and death. It is not an abstract question, to be discussed with philosophic serenity in the seclusion of libraries and drawing-rooms; but it involves property and security, sectional power and party power, and sweeps into its vortex the passions which disturb the repose of society and shake the stability of empires. The country has just passed through a painful and perilous crisis growing out of this question, which yet did not decide it. It still hangs like a dark cloud over the horizon of the future. The public mind, like the sea after a storm, heaves and swells with ominous agitation, and parties are mustering their forces to renew the contest. It is a question about which many are alarmed, many more are strongly excited, and none are indifferent. Viewed simply as a moral question, affecting individual conduct and the condition of millions of human beings, it is one of deep and serious interest; but involving, as it necessarily does, a vast amount of property, and connected, as it has become, with party strife and sectional rivalry, moderation, fairness, and reason in the treatment of it are not to be expected. A work like Uncle Tom, coming at such a moment, so admirably suited to the common mind, teaching, not by abstract reasoning addressed to the intellect, but by actual scenes and events affecting the imagination and the feelings, written, too, with so much power and beauty, is eagerly seized on by one party as a valuable auxiliary, and indignantly resented by the other as a new attack. It becomes at once the topic of animated criticism and discussion, and the result is - it is read by all.

Another cause of the wide-spread popularity of Uncle Tom is its foundation in truth. It is a highly-colored description of a reality. This is undeniable by any one who can reflect on what must be the consequences of absolute and irresponsible power, bestowed without reference to character. Here is the real source of the power of the work. Were it a mere

fanciful picture of ideal scenes, it would have already taken the place of other falsehoods, and been forgotten; for it does not pretend to be a work of mere imagination, and if it did, it wants the creative power, the touches of genius, that could give it life as such. If it be not founded on truth, it is nothing. It has been accused of exaggeration, and it is said that the imputed atrocities are exceptions to ordinary usage. But the charge of exaggeration admits the substance, and to acknowledge the exceptions yields nearly the whole case; for the favorable view of Southern life is given by Mrs. Stowe as well as the unfavorable, and she does not say or imply that brutal violence and cruelty are either universal or general. The main points, the state of the law and the existence of practices under it which are inconsistent with enlightened and Christian humanity, and which are not prohibited, are even sanctioned, by the law, are not, and cannot be, denied.

This picture of slavery has astonished Europe and the North. It has astonished many also in the South, who, judging of the state of society only from what passes before their eyes, are ignorant of the existence of what they do not see, or indeed of the true meaning and nature of what they do see, until their attention is forcibly called to it. Nothing is more common than such ignorance of what is passing around us. How few know or think of the scenes of misery and destitution in our cities; yet they exist within a few squares of the comfortable and luxurious homes of wealth, and we see beggars in the streets every day. Now and then, a statistical account, or a police report, or an investigation made for charitable purposes, reveals them to us. Otherwise we should know nothing about them, and perhaps indignantly deny that, in this land of plenty, in New York and Philadel phia, thousands live in all the wretchedness of extreme want, or that the percentage of poverty and crime equals or surpasses that of London.

Some years ago, certain statements were published showing the condition of the children who worked in the English factories and mines. These statements produced universal horror and disgust. The attention of Parliament was called to the subject, investigating committees were appointed, and

remedial laws passed. The amazement and indignation universally expressed by the journals of the day showed clearly that very few people knew any thing about the painful reality which these examinations brought to light; and, doubtless, had the charge been made without the proof, hundreds of sensible persons, living in the neighborhood of these very factories and mines, would have rejected, with warmth, the idea that such a state of things could exist in England.

So it is with slavery. Very few in the North have inore than a vague and general idea of it. No precise and definite images that mark its character have been presented to their minds. They have never seen the slave-pen, or the slave auction, or the slave-gang chained and driven along the road to market. They have never visited the Calabooze at New Orleans, or the Sugar-house at Charleston. They have never seen the wife sold from the husband, the child from the parent; nor made acquaintance with the negro-trader, the negrocatcher with his trained dogs, or the negro-whipper, professions unknown in the Northern States. Very many in the South, too, are almost equally ignorant of such things, and those most ignorant from whom we are likely to hear any thing on the subject. These have seen slavery in its mild and beneficent aspect, in the old homesteads of Virginia and Carolina, where hereditary attachment and enlightened humanity have softened and mitigated the systern. The evil of it, though around them, they have not noticed, or not thought of as evil; the good they know and are familiar with, and it is difficult to make them believe that the evil exists; just as it would be difficult to give to the amiable mistress of a sumptuous and decorated mansion in the Fifth Avenue or Walnut Street, a distinct and adequate idea of the misery and degradation of the dens and alleys of Southwark or the Five Points. We are all very prone to believe that our little sphere is the world; and it is a true saying, that one half of mankind do not know how the other half live. Those who, having eyes, see not, and ears, hear not, are greatly the majority; and the chief office of the preacher and teacher, the poet and the thinker, is to tell us what we are, and to show us the things that are before and around us.

It is true, that, in some of the Southern States, particularly in Louisiana, there are laws providing for the protection of the slave from excessive cruelty, and for his proper treatment in regard to food, clothing, and labor. But they are so vague and general, encumbered with so many conditions, so easily evaded, and so very lenient to the master, that it is obvious. they are totally inadequate for the end in view. In no case can a slave be a party to a suit, but must find a white man willing to act for him; and in those cases most requiring the intervention of the law, the oath of the master, denying the charge, is a sufficient defence. There is also one general principle pervading the whole law of the South, that no negro can be a competent witness against a white man, which, so long as it is maintained, must render all laws, intended for the defence and benefit of the negro race, nearly nugatory.

A more signal example of the prejudices of race could scarcely be imagined; for such a principle, being contrary to reason, can proceed only from prejudice. It is founded on the vulgar idea that a suit at law is a hostile attack, and therefore, that the evidence of a negro, supporting such an attack, is derogatory to the dignity of the white man. This notion, natural enough to a party implicated, is unworthy of a government, as it betrays ignorance of the principles of jurisprudence. The first object of all legal proceedings is to investigate the facts in order to apply the law, to discover the truth; and this principle shuts out the truth. Cannot a negro tell what he knows, and describe what he has seen and heard? And is it not sufficient that he is subjected to crossexamination, that court, bar, and jury are composed of the superior race, and that his testimony will be received with caution, because of his color and condition? Is there any danger that he will be too easily believed when his testimony is against a white man? and are not the rules of evidence sufficient to protect the jury from falsehood and deception? Modern opinion justly regards the common law as unwisely strict in some of its provisions as to the exclusion of testimony; and the courts now discourage objections to the competency of witnesses, desiring to open wide all avenues to a knowledge of the facts. It is thought that the sanction of an

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oath, the test of cross-examination, the opportunity afforded of estimating credibility from the manner, education, intelligence, and relative position of the witness, afford sufficient security; and that it is better to run the risk of admitting some falsehood, than to incur the certain evil of excluding much truth. The law which refuses the testimony of negroes refuses what must often be the best and the only evidence in the case, and renders all laws, professedly passed for the advantage of the slave, practically ineffectual, by making it easy to evade them.

It may, with much truth, be urged, by way of extenuation and apology, that the system, on the whole, works well, as is proved by the rapid increase and general condition of the negroes in the South; that cruelty is rebuked by public opinion; that the large planters, the wealthy and educated, own the great majority of the slaves; that with these, as also with many others, they are for the most part well-fed, clothed, and kindly treated; that doubtless there is a certain proportion of bad masters, and a certain proportion of miserable, illused, overworked negroes; but that, in every community, violence, brutality, and ignorance exist, which produce, as a necessary consequence, much human suffering; that the statistics and police reports in the North show the existence of wretchedness from extreme want, and a constant succession of riots, brutal assaults, and horrible murders; but that it would be unfair thence to infer a general state of moral degradation, or to ascribe the presence of these evils to the institutions and domestic relations of Northern society.

To this reasoning there is a conclusive reply. It is true that, in the Northern States, cases of violence and outrage are of frequent occurrence. But they are crimes; they are against the law, not permitted and sanctioned by it. No portion of the population here is placed beyond the pale of the law and excluded from its protection. When the Southern States shall have extended the shield of the law and the care of the magistrate over every human being within their limits; when wrong, outrage, and injustice shall have been declared crimes, and punishable as crimes, whether committed against white or black, slave or free, then only will they be en