And be it stated to the credit of the slaveowners of the South, that they are fully alive to the danger of the portentous struggle, and have of late years shown no indisposition to help in their own emancipation as well as in that of the slave, provided they may only escape the dire catastrophe we speak of. It is certain that a large class of slaveowners in the South are most desirous to relieve their soil of the stain and inconvenience of Slavery, if the tremendous step can be taken with safety to all parties concerned in the act of liberation. The efforts made in the South to improve the condition of the slave, show at least that humanity is not dead in the bosoms of the proprietors. Mrs. Stowe has certainly not done justice to this branch of the subject. Horrors in connection with Slaveryitself a horror-unquestionably exist; but all accounts -save her own, and those of writers actuated by her extreme views--concur in describing the general condition of the Southern slave as one of comparative happiness and comfort, such as many a free man in the United Kingdom might regard with envy. One authority on this point is too important to be overlooked. In the year 1842, a Scotch weaver, named William Thomson, travelled through the Southern States. He supported himself on his way by manual labour; he mixed with the humblest classes, black and white, and on his return home he published an account of his journeyings. He had quitted Scotland a sworn hater of slave proprietors, but he confessed that experience had modified his views on this subject to a considerable degree. He had witnessed slavery in most of the slaveholding States; he had lived for weeks among negroes in

Cotton plantations, and he asserted that he had never beheld one-fifth of the real suffering that he had seen among the laboring poor in England. Nay, more, he declared:

"That the members of the same family of negroes are not so much scattered as are those of workingmen in Scotland, whose necessities compel them to separate at an age when the American slave is running about gathering health and strength."

Ten years have not increased the hardships of the Southern slave. During that period colonization has come to his relief-education has, legally or illegally, found its way to his cabin, and Christianity has added spiritual consolations to his allowed, admitted physical enjoyments. It has been justly said that to those men of the South who have done their best for the negro under the institution of slavery must we look for any great effort in favour of emancipation, and they who are best acquainted with the progress of events in those parts declare that at this moment "there are powerful and irresistible influences at work in a large part of the slave States tending towards the abolition of slavery within these boundaries."

We can well believe it. The world is working its way towards liberty, and the blacks will not be left behind in the onward march. Since the adoption of the American Constitution, seven States have voluntarily abolished slavery. When that Constitution was proclaimed there was scarcely a free black in the country. According to the last census, the free blacks amount to 418,173, and of these 233,691 are blacks of the South, liberated by their owners, and not by the force of law. We cannot shut our eyes to these facts.

THE RESULT OF GROWTH.

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Neither can we deny that, desirable as negro emancipation may be in the United States, abolition must be the result of growth, not of revolution, must be patiently wrought out by means of the American Constitution, and not in bitter spite of it. America cannot for any time resist the enlightened spirit of our age, and it is manifestly her interest to adapt her institutions to its temper. That she will eventually do so if she be not a divided household-if the South be not goaded to illiberality by the North-if public writers deal with the matter in the spirit of conciliation, justice, charity, and truth, we will not permit ourselves to doubt. That she is alive to the necessities of the age is manifest from the circumstance that, for the last four years, she has been busy in preparing the way for emancipation by a method that has not failed in older countries to remove national troubles almost as intolerable as that of Slavery itself. We have learnt to believe that the Old World is to be saved and renewed by means of emigration. Who shall say that the New World-in visible danger from the presence of a dark inheritance bequeathed to it by Europe-shall not be rescued by the same providential means? The negro colony of Liberia, established by the United States, extends along the Western coast of Africa, a distance of more than 500 miles. The civilized black population amounts to 8,000 souls. The heathen population is over 200,000. The soil of the colony is fertile, its exports are daily increasing, it has already entered into diplomatic relations with Great Britain and France. A Government is established, which might have been framed by the whitest skins; 2,000 communicants are in connection with its churches;

1,500 children attend its Sabbath schools. Education has become would that it were so here-a national obligation; and the work of instruction and conversion is carried on by educated negroes among their brethren, who cannot fail to appreciate the service and to accept the blessing. The refuge afforded by Liberia for the gradual reception of the manumitted and civilized slaves of the United States, we hold to be the most promising element in the question, upon the tranquil settlement of which the happiness and political existence of the United States depend. It will enable America to save herself, and to achieve a work far nobler than that of winning her own political independence. The civilization of Africa hangs largely upon her wisdom. A quarter of the world may be Christianized by the act which enables America to perform the first of Christian duties. We have said that the process of liberation is going on, and that we are convinced the South, in its own interests, will not be laggard in the labour. Liberia and similar spots on the earth's surface proffer aid to the South, which cannot be rejected with safety. That the aid may be accepted with alacrity and good heart, let us have no more Uncle Tom's Cabins engendering ill-will, keeping up bad blood, and rendering well-disposed, humane, but critically-placed men their own enemies and the stumbling-blocks to civilization and to the spread of glad tidings from Heaven.

1852.

AMERICAN LITERATURE.

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THE BLITHEDALE ROMANCE.*

WE must look out. America is going ahead, and threatens to outstrip us in a direction altogether unexpected. It has taken the energetic people of the United States not quite eighty years to convince the world of their unapproachable skill in the art of material development. Another half century may enable them to prove their superiority over contemporary nations, in labours purely intellectual. We have long depended for our cottons on America; we are now beginning to import our novels. Longfellow and others prove that good samples of poems may be introduced with effect into the English market. The facts are all very serious. We cannot hope to check the supply by imposing a very heavy duty on the American commodity. But what an argument is here for Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton when he next meets his Hertfordshire farmers, and informs them that he, as well as his constituents, is forced to an unequal contest with the foreigner-that one and all are likely to be crushed under arrangements that bring food for the mind and food for the body across the seas, untaxed to the British consumer!

We look back and marvel at the instinctive wisdom with which America has provided for the intellectual

* "The Blithedale Romance," by Nathaniel Hawthorne, author of "The Scarlet Letter," "The House of Seven Gables," &c.