in servitude himself. Mr. Hinton, however, is a white man, and writes not more from opposition to Slavery, as a moral wrong, than from conviction of the injury it is doing his native State.

Such works as this Impending Crisis of the South and Uncle Tom's Cabin are read and generally approved in the northern portion of the Union, but have little or no effect upon the political action of that section. Their influence may be summed up in the remarks of Thomas Jefferson to Dr. Price, upon his treatise, Emancipation in America:

"Southward of the Chesapeake, your book will find but few readers concurring with it in sentiment on the subject of Slavery. From the mouth to the head of the Chesapeake, the bulk of the people will approve it in theory, and it will find a respectable minority ready to adopt it in practice; a minority, which, for weight, and worth of character, preponderates against the greater number who have not the courage to divest their families of a property which, however, keeps their consciences unquiet. Northward of the Chesapeake you may find here and there an opponent to your doctrine, as you may find here and there a robber or a murderer; but in no great number." "This [Virginia] is the next State to which we may turn our eyes for the interesting spectacle of justice in conflict with avarice and oppression-a conflict where the sacred side is gaining daily new recruits from the influx into office of young men, grown and growing up."

* * *

"Be not, then, discouraged. What you have written will do a great deal of good; and could you still trouble yourself about our welfare, no man is more able to help the labouring side."

REASONS WHY SLAVERY HAS BEEN ABOLISHED IN SOME STATES AND RETAINED IN OTHERS.

When the North American colonies resolved upon independence of the mother country, and victory had crowned their efforts, they found much difficulty in agreeing upon such a Federal Constitution as would not interfere with conflicting rights and interests. Slavery had existed in each and every of those colonies, but in some it had been abolished.

Although Slavery had thus been got rid of in the North, and retained in the South, we must not look for the reason of that abolition or retention in geographical and climatial causes alone. In no portion of the United States is the weather too hot for white men to labour in the open air, and there is no occupation in which the African race is employed -from Virginia to Florida-which the Caucasian cannot equally perform. The cultivation of cotton, the main staple of the South, is one of the least laborious in agriculture; so much so that our West Indian planters are opposed to its introduction into

Jamaica and other islands, knowing that it will draw off their hands from the cultivation of sugar. In the southernmost portions of the Union, railroad and other engineering works are carried on mainly by white men, and this labour is infinitely more trying than that of agriculture. Yet, if we examine the rates of mortality in the different States (not merely during a single year, which might be an exceptional one, but over a decennial period), we find that the ratio of mortality amongst the whites is considerably higher in the northern than in the southern portions of the country. This assertion may appear extraordinary, considering that the diseases of the South belong to a latitude foreign to the white man; but we have the authority of the United States Census Returns for the statement.

We must look for the causes of the early abolition of Slavery in the North to religion alone. The colonists who settled in the northern portions of the British possessions were the Puritans-men driven from England by ecclesiastical tyranny, and seeking religious liberty as much, if not more, than civil. These men settled in the now States of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, and formed their constitutions and made their laws out of the Bible. If we examine the

records of the above-mentioned colonies, we find that the Scriptures were, literally, the constant companion of the settlers, and their rule of life and government. True it is that their Christianity took a strong ascetic turn, a dispensation half way between the Old and New Testaments; but they were honest in their convictions, and quickly found out that Slavery was not consonant with the teachings of Christ. New York and New Jersey, colonized in the first instance by the Bible-reading, Lutheran Dutch, and subsequently reduced beneath English sway, underwent similar changes and from similar reasons; whilst the descendants of Penn and the Quakers could not long retain an institution so repugnant to the principles of their creed.

Turn we now to the South, and we shall find a different civilization obtaining, and widely different principles at work. Virginia and North Carolina were colonized by the Cavaliers, men who answered the psalms of the Puritans by the songs of the Stuart court. Feudal lords or retainers in their forsaken country, they naturally sought to form around them a similar civilization in their adopted home. The English "Estate" emigrated, and became the American "Plantation." Serfs were changed for negro slaves. The same holds good with reference to

Maryland, settled by Irish Catholics, and the Huguenot colony of South Carolina, which grew out of a strictly Feudal element. Georgia, colonized at a later period than the above, under the auspices of General Oglethorpe, adopted similar usages to Virginia and the Carolinas, on the ground that as the agricultural productions of their settlement were the same, so must their mode of cultivation be. Seeing no other excuse for Slave-holding, it was a plausible defence of their iniquity to assert that agricultural operations could only be carried on in southern climes by African labour, and that as the negro was incapable of taking care of himself, his master should do so by making him his chattel. The world keeps moving, and so do the Southern States of the American Union, though it be, like a crab-backwards. Slavery, which they originally defended, on the ground of their own self-interest, they now advocate on holy and Christian principles, teaching "a new gospel than that delivered to the saints,” and declaring that by its means “the children of Ham will be brought into the fold of Christ.” And there are thousands of misguided men in the South who honestly believe they are doing God service in thus acting. Truly the human heart is the devil's lawyer.