political and commercial papers that are published in the slave states.  The editors of those papers constitute the main body of the literati of the slave states; they move in the highest circle of society, are among the ‘popular’ men in the community, and as a class, are more influential than any other; yet these editors publish these advertisements with iron indifference.  So far from proclaiming to such felons, homicides, and murderers, that they will not be their blood-hounds, to hunt down the innocent and mutilated victims who have escaped from their torture, they freely furnish them with every facility, become their accomplices and share their spoils; and instead of outraging ‘public opinion,’ by doing it, they are the men after its own heart, its organs, its representatives, its self.

To show that the ‘public opinion’ of the slave states, towards the slaves, is absolutely diabolical, we will insert a few, out of a multitude, of similar advertisements from a variety of southern papers now before us.

The North Carolina Standard, of July 18, 1838, contains the following:—­

“TWENTY DOLLARS REWARD.  Ranaway from the subscriber, a negro woman and two children; the woman is tall and black, and a few days before she went off, I BURNT HER WITH A HOT IRON ON THE LEFT SIDE OF HER FACE; I TRIED TO MAKE THE LETTER M, and she kept a cloth over her head and face, and a fly bonnet on her head so as to cover the burn; her children are both boys, the oldest is in his seventh year; he is a mulatto and has blue eyes; the youngest is black and is in his fifth year.  The woman’s name is Betty, commonly called Bet.”

MICAJAH RICKS.

Nash County, July 7, 1838.

Hear the wretch tell his story, with as much indifference as if he were describing the cutting of his initials in the bark of a tree.

"I burnt her with a hot iron on the left side of her face,”—­“I tried to make the letter M,” and this he says in a newspaper, and puts his name to it, and the editor of the paper who is, also, its proprietor, publishes it for him and pockets his fee.  Perhaps the reader will say, ’Oh, it must have been published in an insignificant sheet printed in some obscure corner of the state; perhaps by a gang of ‘squatters,’ in the Dismal Swamp, universally regarded as a pest, and edited by some scape-gallows, who is detested by the whole community.’  To this I reply that the “North Carolina Standard,” the paper which contains it, is a large six columned weekly paper, handsomely printed and ably edited; it is the leading Democratic paper in that state, and is published at Raleigh, the Capital of the state, Thomas Loring, Esq.  Editor and Proprietor.  The motto in capitals under the head of the paper is, “THE CONSTITUTION AND THE UNION OF THE STATES—­THEY MUST BE PRESERVED.”  The same Editor and Proprietor, who exhibits such brutality of feeling towards the