I have since seen, heard, and read, only tends to confirm my original impression.  While I would readily give Mrs. Stowe a chaplet of laurel as a clever authoress, I could never award her a faded leaf as the negro’s friend.  There can be no doubt that Mrs. Beecher Stowe has had no small share in the abolition excitement which has been raging in the States, and which has made Kansas the battle-field of civil war; but the effect of this agitation has gone farther:  owing to husting speeches and other occurrences, the negro’s mind has been filled with visionary hopes of liberty; insurrections have been planned, and, worse still, insurrections have been imagined.  In fear for life and property, torture worthy of the worst days of the Inquisition has been resorted to, to extort confession from those who had nothing to confess.  Some died silent martyrs; others, in their agony, accused falsely the first negro whose name came to their memory; thus, injustice bred injustice, and it is estimated that not less than a thousand wretched victims have closed their lives in agony.  One white man, who was found encouraging revolt, and therefore merited punishment of the severest kind, was sentenced, in that land of equality, to 900 lashes, and died under the infliction—­a sight that would have gladdened the eyes of Bloody Jeffreys.  And why all these horrors?  I distinctly say,—­thanks to the rabid Abolitionists.

Let me now for a moment touch upon the treatment of slaves.  The farms of the wealthy planters, and the chapels with negro minister and negro congregation, bear bright evidence to the fact that negroes have their bodily and spiritual wants attended to, not forgetting also the oral teaching they often receive from the wife of the planter.  But is that system universal?  Those who would answer that question truthfully need not travel to the Southern States for documentary evidence.  Is any human being fit to be trusted with absolute power over one of his fellow-creatures, however deeply his public reputation and his balance at the banker’s may be benefited by the most moderate kindness to them?  If every man were a Howard or a Wilberforce, and every woman a Fry or a Nightingale, the truth would be ever the same, and they would be the first to acknowledge it.—­Man is unfit for irresponsible power.

Now the only bar before which the proprietor of slaves is likely to be arraigned, is the bar of public opinion; and the influence which that knowledge will have upon his conduct is exactly in the inverse ratio to its need; for the hardened brute, upon whom its influence is most wanted, is the very person who, if he can escape lynching, is indifferent to public opinion.  No Southerner can be affronted, if I say that he is not more Christian, kind-hearted, and mild-tempered than his fellow-man in the Northern States, in France, or in England; and yet how constantly do we find citizens of those communities evincing unrestrained passions in the most brutal acts, and that with the knowledge