the "agricultural population" of England, (see Appendix, K. 1.), "in filthy and crowded cottages, where the sexes are in close and perilous contact night and day, where decency is difficult and comfort impossible; the effect of which is to break down the barriers of morality, to obliterate all the sweet and saving attractions of a home, to weaken and desecrate all domestic ties, and to brutalise the manners and debase every natural feeling;"-with the "tone of morality" so "low," as to draw from the North British Review, of May, 1852, the following; (see Appendix, K. 1.):-"There are few things more remarkable in the sight of observant residents in many country villages than the small number of marriages solemnised in the course of the year. Among these few things, we are afraid, must be mentioned the number of illegitimate children that are born into the world. In some villages, indeed, these events are of such frequent occurrence as to excite neither surprise nor indignation. ****. There is something in this kind of insensibility which is very chilling and disheartening. This obtuseness of the moral senses, this deadness to shame, makes one almost despair over it. When the standard of public opinion is so low, there is little hope of practical improvement.” VERY “dignified" this!

Untoward

Oppressed by untoward circumstances. circumstances? Ay, a very untoward "circumstance" is the remorseless "Demand-and-Supply System" of modern Civilization,—the system of "unregulated, stimulated, and universal competition," the "keep-what-you've-got-andget-what-you-can" system, which the Guardian would have us believe is not an "institution." Let him beat that into the heads of the laboring classes if he can. I think he will have hard work, judging from the following, which I take from "The Address of the Metropolitan Trades' Delegates to their Fellow-Countrymen, on the Interests and Present

Position of the Laboring Classes of the Empire;" "Signed on behalf of the Delegates,-John Segrave, President; Augustus E. Delaforce, Secretary, 10, North Square, Portman-place, Globe-road Mile-end. Committee-room, St. Andrew's Coffee-House, 82, High Holborn, London, April 11th, 1850:"-"We have it thus announced to us that it is under the operation of unregulated, stimulated, and universal competition, we are henceforth to live. Cheapness is proclaimed to be the one great and desirable attainment. **** Bad and appalling, however, as is the existing condition of so many whose only means of supporting themselves and their families is the exercise of their daily labour, yet we maintain that the prospect before us is still more dark and gloomy. We declare to you our conviction, that a far greater degree of suffering and of destitution impends over the laboring class and their families, both of this and of all other nations, unless the falseness of the free or competitive system be thoroughly penetrated. **** The predominating influence and power of aristocratic government having prevailed for a lengthened period, are now passed away. The aristocratic part having raised the structure of its government upon the ancient constitutional principles, departed from these principles, introduced corruption, and is now deposed. The predominating influence and power of the middle classes of the nation are acknowledged and accepted at the present time. This party having introduced, as principles of general social action, the meanest incentives and motives that can animate the human mind, namely, the free and full action of unenlightened self-interest—the unqualified love of wealth and the gratification of this love the accumulative principle of social action instead of the distributive-their political philosophy being of a character wholly mercantile-is now impaired and degraded by the conflicting operation of those courses which it sets in motion and stimulates."

So say the "Trades' Delegates." What the London Times says, I have already given, but it may not be amiss to repeat it: "We will not anticipate the American rejoinders on the mere question of slavery itself, its physical distresses, and moral degradations. These must have occurred to the aristocratic and not less philanthropic circle at Stafford-house, who know too well the fragile materials of their own social system not to fear the damaging reply they are bringing on themselves." (Appendix, K. 7.)

So much for the Times. And what says the London Morning Herald? Read the following:-"Let men prate as they will about our progress, we do not believe that scenes like these existed in the olden time. Discomfort there may have been-distress, and hard and pinching times but we do not believe that any generation but our own has ever witnessed so hideous a congregation of squalid, abject, and hopeless destitution as is to be found in these loathsome receptacles, to which our busy civilization drives its cast-off and rejected victims to rot." (Appendix, K. 2, (2),).

"Our busy civilization!" Pregnant words, as its "castoff and rejected victims" can testify.

And what are to be the results of this "stimulated and universal competition?" What have been those results already? We have seen no small number of them, physical, moral, and intellectual; but there is one that I have not yet adverted to, and a frightful one it is, as witness the following from the London Guardian of Feb. 9th, 1853:

"The Lancet states that insanity is on the increase among the working classes in the parish of St. Marylebone, and that none but those whose duties bring them in contact with the sufferers can form an idea of its fearful spread. There are no less than four hundred and ninety-four chargeable to the parish. In St. Pancras, insanity also prevails to an

unusual amount, especially among the humbler classes." Can we wonder at it?

And this is the condition to which the Abolitionists would reduce the slave of the South! Well may the latter say, "Save me from my friends, and I will take care of my enemies!"

There is another point that remains to be adverted to. In the Appendix (K. 3, (7),) are two instances of cruelty to young children, and here is another instance, of oppression of a "poor girl;" I give it as I find it in the London Guardian, of Jan. 26th, 1853:

"The National Guardian Institution for Hiring Servants, at 40, Bedford-row, has obtained a bad name from circumstances mentioned by a poor girl, named Green, at the Clerkenwell Police-office last week. Having applied for the purpose of becoming a member, her name was taken down, and she paid 5s. Her mistress was applied to for a character, and she forwarded a letter to the institution speaking highly of her. She, (applicant,) however, procured a situation herself at Hanwell, and, on applying to the institution. for her character, they refused to give it to her, and the lady declining to write another, she lost the situation. Mr. Tyrwhitt, the magistrate, sent an officer to the institution, but all to no purpose, and the magistrate was obliged to content himself by saying that the National Guardian Institution' exhibited anything but a respectacle figure in the affair. He would bear it in mind. The young woman

left the court convulsed with grief."

6

Now, if I were to say that these instances of cruelty and oppression were the natural and legitimate results of the English Social System, I should think I was telling a lie; yet I should only be doing as Mrs. Stowe and her English endorsers do, in the case of the instances of cruelty and oppression which "now and then occur," (vol. ii. p. 311), in which Southern slaves are the victims.

+

Having said thus much of the social evils of England, it is fair to say further that the English people are awaking, at length, to the necessity of doing something, and that something has already been done; witness the "Model Lodging-Houses" lately erected in London: but having made this admission, candor compels me to add that what has yet been accomplished by the English employer for the benefit of the working-man, is but as a drop in the bucket compared with what the Southern Planter has done and is doing for the comfort and improvement of the slave, physical and moral. (See Appendix, M.)

Here, then, there is ample room and verge for generous national rivalry; and if all Christian nations, instead of intermeddling with each other's domestic arrangements, would enter heartily into this noble competition who should do most to mitigate the evils incident to all social systems, and peculiar to none, humanity would be largely the gainer by it.

NOTE 9.-EMANCIPATION-ITS RESULTS.

In the foregoing Note, I stated that in bringing forward certain facts in regard to the condition of the laboring classes of England, I did it, not for the sake of recrimination, but because my argument required it. The bearing those facts have on the argument, I now proceed to point

out.

I take it for granted, in the first place, that the slaves ought not to be emancipated, unless their condition, as a class, would be thereby improved, or, at any rate, not deteriorated. I say, I take it for granted, for it seems to me an axiom of common sense. And yet, I am not sure that the Abolition orators will grant it; for to do so would be fatal to their argument. They seem to have a wonderful