formerly slave countries, nor those of Sparta and Athens,* we shall not refer to the picture of the democracies which slavery threatens with exhaustion and disorder, nor of the aristocracies which it kills by corruption and insurrection. What we have already written concerning the state of America will suffice. What strokes might we add to this lamentable picture!

The frequency of crime, the decay of justice, the state of the clergy, and the corruption of the family in the Southern States are written in authentic and ineffaceable words in every document.

It is especially admitted, as we have already said, that to slavery may be attributed the decline of public spirit, the violence of parties, the disgust of enlightened men for a system of politics in which brutality has more share than intellect.

Here the system of compensation would find again a more exact application; it is not true that domestic servitude. is the support of public liberty, but it is true that civilization recedes before barbarism, that angels flee before demons, that virtue disappears before vice, talent before grossness, that the party which aims to keep the blacks has prevailed over the party which wished to lead the whites to progress, that Washington and Franklin have given place to Walker and Lopez.

We have given too much space, perhaps, to this discussion of the general and theoretical arguments which the partisans of slavery have put in circulation. One experiences real pain in honorably discussing things which his conscience declares to be dishonorable. But he is well recompensed if he succeed in expelling from the pure region of the soul, of thought, and of science, a theory which had crept in through specious arguments. Disavowed by the

* Wallon, XXVI.

history, by the philosophy, by the political economy which it in turn invoked, despoiled of its borrowed garb like a thief of the garments of an honest man, this theory is reduced to a pure and simple fact, a fact gross, formidable, difficult to overcome, but at least deprived of the aid of the two strongest weapons on earth, — conscience and reason.

Let us come to the point, and, after general and theoretical arguments, examine special and practical arguments. These are reduced to two, most especially in use, the one by the ladies, the other by the citizens of the United States.

The most feeling among the ladies of Havana and New Orleans comfort their hearts by saying, "The slaves are not unhappy."

The most philanthropic among the American divines exclaim, "Slavery is an evil, but emancipation is impossible. There is no legal remedy."

We will give these two objections the reply which they merit.

§ 2. THE HAPPINESS OF THE SLAVES.

Nothing is more common in American books than the following sentence:

“The slave is not unhappy; he would have been much more wretched in Africa, France, or England is the free laborer less to be pitied?"

I.

:

It will be supposed that I am about to borrow facts in reply from the celebrated novels of Mrs. Stowe, and reasons from Channing's work on slavery.

The work of Channing is in my eyes one of the most admirable ever inspired by religion and patriotism, and the novels of Mrs. Stowe are among the most eloquent appeals

that ever proceeded from woman's pen; nevertheless, I am resolved not to make the slightest use of them.*

I am ready for every admission, every temperament, every concession that may be wished; let us keep to the truth, the truth, alas! is lamentable enough.

I am willing, therefore, to believe that the negro was more unhappy in Africa; but the question is, not to know how he was treated in the land of Mahomet, but how he should be treated in the land of Jesus Christ.

If our cities contain wretches more to be pitied than some negroes, it is a reason for ameliorating the condition of the whites, by no means for maintaining the condition of the blacks.

I consent not to speak of laws. Open the collection of these odious laws! We read there with horror enactments unknown to heathen legislators; we see the slave deprived of rights like a chattel, yet weighed down with. more duties than a man; in Louisiana, in South Carolina, in Florida, almost everywhere, affranchisement fettered, marriage impossible, instruction interdicted; in Maryland, the author or the propagator of a writing in favor of liberty punished by an imprisonment for twenty years; free blacks banished from Arkansas, Missouri, and many other States.†

If there are laws which protect the rights of masters, there are some without doubt which hinder the abuse of their power. But, as Bentham has justly said: "Under the rule of the most excellent laws, the most crying infrac

* I do not wish to place the Americans alone on defence; I recognize their arguments for and against slavery in contests which the same debates excited formerly in Europe; perhaps slavery has never been justified with more spirit and obstinacy than in France; also, in order to avoid translations, to spare the Americans, and to inflict on the French authors who maintained this cause, now so dishonorable, the shame of a reperusal after the lapse of long years, a large number of my quotations are borrowed from them.

† Stroud, Laws of Slavery. See in Appendix an extract from the Code of Louisiana.

tions alone will ever be punished, while the ordinary course of domestic oppressions will brave all the courts of justice." Is it enacted, moreover, that the judges shall not themselves have slaves?

I consent not to cite the statistics which prove the extreme mortality among the negroes, the excess of deaths over births, which has occurred, moreover, wherever there have been slaves, even in the colonies where they have been best treated. It would be answered, that statistics prove nothing, and contradict each other; it might be answered, besides, that the birth or death of a negro is not considered a fact of sufficient importance for particular note; this I believe true, particularly of the deaths.

I consent, in fine, not to speak of the cruelties of masters or their agents. "Do not believe a word of Mrs. Stowe's tales," it is said; "to judge America from her stories is like judging France from the Police Gazette, or a catalogue of criminal cases. To listen to her, every master is a demon, and every slave an angel, as on the stage every rich citizen is a villain, and every poor man a saint. Can you not see that, feeling aside, interest alone would lead the master to take good care of his slave?"

I accept all this; let us not judge slavery by its abuses, but exclusively by its results.

.....

"Without doubt," exclaims M. de Vaublanc, in his Mémoires, "there are unfortunates among the negroes; but how many such do you not see in France ? . . . . . The men who skim the caldrons where sugar is made respire a balsamic odor as healthy as agreeable. I have seen a physician order Bordeaux wine for a negro. Doubtless some Frenchmen have abused their authority, and ordered cruel chastisements; this was criminal, but how rare !

"The house, the windows, every place is open. If the negroes were maltreated, they would shed the blood of their abhorred masters; but these masters sleep tranquilly.

... ·

Tell us, then, enlightened philosophers, what is the result of a comparison between this extreme confidence and your doors, your locks, your bolts, your walls mounted with glass, your watch-dogs?" &c.

The author of the Voyage aux Antilles has consecrated his pencil to the same melting scene of the Creoles sleeping tranquilly in the midst of the negroes, then warms in the same manner with the subject: "Behold the creatures whom European philanthropists represent as loaded with chains, lacerated by the whip, with hearts full of vengeance and hatred against their masters! We would like to know what men in Europe would dare let armed servants sleep in their chamber by the side of themselves and their money?" *

He says elsewhere:

Those who have seen European and tropical agriculture, and compared the toil of the laborer who harvests corn and wine with that of him who gathers sugar, coffee, and spices, are forced to acknowledge that God has done almost everything for the latter, and almost everything against the former, taking pity perchance on the insufficiency of the black. race, which amasses immense riches with little effort."†

These arguments appear and reappear in all American books. Without contesting them, how can we make them agree. To prove that the blacks are needed, it is affirmed that the whites would succumb to tropical agriculture; to prove that the negroes are happy, it is declared that this labor is much less fatiguing than that of the whites; when it is sought to demonstrate the inferiority of the negro, he is charged with vices; to prove that he is contented, his good character is extolled, &c., &c.

Why should we be moved by the scene of these peace

*Voyage aux Antilles, pp. 93, 95.

† Ibid., p. 119.