".... The affairs of your country interest me painfully. The Northern States had acknowledged the right of the Southern to hold slaves, and had even been so iniquitous as to surrender a fugitive from his thraldom. I would propose an accommodation:—
"1. That every slave should be free after ten years' labor.
"2. That none should be imported, or sold, or separated from wife and children.
"3. That an adequate portion of land should be granted in perpetuity to the liberated.
"The proprietor would be fully indemnified for his purchase by ten years' labor. France and England will not permit their commerce with the Southern States to be interrupted much longer. It has caused great discontent in Manchester and Leeds, where the artificers suffer grievously from want of employment.
".... May you continue to improve in health as the warmer weather advances. Mine will not allow me to hope for many more months of life, but I shall always remember you, and desire that you also will remember
"W. S. Landor."
"January, 1863.
".... Your account of your improved health is very satisfactory and delightful to me. Hardly can I expect to receive many such. This month I enter on my eighty-ninth year, and am growing blind and deaf.... I hope you may live long enough to see the end of your disastrous civil war. Remember, the Southrons are fighting for their acknowledged rights, as established by the laws of the United States. Horrible is the idea that one man should be lord and master of another. But Washington had slaves, so had the President his successor. If your government had been contented to decree that no slave henceforth should be imported, none sold, none disunited from his family, your Northern cause would be more popular in England and throughout Europe than it is. You are about to see detached from the Union a third of the white population. Is it not better that the blacks should be contented slaves than exasperated murderers or drunken vagabonds? Your blacks were generally more happy than they were in Africa, or than they are likely to be in America. Your taxes will soon excite a general insurrection. In a war of five years they will be vastly heavier than their amount in all the continent of Europe. And what enormous armies must be kept stationary to keep down not only those who are now refractory, but also those whom (by courtesy and fiction) we call free.
"I hope and trust that I shall leave the world before the end of this winter. My darling dog, Giallo, will find a fond protectress in ——.... Present my respectful compliments to Mrs. F., and believe me to continue