Yet, in spite of these facts, a writer in the London Saturday Review informs the English public that the rapid deterioration of the soil under slave labor is a popular fallacy! Could the gentleman who gives this information so glibly, examine, we do not say Virginia, but simply that lower county of Delaware which has adhered somewhat to the old Southern slave system, in contradistinction to its two sisters, he might have distinctly ascertained if the exhaustion of soil by slave labor be a fallacy. Again, if the profits of slavery be only for the master, it may be true that the same process which enriches him impoverishes the country at large; and this is really the case through all the South. Free labor shuns slave society: a few Northern men may here and there live in the South, but as a rule the negro makes the poor white meaner than himself. It is true that free white labor in new lands is very exhaustive—but in time it takes them up again and restores them: this the negro never does, and never can do.
The tendencies of slavery to render the white man insolent, arrogant, and oligarchical, are well pointed out by Professor Cairnes, and with them the evil tendencies of slave societies. It makes bad white men, and intolerable political neighbors. In the ancient world, slaves were constantly being educated, freed, and made equal to their masters; but in the confederacy, everything is done to crush them lower and lower; and in these facts lie perdu the future further degradation of every poor white in the South, the constant increase of power and capital in the hands of a few, and the diminution in number even of these few.
The fact that Virginians breed slaves expressly for sale is well exposed in this book. Our author is kind enough to believe that they never raise a single negro for the express purpose of selling him or her; but we, who live nearer the 'sacred soil,' know better. It is not many days since a farmer in our present immediate vicinity, on the Southern Pennsylvania line, found himself obliged to dismiss a fine six-foot negro runaway from Virginia, whom he had hired, on account of the entire inability of the contraband to do the simplest farm tasks. 'What is the reason you can't stand work?' inquired the amazed farmer. 'Why, mass', to tell de trufe, I wasn't brought up to wuck (work), but to sell. If I'd been wucked too hard, it ud a spiled my looks fo' de markit.' Professor Cairnes may accept the sorrowful assurances of more than one person, who has been taken frequently enough into the councils of 'the enemy' in bygone times (crede experto Ruperto), that slaves are begotten, born, bred, and raised for the Southern market—as much so as any pigs—and that, too, by eminently aristocratic and highly refined scions of first families. Now that we can and dare speak the truth, it is not amiss to do so. We recall the day when to have taken part in the charge of the Six Hundred would have been a trifle of bravery compared to making the above truthful statement—for any one who valued social standing, or indeed a whole skin—on the border. Whether their own children were sold may be imagined from an anecdote long current in Virginia, relative to ex-Governor Wise, who, in a certain law case where he was opposed by a Northern trader, decided of a certain slave, that the chattel, being a mulatto, was of more value than 'a molangeon.' 'And what, in the name of God, is a molungeon?' inquired the astonished 'Northern man.' 'A mulatto,' replied Wise, is the child of a female house-servant by young master'—a molungeon is the offspring of a field hand by a Yankee peddler.'
Mr. Cairnes has, we doubt not, often heard of mulattoes—they constitute the great majority of Virginia slaves. But did he ever hear of 'molungeons'?
Mr. Cairnes justly denies the common theory that the South has maintained paramount political sway in the Union by a superior capacity for politics. He declares that men whose interests and ideas are concentrated in a very narrow range, on one object, have vast advantage over their intellectual superiors, when the latter pursue no such single course. He might have added that the young Southern gentleman, when not intended for a physician, almost invariably devotes to mere provincial politics and the arts of declamation and debate, all of those intellectual energies which the Northerner applies to business, art, commerce, literature, and other solidly useful occupations. If the Southerner has an inborn superior talent for politics, why is it that, as in the case of British or French statesmen, he never develops the slightest talent for literature? So notoriously is this the case, that even the first writers of the South, especially for the press, are generally broken-down Northern literary hacks, or miserable Irish and English refugees. Mr. Cairnes quotes De Bow's Review. He might be amazed, could he examine a number of that remarkable periodical, at the quality of the English written by some of the most eminent philosophers, patriots, and politicians of the confederacy!
The history of the Slave Power, as set forth in Louisiana, Missouri and its Compromise, the Mexican war, Kansas, the rise of the Republican Party, the Dred Scott decision, the attempt of John Brown, and secession, are given in a masterly manner in this work, and with a miraculous appreciation of truths. Not less vigorous and shrewd is the chapter devoted to the designs of the Slave Power, in which the future capacity of that power to do illimitable mischief is set forth in a manner which will be new even to the great mass of American Republican readers. If we differ with him in his 'Conclusion,' it is that we may be consistent to his earlier position. We do not agree with him when he advocates the giving permission to the South to secede with the Mississippi as their western boundary. Penned up by North and West, and with their ports occupied by us, the South would soon decay. But we rather believe the North, brought to the tremendous trial of a test between aristocracy and republicanism, will yet conquer by destroying slavery and giving the poor whites of the South their rights. But we cannot conclude without expressing the earnest hope that this book will be read, and that thoroughly, by every intelligent American. There is at present a reaction rapidly forming in England in favor of the Federal cause, and we foresee that this extraordinary work—the best summary in existence of our principles, and the most overwhelming stylus-stroke which slavery has ever received—is destined to be of incalculable service to the great cause. Let it circulate by the hundred thousand!—and do you, dear reader, do your part by perusing it, and making its merits known to all. In connection with it, we commend the review in the Westminster already referred to. It is pleasant to realize that we have friends among enemies. Let us hope that when brighter days come, our Government and our people will not be unmindful of those who defended us in the days of darkness and dole. We owe a great debt of gratitude to such men as Professor Cairnes, and must not be slack in paying it.
Les Miserables. No. IV. St. Denis. By Victor Hugo. New York: Carleton.
A great improvement on the preceding miserable trio, yet still far from fulfilling the extravagant assertions as to its merit with which the press has been deluged. We see in this novel, historic pictures, not without accuracy, details of life which are true enough, and, we might add, familiar enough, from a thousand feuilletons, but we find no PURPOSE, corresponding to the expectations excited. We have every variety of miserable wretch imaginable paraded before us, without a hint of any means of curing their social disease. 'There is a hammer for tearing down, but no trowel for building up,' beyond a little empty talk on the benefits to be derived from education. The truth is that Victor Hugo writes, like too many of his nation, simply for sensation and effect. The fault to be found with this series is, that, like Jack Sheppard, it degrades the taste and blunts the feelings—in a word, it vulgarizes, and is as improper reading for the young, so far as effect is concerned, as the most immoral production extant. Vulgarity is the open doorway to vice, and, philosophize as we may, sketches of thieves and vagabonds, gamins, prostitutes and liars are vulgar and unfit reading for youthful minds, if not for any minds whatever.
Abel Drake's Wife. By John Saunders. New York: Harper & Brothers.
The reader is well aware that this work has attained a great popularity—we may add that it has deserved it, being a work of marked originality; one of characters and feelings which will even bear at sundry times reperusal: as good a character as can be given to a novel, and a far better one than we are disposed to award to the majority of those which we meet. It is, we should say, in justice to the progressive powers of the author, far superior to his earlier productions.