make men maltreat their wives? Quere: Did a temperance lecturer at the South ever inveigh against drunkeness on the ground that it made men beat their slaves?

The only limitation to the wife's power of remedy, which can be alleged, is a purely sentimental one, (in the good sense of the word,) namely, that delicacy, dread of public scandal, and consideration for her children and her family generally, may induce her to suffer in silence. The answer to this is, that such considerations have weight on both sides of the relation. The very same motives may lead a husband to pass over grave irregularities or even the most serious wrong on the part of his wife. It is clear, then, that no correspondence can be made out here in favor of slavery, an institution where all the privilege is on one side, and all the suffering on the other.

But the advocate of slavery changes the venue, and by so doing thinks he has brought facts to bear against

us.

"What you affirm may be true of our free states," he exclaims, "but look at England! Look at the London police reports! Husbands beat, mangle and mutilate their wives, and are only punished for it by a few months' imprisonment." Very well, say we, first show us some cases in which a slaveholder has been punished for beating, mangling or mutilating his own slave, even with a few days imprisonment. Next consider that the English have never attempted to deny, defend or palliate the enormity of wife beating among their lower orders; still less have they ever murdered or wished to murder any one for calling attention to it. Note especially that, in order to make the cases at all parallel, it would be necessary that in all trials for such offences not only the evidence of the wife, but that of any other woman whatsoever, should be inadmissible.

It will be seen, then, that the analogy requires a much larger number of legs than it possesses, to make it go on all fours.

But we have not yet done cutting the ground from under it. Brutal usage of wives by their husbands is an “institution" almost peculiar to England. Russia may claim some share in it, but in other European countries it prevails to a very slight extent. It is, therefore, but fair to conclude that the cause of it is not to be sought in

Vol. III.

3

the institution of marriage, because it is not conterminous with that institution but that it is rather owing to a certain leaven of brutality in the English character, eradicated, or at least restrained, by religion and education among the higher classes, but having its full swing with the lower. If our opponents can show that there are slaveholding communities in which the slaves are not habitually treated with cruelty, they will then be entitled to claim that the cruelties practised on the southern slaves, (as well as the murders, duels, street fights, &c., among the masters,) are not in any respect attributable to the institution of slavery, but only to a natural leaven of brutality in the southern character. It is doubtful whether they would take much by this motion; but even this doubtful advantage is denied them. It is impossible to produce any country in which slavery has long existed, without involving cruel treatment of the slaves.

The analogy asserted between the wife's condition and the slave's fails, therefore, in every point of principle involved. The child's however, has two prima facie points of undoubted resemblance. First, the child, like the slave, finds himself in a state of subjection to which his consent has not been asked; secondly, the father has a legal right to inflict corporal punishment on his child, as the master has on his slave, and this legal right is, as in the other case, morally supported by custom and public opinion.

But when we come to examine why the child and the slave are placed in their respective conditions, the analogical resemblance vanishes at once. The child finds. himself in a state of subjection to his parents. Why? Because from his physical and mental incapacity he must be under the control and direction of some one; and therefore law and custom put him under the control of those persons who, in all reasonable probability, will love him and care for him more than any other persons in the world would, being moved thereto by one of the strongest, if not the strongest, of natural affections. He is subject to his parents for his own benefit that is the leading idea of the relation.

But the slave is subject to the master for the master's profit. that is the leading idea of his relation. The talk we sometimes hear about the slave being placed in his state of servitude for the sake of civilizing and

Christianizing him is in most instances sheer cant and blasphemy; and even admitting that such results are in certain cases and to a certain extent obtained by slavery, they are still only incidents, not original reasons of the relation. Its fundamental idea is that the slave belongs to the master for the master's profit, just as his horse. or carriage, or any other chattel, animate or inanimate, does.

The origin of the two relations, therefore, though superficially similar, is fundamentally different.

Now for the right to punish: Admitting that it is the same in both cases, we proceed to examine what are the safeguards in each case against its abuse. The child is protected by one of the strongest natural affections. Nothing measures this affection better than the strength of the motives required to overcome it except, indeed, the astonishment excited at its being overcome by any motives, however strong. History assigns the foremost place among the worthies of loyalty and patriotism to him who has sacrificed his children rather than betray his king or his country. The woman who leaves her children to follow a man is considered to have given the last proof of frantic devotion to him. Law and custom may safely place an arbitrary power in the parent's hand, when there exists so strong a motive against its abuse.

Now, what is the feeling of a master towards his slave? Very often it must resemble that which he would entertain towards any beast of burden. At best it is the sentiment of affection for an old family servant. Who will pretend to compare this with the affection of a parent for a child? The prince, in the fairy tale, kills his two children to re-animate his faithful John. This is all very well in a fairy tale, but we do not expect such things in real life.

How exalted an opinion should we form of a man's patriotism from being told that he had suffered two or three of his slaves to be killed by the enemy rather than turn traitor!

The only general feeling at work to protect the slave is one of interest and calculation. This gives him, practically, about as much protection as a horse has. The man who maltreats his horse will probably hear some remarks calculated to annoy him; perhaps he may

even fall into the hands of some society for the prevention of cruelty to animals (there are no corresponding societies in slaveholding communities;) but neither his legal nor his moral punishment will in any way compare with that of a man detected in cruelty to his offspring.

Let it also be noted, that it is never for the parent's interest (save in some exceptional and monstrous cases, like those of the English burial-clubs,) to destroy his children; but we have statistical records to prove that it is often for the planter's interest to work up his stock of slaves in a certain period of time, and supply their place by fresh purchases.

But further: The parent has reasons of prospective interest for not maltreating his children. He naturally looks to them for support and comfort in his old age. It is of great importance to him that, when emancipated from his control, they should not regard him with indifference or aversion. Whereas there is very little chance of the slave's ever being in a condition where his feelings can make much difference to his master.

It may indeed be said that masters will treat their slaves well for fear of their running away; but the precautions of another sort, taken against evasion, show that slaveholders themselves have little faith in this motive.

We have spoken of children when emancipated from parental control. This brings us to consider the limited period of the child's subjection a difference sufficient of itself to vitiate the whole analogy, and render the comparison at once inadmissible. As well might it be argued that members of the learned professions ought not to contract matrimony, because they were prohibited from doing so while students at college.

Once more: The child, though legally punishable by his parents, has legal remedies against inhuman punishment beyond those of the slave. If any stranger takes up his cause, he may be heard as a witness against his own parents so may his brothers and sisters or any other children.

Finally: In every supposable case of a parent's maltreating his legitimate child, he would be as likely or more likely to maltreat an illegitimate child. Therefore the occasional ill-treatment of children by parents is no argument against the institution of marriage. But it cannot

be similarly shown that the master who ill treats a slave would be as likely to ill treat a servant. Therefore the ill usage of slaves is a direct argument against the institution of slavery.

We conclude, then, that the relation of child and parent resembles that of slave and master in two bare facts; but in all the circumstances qualifying those facts, it differs so utterly as to destroy all argument drawn from analogy of the cases.

Some of the above remarks look like demonstrations of self-evident truths. We may be accused of knocking down men of straw. And so we are; but it is not we who have set them up. The slaveholders have erected them to do duty for real men, which they will if not knocked over. The puppets which the Italian bandit stationed at the roadside yielded to the touch of an infant; but until their real nature was detected, they served him as effectually in his schemes of plunder as living and vigorous accomplices could have done.

THE ENGLISH PRESS AND THE AMERICAN PUBLIC.

Fraser, July 1855.

THE newspapers and periodicals of Great Britain. have been in the habit of handling the Americans, their customs, habits, laws, and proceedings generally, with the smallest possible amount of gloves. The American public by this term we do not mean merely the American daily press, which we are far from accepting as a complete or adequate representative of the American public -complains of this treatment, and denounces the attacks made on it as ill-natured, unfair, and prejudiced. To this it is replied that the Americans are absurdly thinskinned and sensitive, and moreover supremely inconsistent in wishing to put down free discussion, and curtail the largest liberty of criticism. However inconsistent or illogical the Americans may have been in some of these