that faith ought to repose on conviction, and that conviction is an affair not of the heart but of the intellect.

His attempts to combat his doubts by his wishes are well painted.

'Oh,' says Tom to him, 'if Mas'r would only look up, where our dear Miss Eva is, up to the dear Lord Jesus.'

́ ́ Ah, Tom, I do look up; but the trouble is, I don't see anything when I do. I wish I could. It seems to be given to children and poor honest fellows like you, to see what we can't.'

"Thou hast hid from the wise and prudent and revealed unto "babes," murmured Tom.

'Tom, I don't believe,-I can't believe-I've got the habit of doubting,' said St. Clare; I want to believe this Bible, and I can't.' Dear mas'r, pray to the good Lord,-do, do, dear mas'r, believe.'

'How do you know there's any Christ, Tom? you never saw the Lord.': Felt him in my soul, mas'r,-feel him now.' (Ch. 27.)

Even Mrs. Stowe does not seem to perceive that she has engaged her hero in a contest in which, as he manages it, success is impossible. Minds unaccustomed to reasoning, habituated to bow to authority, and to take their opinions on trust, may believe because they are told to believe, or because they have always believed, or because those about them believe, or because it is happiness to believe, or because it is a sin not to believe. But reasoners, men who cannot accept conclusions without premises, however they may wish to be satisfied without proof, cannot be so. The more earnest their desire, the more certain is their failure. The more they wish to arrive at a given conviction, the more anxious becomes the craving for evidence, the more arduous seem the difficulties that are to be got over, the more obstinate are the lurking doubts. The cure for St. Clare's scepticism might have been an earnest and impartial study of the arguments, and the evidence, for and against Christianity. We say for and against, because a man who has once doubted may never be effectually convinced as long as he knows, or even suspects, that there is a side of the question which he has not examined.

The only remaining character on which we need dwell is Topsy. She is, perhaps, the most popular of all Mrs. Stowe's dramatis persona, probably because she is the most original. Nature intended her to be intelligent and affectionate, but she has grown up to girlhood without having ever received instruction or experienced kindness. So far, perhaps, she does not differ much from many of the outcast children that are thrown up from time to time in our police courts. But she is marked

by a peculiarity not to be found in Europe, unless it be among the Cagots, if any are left, of the South of France, the feeling that she belongs to a degraded caste. There can't nobody love niggers, and niggers can't do nothing,' is the creed which a life of twelve years in New Orleans has taught her. Though she cannot be loved, however, she can be admired and feared.. All the children are delighted by her drollery, grimace, and mimicry; and the elder members of the servants' hall find that whoever casts any indignity upon Topsy, is sure to meet with some inconvenient accident shortly after. Her great pride is in her wickedness.

"Lor you niggers," she says to her young admirers, "does you "know you's all sinners? Well you is every body is: white folk "is sinners to-Miss Feely says so; but I spects niggers is the "biggest ones: but Lor ye an't any on you up to me. I's so awfully "wicked, there can't nobody do nothing with me. I spects I's the "¡wickedest critter in the world." And Topsy would cut a somersault and come up brisk and shining, and evidently plume herself on the distinction.'

The way in which this hardened nature, after having resisted the cold kindness of Ophelia, is at once subdued and softened by the compassion and love of Eva, deserves the admiration which it has received.

The

The Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin,' is too long. portion of it which shows that American slavery and the American slave trade can produce real events similar to those related in Uncle Tom,' was scarcely necessary. Such events are, as we have already remarked, the inevitable incidents to the system, nor is the production of a real counterpart for every story in Uncle Tom,' a complete defence of Mrs. Stowe against the charge of misrepresentation.

With respect to the internal slave trade of America, we do not believe misrepresentation to be possible. Every part of it is so utterly hateful, that its horrors cannot be exaggerated. But with respect to the treatment of slaves by their owners, while employed in their houses or in their fields, we think it possible that Uncle Tom' may produce a false impression, not by describing events that do not happen, but by leading us to think that they happen habitually. It is probable, we hope that it is true, that there are twenty Shelbys for one Legree. affects the imagination so much more pungently, and dwells so much more in the memory, than good, that if we run through a list of the railway accidents of a year, we are inclined for an instant to suppose railways to be the most dangerous means of

Evil

travelling, instead of being, as they are, the safest. So after reading Mrs. Stowe, we forget the Shelbys, and remember only the Legrees. If Mrs. Stowe be accused, as perhaps she may fairly be, of producing this exaggerated impression, she cannot defend herself by proving, as she does triumphantly, that Legrees exist.

The great value of the Key' consists in the specimens which it gives of the legislation of the Slave States, and of the arguments by which it is defended. One of the laws common to all the Slave States is the refusal to admit the testimony of a coloured person against a white. Such a law obviously deprives the whole coloured race of the protection, such as it is, which any other laws affect to give to them. The deliberate, intentional killing of a slave is now, by the laws of every State, murder. But a white may perpetrate it in the presence of hundreds. Hundreds of witnesses may be ready to prove it by direct evidence. They saw him take aim, fire, and the negro fell dead. The Court cannot hear them. Hundreds may be ready to prove it by circumstantial evidence. They heard him threaten to shoot the negro, they saw him load the gun, and go towards the field; they heard the explosion, they saw him return, and they heard him boast that he had shot Pompey. The Court cannot hear them. It can listen only to a white constable, who says that, in consequence of 'something which was told to him,' he went to a certain field, and there found the body of a negro with a wound in the breast; and the evidence of a white surgeon, who opened the body, and found the heart perforated by a bullet. a bullet. On such testimony alone, of course, no man can be convicted. A deed done in the face of day, in the presence of crowds, of which every detail is notorious, is to the Court, and to the Court alone, a mysterious event: perhaps a murder, perhaps a quarrel, perhaps a suicide, respecting which every attempt to obtain evidence or explanation has failed.

But, after having thus carefully provided that even the wilful deliberate murder of a negro shall not be punishable unless it can be proved by the evidence of a white, we are inclined to think that the Southern legislators might have safely extended to their slaves the protection which we give to horses, cattle, and dogs. The grounds on which they have thought fit to refuse to do so are well stated in the following judgment of Chief Justice Ruffin, of North Carolina.

The question before him was, whether a person who had hired a slave could be indicted for inflicting on that slave a punish

ment which was admitted to have been cruel, unwarrantable, ' and disproportioned to the offence.'

'The question,' says the Chief Justice, has been assimilated at the bar to the other domestic relations, and arguments drawn from the well-established principles which confer and restrain the authority of the parent over the child, the tutor over the pupil, the master over the apprentice, have been pressed on us.

6

The Court does not recognise that application; there is no likeness between the cases, they are in opposition to each other; there is an impassable gulf between them. The difference is that which exists between freedom and slavery, and a greater cannot be imagined. In the one, the end in view is the happiness of the youth, born to equal rights with the governor on whom the duty devolves of training the youth to usefulness in a station which he is afterwards to assume among free men. To such an end, and with such an object, moral and intellectual instruction seems the natural means; and, for the most part, they are found to suffice. Moderate force is superadded only to make the others effectual. If that fail, it is better to leave the party to his own headstrong passions, and the ultimate correction of the law, than to allow it to be immoderately inflicted by a private person.

With slavery it is otherwise. The end is the profit of the master, his security, and the public safety; the subject is one doomed in his own person and in his posterity, to live without knowledge, and without the capacity to make anything his own, and to toil that another may reap the fruits. What moral considerations can be addressed to such a being to convince him, which it is impossible but that the most stupid must feel can never be true, that he is thus to labour upon a principle of natural duty, or for the sake of his own personal happiness? Such services can be expected only from one who has no will of his own, who surrenders his will in implicit obedience to that of another. Such obedience is the consequence only of unlimited authority over the body. There is nothing else that can operate to produce the effect. The power of the master must be absolute to render the submission of the slave perfect. I confess the harshness of this proposition. As a principle of moral right every man in his retirement must reprobate it. But, in the present state of things, it must be so: there is no remedy. This discipline belongs to the state of slavery. They cannot be disunited without abrogating the rights of the master, and absolving the slave from his subjection. It constitutes the curse of slavery to both the bond and the free portions of our community. It is inherent in the relations of master and slave. In the abstract it may well be asked what powers of the master accord with right. The answer will probably sweep away all of them. But we cannot look at the matter in that light. We are forbidden to enter upon a train of general reasoning on the subject. We cannot allow the rights of the master to be brought into discussion in Courts of Justice. The slave, to remain a slave, must be made sensible that there is no appeal from his master that the master's power is in no instance usurped, but is

conferred by the law of man at least, if not by the law of God. Judgment entered for the defendant.'*

We join in Mrs. Stowe's 'admiration of the unflinching 'calmness, with which a man, evidently of humane, honourable 'feelings, walks through the most terrible results and conclu'sions in obedience to legal truth.' Chief Justice Ruffin's

exposition of the law of North Carolina is, we have no doubt, accurate. His defence of that law, as necessarily incidental to the status of slavery, is bold and masterly: but it does not convince us. We do not believe that if the cruel, unwarrantable, and disproportionate punishment' of the slave were an indictable offence, a master would run much chance of conviction by a Carolina jury forbidden to receive negro evidence. While the laws respecting such evidence remain unaltered, it seems to us unimportant what amount of protection is pretended to be given to the slave, or what amount of restraint is pretended to be imposed on the master.

Mrs. Stowe goes on to quote a work by the Rev. James Smylie, an eminent member of the Southern Presbyterian Church, in defence of the laws prohibiting the teaching slaves to read,-Laws,' says Mr. Smylie, meeting the approbation 'of the religious part of the reflecting community.'

These laws, however, we can understand. We are not surprised that slave owners, living among enemies, wish to deprive those enemies of the means of combination afforded by a written language. We are not surprised at their telling the slave that, while he lives, there is no appeal for him against his master; and that even his death under his master's hand is not punishable, unless it can be proved that the master's intention was to kill,-not merely to torture. We are not surprised at their attempt, indirectly, to deprive the slave of the legal protection against wilful murder, which shame forces them to pretend to provide for him.

We see why, in every Slave State, the crime of a slave is punished far more severely than that of a free man. The slave is already in a situation worse than any to which a free man can be reduced by punishment, short of perpetual imprisonment or death. Sufferings and degradations, from which a freeman would escape by suicide, are the ordinary incidents to his status. Habit prevents their having any terrors for him. The only resources left to the law are torture, mutilation, and death.

We can understand the motive for enacting, in North Carolina, the law which justified the following proclamation,

Key, Book 2. Chap. 2.