f negro slavery. Let me read to you these
extracts from a recent number of 'Le Pays,' Paris. The writer is arguing
that Europe must recognize the Southern confederacy:

'But in awaiting these results which would flow from the cordial
welcome given by Europe to the new confederation, let true
philanthropists be assured that they are wonderfully mistaken in
regard to the real condition of the blacks of the South. We
willingly admit that their error is pardonable, for they have
learned the relations of master and slave only from "Uncle Tom's
Cabin." Shall we look for that condition in the lucubrations of that
romance, raised to the importance of a philosophic dissertation, but
leading public opinion astray, provoking revolution, and
necessitating incendiarism and revolution? A romance is a work of
fancy, which one cannot refute, and which cannot serve as a basis to
any argument. In our discussion, we must seek elsewhere for
authorities and material. Facts are eloquent, and statistics teach
us that, under the superintendence of those masters,--so cruel and
so terrible, if we are to believe "Uncle Tom,"--the black population
of the South increases regularly in a greater proportion than the
white; while in the Antilles, in Africa, and especially in the so
very philanthropic States of the North, the black race decreases in
a deplorable proportion.

'The condition of those blacks is assuredly better than that of the
agricultural laborers in many parts of Europe. Their morality is far
superior to that of the free negroes of the North; the planters
encourage marriage, and thus endeavor to develop among them a sense
of the family relation, with a view of attaching them to the
domestic hearth, consequently to the family of the master. It will
be then observed that in such a state of things the interests of the
planter, in default of any other motive, promotes the advancement
and well-being of the slave. Certainly, we believe it possible still
to ameliorate their condition. It is with that view, even, that the
South has labored for so long a time to prepare them for a higher
civilization.

'In no part, perhaps, of the continent, regard being had to the
population, do there exist men more eminent and gifted, with nobler
or more generous sentiments, than in the Southern States. No country
posse