impossible to
conceive a more savage existence within the pale of any modern
civilisation.

The South Carolinan gentry have been fond of styling themselves the
chivalry of the South, and perhaps might not badly represent, in their
relations with their dependents, the nobility of France before the
purifying hurricane of the Revolution swept the rights of the suzerain and
the wrongs of the serf together into one bloody abyss. The planters of the
interior of the Southern and South-Western States, with their furious
feuds and slaughterous combats, their stabbings and pistolings, their
gross sensuality, brutal ignorance, and despotic cruelty, resemble the
chivalry of France before the horrors of the Jacquerie admonished them
that there was a limit even to the endurance of slaves. With such men as
these, human life, even when it can be bought or sold in the market for so
many dollars, is but little protected by considerations of interest from
the effects of any violent passion. There is yet, however, another aspect
of the question, which is, that it is sometimes clearly _not_ the interest
of the owner to prolong the life of his slaves; as in the case of inferior
or superannuated labourers, or the very notorious instance in which some
of the owners of sugar plantations stated that they found it better worth
their while to _work off_ (i.e. kill with labour) a certain proportion, of
their force, and replace them by new hands every seven years, than work
them less severely and maintain them in diminished efficiency for an
indefinite length of time. Here you will observe a precise estimate of the
planter's material interest led to a result which you argue passion itself
can never be so blind as to adopt. This was a deliberate economical
calculation, openly avowed some years ago by a number of sugar planters in
Louisiana. If, instead of accusing Mrs. Stowe of exaggeration, you had
brought the same charge against the author of the 'White Slave,' I should
not have been surprised; for his book presents some of the most revolting
instances of atrocity and crime that the miserable abuse of irresponsible
power is capable of producing, and it is by no means written in the spirit
of universal humanity which pervades Mrs. Stowe's volumes: but it is not
liable to the charge of exaggeration, any more than her less disgusting
delineation. The scenes described in the 'White Slave' _do_ occur in the
slave States of North America; and in two of t