s the magnanimous friends of man, I came
forward in the newspapers and acknowledged myself a German, in order to
say that all were not like these shriekers about humanity. I showed
that it was madness to desire to free the slave. Humane men wanted to
render benevolent aid; but the wretchedness of the world is not cured
by benevolence, nor the poverty, nor the crime. The works of mercy, all
seven together, do not help the world, they are all quack-remedies: the
only real benevolence to the lower orders of men is slavery. They want
to be nothing else than what they are: the best thing is for them to be
taken care of by their masters--for the blacks certainly, and no less
so, perhaps, for the whites. Herr Weidmann knows that his nephew has
been my bitterest enemy. I was in the Southern States, and there I and
my compeers were nobles. We are the privileged class. There are
privileged races, and privileged persons among those races. The barons
of the Southern States seemed to me the only honest men I had become
acquainted with; everywhere else there was hypocrisy. I was displeased,
indeed, that they wanted to get for their cause the cover of religion;
but it was a rich joke that the ministers of religion volunteered their
aid in this attempt.

"But I soon learned to have less regard even for this Southern
chivalry. They are hypocrites, too; for they hold slaves, and yet
despise him who imports the slaves. This is a remnant of the old
hypocrisy of setting up a standard of virtue. Why deny the natural,
open, pitiless mastership? Why not openly acknowledge that which they
acknowledge in secret? Because the English worshippers of rank place
slave-traders in the category of pirates? Even the freemen of the South
are themselves the slaves of a vulgar notion. Now it came over me. When
I had a son, a longing was awakened within me which I could not
appease. I know not whether I have already told you, that, in my early
days, the thought often occurred to me, had I been a noble, had I with
my courage and my ability entered the military service, I should have
become a steady man like the rest; I might have been for a time
dissipated; but then I should have managed my estate, and been the
founder of an honorable line. The fundamental cause of my adventurous,
restless life always seemed to me to be the fact that I was a commoner,
having every claim to a privileged station, and yet always thrust into
the back-ground. I know that it is an