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rated Southerner rose in estimation to a degree perhaps even beyond his merits.

Something of the same change has happened in the feelings of the author of this little work. As a European, as an English subject, his early habits, his preconceived opinions, led him to look at first with antipathy upon institutions which were tainted with the plague-spot of slavery; but in the course of a long residence in the Southern States, he saw reason to alter many of his notions, and even, like most converts, to be zealous for the opposite extreme. If, therefore, to the soberminded reader, he may sometimes seem too sanguine in his expectations, and to view the working of the Southern system in too favourable a light, it should be remembered that his witness is not the less valuable. It is to the credit of the Southerners that they should have won over to their cause an intelligent stranger, whose long residence among them has given him countless opportunities of knowing them well; who, having left them impoverished (owing to the war), and with little hope of being able to return to a climate which has not agreed with him, is a perfectly disinterested ad

vocate.

With regard to two points, however, it is necessary to guard against misapprehension.

1. When slavery is eulogized as enabling the South to possess the means of forming a class of men who have leisure to cultivate their minds, it is

not to be forgotten that such a system can only be wanted where the constitution of the country is ultra-democratical.-Democratical Athens indeed was highly intellectual; but it was a Slave State.

2. The author distinctly recognizes the fact that slavery is opposed to the spirit of Christianity, which sooner or later must work out its abolition. What he asserts, however, with regard to those who are already slaves,-namely, that the Gospel does not enjoin a premature emancipation, which would be like a rash "putting of new wine into old bottles,"—must by all calm reasoners be allowed to be equally true. The apostles condemned the slave trade by denouncing "men-stealers;" but in more than one of the Epistles the rights of owners are respected, and even the duty of the slave to his master is set forth. From habitually reading the Scriptures in a translation, we are apt (owing to the use of the word "servant ") to overlook this circumstance; so much so, that many an honest abolitionist, who teaches his child not to covet his "neighbour's servant, nor his maid," does not know that he is telling him not to covet his neighbour's male or female SLAVE, who is as much a property as "his ox or his ass."

THE SOUTH AS IT IS.

I.

INTRODUCTORY.

THE fearful struggle which is now going on between the Northern and Southern States of North America naturally awakens a desire to know more of the immediate as well as remote causes of the war. It has stirred up for the Confederates, or Southerners, an interest hitherto unfelt. The opportunity, it is to be hoped, is now come for calling attention to their true condition; for it is only when an inquiry is taken up in earnest that truth is likely

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to find a hearing with regard to a country of which we mistrust the institutions, and with which our intercourse is chiefly limited to the ports which are the great staples for rice, tobacco, and cotton.

If this war were a contest between two semi-barbarous tribes, in a remote region of country, it would claim at our hands but a passing notice. But this is a civil war of the most bitter and fearful character, a war of threatened extermination on the one hand, and of stubborn resistance, of resolute and manly defence of their own rights and privileges, on the other. If we consider the origin of the great American commonwealth and the character of the mixed populations of which it is composed; the progress which these have made in the arts of civilized life; the development of the boundless resources within their reach; the peculiarity of their institutions, the republican form of their

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