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From The Spectator. MISS KEMBLE'S "GEORGIA."* THERE is but one argument for slavery which is openly produced in England, and that is something like this; slavery is, after all, but a name; in every country the laborer is subjected to the power of the capitalist, and the compulsion of hunger, if not more severe, is more regular and persistent than the compulsion of physical pain. For the rest, slavery as a form of labor has large compensations, the workman being saved from anxiety, from the dread of starvation, and from the terror of an old age of poverty and want. Except for the immutability of his condition, an incident accompanying free labor everywhere except in the United States and a small section of Europe, the slave is as well off as the unskilled white artisan.

We would recommend all to whom this line of argument seems effective to read a series of letters just published by Messrs. Longman. They were written in 1838, by Miss F. A. Kemble, then the English wife of a planter in Georgia, whose estate on the island of Darien is now occupied by the Federal troops, and were not originally intended for publication. The wife of a planter of strong Southern opinions, living on the profits of the system, and not moved apparently by any strong religious ideas, Miss Kemble had singular opportunities for unprejudiced observation, and the result is a condemnation of slavery more severe than any in which professed philanthropists would venture to indulge. It is a system based upon human misery and degradation, having no end save the owner's profit, no bulwark except incessant terror. Miss Kemble, it will be remembered, was on a well-managed plantation, held by merciful owners, where punishment, by a rule of the estate, was strictly limited, and where the head man was himself a grave, intelligent negro. On this property she found the negroes lodged in wretched huts, with one room twelve feet square and two little side cabins like those of a ship. Two families, sometimes eight or ten in number, lived in each, sleeping on mattresses of strewn forest moss, and covered with a "pestilential' blanket. Each house had a little garden, "usually untended and uncultivated," and the inmates and swarming children were all * Journal of a Residence on a Georgian Plantation. By F. A. Kemble. Longmans.

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alike crusted with dirt, covered with vermin, and stinking from the absence of any habit of bathing. The infirmary was a long building of two stories, crowded with women who lay under every extremity of suffering, wrapped in dirty blankets, on the bare floor, and shivering with the cold. It was the women to whom Miss Kemble chiefly attended; among them the forms of suffering were manifold and terrible, for besides every kind of pain to which free laborers are liable, there is one peculiar to the slave women, and of which Miss Kemble's book is full till it is sickening to read. Slave-breeding pays well, and, as a consequence, the women, transferred to one" husband" after another, and at the mercy of every overseer-headman Frank's wife was quietly taken away while the authoress was there, kept a year by the overseer, and then returned-perish of childbearing. The women are stimulated by the pride of being valuable to the estate, and wretched creatures worn out with labor still exultingly told their mistress that they would yield plenty of little nigs for massa." They have frequently ten or eleven children, are flogged when pregnant, and three weeks after confinement driven back to work in the cotton field. The consequence is an illness not often mentioned out of a medical journal, pain in the back, and every conceivable form of uterine disease. The one petition of these poor women was for a longer period of rest, and they were flogged for petitioning, flogged, as a pretty young negress herself told the story :—

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The

"She had not finished her task one day, when she said she felt ill, and unable to do so, and had been severely flogged by driver Bran, in whose gang' she then was. next day, in spite of this encouragement to labor, she had again been unable to complete her that he'd tie her up and flog her if she her appointed work; and Bran having told did not get it done, she had left the field and run into the swamp. 'Tie you up, Louisa!' said I, what is that?' She then described to me that they were fastened up by their wrists to a beam or branch of a tree, their feet barely touching the ground, so as to allow them no purchase for resistance or evasion of and their backs scored with a leather thong, the lash, their clothes turned over their heads, either by the driver himself, or if he pleases to inflict their punishment by deputy, any of the men he may choose to summon to the office; it might be father, brother,,husband,.

The rule is relentlessly enforced, the overseers pleading, what is probably the truth, that if any excuses were accepted there would be no end to the contrivances to obtain the much desired rest.

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or lover, if the overseer so ordered it. I read were strictly enforced; she was told by turned sick, and my blood curdled listening her own overseer that her mere presence to these details from the slender young slip among the slaves was full of danger to the of a lassic, with her poor piteous face and institution; her husband forbade her to premurmuring pleading voice." to leave the South utterly unable to endure sent petitions, and she was finally compelled the sense of her own powerlessness. And this is an inevitable incident of slavery, and prohibits even the influence of voluntary benevolence from above. Suppose, for example, a slaveowner, full of intelligence and courage, chose to rely on the military force which is always in practice behind him, and treat his slaves as the Roman patrician did, i.e., retain his despotic power, but cultivate every man to the limit of his ability, making one a scholar like Æsop, another a physician such as St. Luke probably was, a third an armed athlete, such as every slave gladiator must have been. The system under the pressure of modern ideas would collapse in a twelvemonth, and the planters, well aware of the fact, intercept the danger at the be

Among others, a poor woman called Mile, who could hardly stand for pain and swelling in her limbs; she had had fifteen children and two miscarriages; nine of her children had died; for the last three years she had become almost a cripple with chronic rheumatism, yet she is driven every day to work in the field. She held my hands and stroked them in the most appealing way, while she exclaimed, O my missis! my missis! me neber sleep till day for de pain,' and with the day her labor must again be resumed. I gave her flannel and sal volatile to rub her poor swelled limbs with; rest I could not give her―rest from her labor and pain-ginning by making intelligence a crime. The

this mother of fifteen children."

This eternal labor was supported on two learn. Thrift is valueless, for he can hold no slave can never improve, for he can never meals of hominy a day, one of them eaten property. Carefulness is waste of thought, after six hours of hungering labor, a prac- for losses are not his. Industry is hateful, tice, however, we are bound to add, which is for why do more than is necessary to avoid not intended as an aggravation of cruelty. the lash? Even native brain-power is danThough extremely injurious, it is almost uni-gerous, for the able are always an irritation versal among the free agriculturists of Ben- to absolute masters, who require, as the Emgal, the motive being economy. breakfast followed by hard labor “ An early peror Francis said, obedient subjects, not pronothing," and the plowman, unless he eats ant in Belgium, whose life passes in toil for goes for fessors. Moreover, the most wretched peasafter his first spell of toil, would be compelled bare subsistence, whose wife helps to draw to eat like an Englishman three times a day. the plow, and whose children begin ditching But it will be urged, in what does this at ten, has, at least, some alleviations. He state of affairs differ from that common among can have a home, sympathy from his wife, the proletariat of every country? In all love from his children, excitement from vilthere are classes who are overworked, whose lage gossip, consolation from the assured hope wives are forced to field labor, who live in that his condition in the next world will comfilth and misery, and who die early, worn pensate him for his sufferings in this. How out by toil and childbearing. That is true, does it stand with the slave? though not to the same dreadful degree, the terror of the lash being extinct, for instance, in the two countries, Ireland and Belgium, in which there is the greatest amount of physical suffering. But the special aggravation in Georgia is that this condition is permanent, that there is a deliberate intention not to allow the slave to better herself, or, if possible, to obtain the intelligence to wish for a higher position. Miss Kemble found that the laws against teaching slaves to

most intelligent and trustworthy of Mr.―'s "She was the wife of headman Frank, the slaves; the head driver-second in command to the overseer, and, indeed, second to none during the pestilential season, when the rice swamps cannot with impunity be inhabited by any white man, and when, therefore, the island remains entirely under his authority whole force employed in its cultivation on the and control. His wife-a tidy, trim, intelligent woman, with a pretty figure, but a decidedly negro face-was taken from him by

the overseer left in charge of the plantation | timony to the condition of the mean whites by the Messrs. the all-efficient and all-on the pine lands, the class whose existence satisfactory Mr. K- and she had a son by is so stoutly denied by men familiar only with him, whose straight features and diluted

color, no less than his troublesome, discon- Maryland and Virginia.

tented, and insubmissive disposition, bear witness to his Yankee descent. I do not know ulation who, too poor to possess land or "I speak now of the scattered white pophow long Mr. K- -'s occupation of Frank's slaves, and having no means of living in wife continued, or how the latter endured the towns, squat (most appropriately it is s0 wrong done to him. When I visited the termed) either on other men's land or Govisland, Betty was again living with her hus-ernment districts-always here swamp or band—a grave, sad, thoughtful-looking man, pine barren—and claim masterdom over the whose admirable moral and mental qualities place they invade, till ejected by the rightful were extolled to me by no worse a judge of proprietors. These wretched creatures will such matters than Mr. K- himself, during not, for they are whites (and labor belongs the few days he spent with Mr. while to blacks and slaves alone here), labor for we were on the plantation. This outrage their own subsistence. They are hardly proupon this man's rights was perfectly notori-tected from the weather by the rude shelters ous among all the slaves."

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The same overseer, the instant there was any dispute between husband and wife, used to separate and remarry them to other slaves, celibacy for any period being unprofitable to the owner. The children die horribly fast, faster even than among the outcasts of London; and as for religion, the most successful overseers are utterly opposed to any mode of religious teaching. On this plantation a slave was allowed to preach; but the creed which teaches that all men are brothers is dangerous one for a slave plantation. To make the system consistent the planters should be Mahommedans, but then every slave who turned Mahommedan would be free, every woman who had borne a child to her owner, every child of a white man, and every slave endangered by violence in life or limb, and so the plantation would be depopulated. As a rule, according to our authoress, the negro is brutishly ignorant, the women unable even to tell their children's ages; the men unable to do anything, except the work to which they are flogged. The "system," wholly apart from its merits or demerits on moral grounds, establishes barbarism as the condition of the laboring class, and consequently cripples society at its base.

We have one more extract to make-a tes

they frame for themselves in the midst of these dreary woods. Their food is chiefly supplied by shooting the wild fowl and venison, and stealing from the cultivated patches clothes hang about them in filthy tatters, and of the plantations nearest at hand. Their the combined squalor and fierceness of their appearance are really frightful."

These are the so-called pine-landers of Georgia, I suppose the most degraded race of human beings claiming an Anglo-Saxon origin that can be found on the face of the penniless savages, without one of the nobler earth,-filthy, lazy, ignorant, brutal, proud, attributes which have been found occasionally allied to the vices of savage nature. They own no slaves, for they are almost without exception abjectly poor; they will not work, for that, as they conceive, would reduce them to an equality with the abhorred negroes; they squat, and steal, and starve, on the outskirts of this lowest of all civilized societies, and their countenances bear witness to the squalor of their condition and the utter degradation of their natures. To the crime of slavery, though they have no profitable part or lot in it, they are fiercely accessory, because it is the barrier that divides the black and white races, at the foot of which they lie wallowing in unspeakable degradation, but immensely proud of the base freedom which still separates them from the lashdriven tillers of the soil."

ness.

From Fraser's Magazine.
FALSE GROUND AND FIRM.

Ich habe gelebt und geliebt. SOMEWHERE in the county of Wiltshire is a pleasant sunny piece of down, embroidered with cowslips, gilded with patches of gorse, and offering here and there the pleasant shelter of a small tangled copse, or a clump of young beech-trees. In these trees and copses the blackbirds pipe their nest-music, and the nightingales make the air ring and bubble with the delicious caprices of their May madOn one side, the down is bounded by a farm-road, which, as it nears a mansion below, assumes a statelier aspect, and becomes a fine beech-avenue; on the other it forms a wall of considerable height and steepness to the pretty little valley which nestles at its base, its emerald floor mapped out into blueveined water-meadows, and its low, gray church-tower, and ivy-gabled rectory, and deep cottage roofs, huddling all together in one corner under the protection of some old rook-haunted elms.

Down in this little valley lived, at the time my story begins, a fair young foreigner, governess to the rector's children; and up in the clump on the downs above was a young beechtree, whose smooth stem bore, in clear and well-cut characters, the un-English name of "Ottilia." It was not often that the secluded and somewhat uncultured spot which I have described was honored by a visit from the lord of the domain in which it was included; he preferred to it a tour through his orchard-houses, or a constitutional turn on the broad, smooth, gravelled terrace of the kitchen-garden; or, still more, a drive in his wife's brougham, and a gossip with such stray country gentlemen as he was lucky enough to meet in the neighboring markettown. But on the day which witnessed the inscription of the pretty foreign name, it did happen to come into his head that he would step up to the downs and see "how the young trees were coming on;" and in the process of this inspection he came upon his son, a young gentleman at present waiting at home for his commission, just as he was engaged in giving the final scoop to the tail of the last "a" in "Ottilia."

"What are you about there, Augustus, hacking away at the young trees, and killing them?" said Mr. Bryant, somewhat testily: 66 cannot you find anything better to do this

morning?" Some rather heavy bills from the tobacconist and tailor which had come in at breakfast, had disposed him to be somewhat captious towards this usually much-indulged son.

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Oh, nothing, nothing at all; I am doing no harm in the world," said Augustus, rather hastily, edging between the tree and his father: "I am only waiting for Wilcox and his ferrets. By the by, have you seen what work the rabbits have made of the young barley? We shall have Farmer Jarret grumbling at a fine rate presently." And with diplomatic address he walked his father on through the little wood to the arable land outside; but here, unfortunately, at the sight of the steep sheep-path which led from the down into the vale, his prudence or his fear forsook him-sooth to say, the tree and his late occupation upon it had entirely gone out of his head—and saying he must see what fly was on the water, he started at a dangerous pace down the slippery steep, leaving his father to take his homeward way alone. Mr. Bryant also had for the moment forgotten the piece of mischief on which he had found his son engaged, but as, in his return, he came up to the tree, the "Ottilia" was so conspicuous, and stared him so uncompromisingly in the face, that he could not fail to observe it. He stopped, surveyed it grimly, and calling to mind, what he had once heard without paying any attention, that a pretty German governess was in the immediate neighborhood, he hastened homewards to impart the suspicions which had dawned on his mind to Mrs. Bryant.

This lady was on the alert immediately. She had met with better opportunities than her husband of noticing the unusual charms of Fraulein Berthal, but had prudently held her tongue concerning them, fondly flattering herself meantime that they had been undiscovered by her son since his return from his private tutor's. Here, however, was proof too evident that they had not only been discovered, but sufficiently dwelt upon to produce the immemorially lover-like custom of this inscription. Full of lofty indignation and energy she instantly set off for the parsonage "to have the whole matter out" with Mrs. Mowbray.

Poor, meek, little Mrs. Mowbray, anxious to clear her governess, whom she liked, and to palliate the wrath of Mrs. Bryant, whom

it was evidently expected that Mrs. Mowbray should be overwhelmed with shame, and contrition, and anguish of mind, for having been the primary cause of such machinations having been employed against the heart and fortune of the illustrious Augustus.

she feared, "hoped," and "was sure," and | lady knew no bounds; no terms of indigna"was sorry," and "did not think there was tion were strong enough to reprobate the conanything such as Mrs. Bryant supposed; "duct of the "good-for-nothing girl;" while but her assertions and denials were all the time much weakened by an uneasy remembrance, called up by Mrs. Bryant's words, of the frequent mention made by her children, on their return from their walks, of Augustus Bryant; how he had found a bird's nest, or hit a squirrel, or started them on their races on the downs; she recalled to mind also that the visits of that gentleman and his rod had of late been far more frequent than formerly on the river-bank opposite the rectory garden.

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Mrs. Bryant was anxious to see the culprit, and deliver her mind in person; but here Mr. Mowbray was called into the council, and objected. It did not yet appear, he said, how far, if at all, Miss Berthal had consented to any over-frequent intercourse with Mr. Bryant; and she would be far more likely to speak frankly, and to confess the exact state of matters between them, in a quiet conversation with Mrs. Mowbray, than in an agitating and alarming interview with the mother of the young man himself.

Mrs. Bryant was not to be put off with faint denials or suppositions; she desired that Mrs. Mowbray would question her children as to the frequency of their meeting with her son, and the behavior of their governess when these meetings took place. "Of course, Mrs. Mowbray," she said, you will see, with me, how absolutely necessary it is that any such designing and improper behavior, as it appears this young person has been guilty of, should be discovered and put a stop to immediately it is not to be borne" Pray, dear Mrs. Mowbray, do not commit that a young man of the expectations and position of my son should be exposed to her low arts."

Poor Mrs. Mowbray would fain have declined this task of examining her children, but she was allowed no excuse; and that day, with faltering voice which she tried to make indifferent, and burning cheeks she asked her little ones if they had seen Augustus Bryant.

“Oh, yes, mamma, we see him every day, now! he nearly always comes and walks with

us,

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Oh, he walks with you, dears, does he?" said their mother, catching at a straw; " and what does he talk about?"

Mrs. Bryant submitted with an ill grace; but Mr. Mowbray's quiet manner always exercised over her a repressing influence which she could not shake off; and she returned home, after flinging this Parthian dart:

yourself to another governess till you have consulted me: it is so necessary, you see, to have a knowledge of the world, to judge of the character of this sort of people; and I have so many friends who apply to me: in a day or two I shall be able to recommend some one who will exactly suit you.”

After indulging in a "good cry "' in her own room, Mrs. Mowbray proceeded to the schoolroom, and, sending away the children, began questioning Miss Berthal in a confused, hesitating manner. It was unnecessary to say much when she once understood Mrs. Mowbray's drift, the cheek of the young girl flushed deeply, then became very pale; and she answered with a peculiarly sweet voice, and great quiet: "It is true that I do meet Mr. Augustus, that I do talk with Mr. Augustus; I am the affianced of Mr. Augustus."

"Oh, he does not talk much to us: when we come to a dry place he sits down with Fraulein, and wont run any more, because, he says, he has sprained his ankle; and then we go and pick up snail-shells and make nosegays. Isn't it funny, mamma, that he always sprains his ankle just when we get up to the beechwood? Poor Mrs. Mowbray she heard this with" and so I do love him." sinking heart, and her conscience obliged her to report all the information thus gained to Mrs. Bryant. The righteous wrath of that

“ The affianced!" gasped Mrs. Mowbray. "Oh, my dear Fraulein! what are you saying; what do you mean?”

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"He loves me," said Ottilia, looking down, while a happy light overspread her fair face;

For a few moments Mrs. Mowbray sat in blank dismay at this cool statement, which went so far beyond her worst fears. Then

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