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Show 18 NOTES ON vigorously almost as ever, and under circnmstanccs of cvf'n greater cruelty, I cannot join our author in her n~oicing. The truth is, all the efforts of }'ranee and Engi'\JHl to suppress the trade have only aggravated it~ 'l'hcir intervention was prompted, I am willing to believe, by a good motive, but it has been a signal and notorious failure, from the beginning. As for back as 1826, in tho ninth report of the American Colonization Society, (p. 23,) I find the following: "'l'hc extent and atrocity of the slave-trade remains, it is believed, undiminished, and in more than one instance during the year, has the flag of our country been seen to wnvc over vessels employed beyond all doubt in this traffic." In the following year, Mr. Clay, in a speech before the society at its annual meeting, uses this language: "Notwithstanding the .vigilance of the powers now engngcd to suppress the slave·tradc, I have received information that in a single year, in the single island of Cuba, slaves equal in amount to one half of the above number of 52,000, have been illicitly introduced.'' How it was with the other great slave.market on this side of the Atlantic, we learn from Mr. Walsh"s notices of Brazil in 1828·0: "It should appear, then," says he," that notwithstanding tho benevolent and persevering exertions of England, this horrid traffic in human flesh is nearly as extensively carried on as ever, and under circumstances, perhaps, of a more revolting character.'' He then adds, . that from June, 1819, to July, 1828, only 13,281 Africans ~ were recaptured frorri the slavers by the British cruisers, being an average of less than 1500 annually; while tho annual shipments, during that period, were 100,000, and from 15 to 20 per cent of these were lost or thrown overboard, to elude those cruisers; being a far greater annual sacrifice of life than had ever before accompanied the trafiic. UNCLE TOM'S CABIN. 19 In 1833 carne West-India Emancipation, giving a fresh stimulus to the trade in Cuba, to make up for the falling off in the other West·India islands; large numbers being imported into it annually, notwithstanding the Spanish treaty, and the importation winked at, it is said, by the local authorities, for a consideration. This trade is still going on. Even while I write, the Post brings information of the arrival of the Baltic, with Liverpool dates to the 17th inst., (November,) and the very first paragraph of English intelligence is the following : "In the House of Lords, on the 16th, Lord Brougham presented a petition from Jamaica, praying for more active measures on the part of Government for the suppression of the slave trade. Lord Palmerston moved to demand a return of the slaves imported to Cuba and Brazil. Mr. Hume complained of the infraction of the slave treaty by Spain and Portugal." And yet we are told, in the faco of all this, that the world has outlived the slave-trade. If so, then it has outlived slavery also, and "Uncle Tom" is a work of supererogation. (See Appendix, C.) But enough of the preface: let .us come to the body of the work. NoTE 4.-Trm SLAVE CoDE;-WnAT SLAVERY Is. This is not the first subject in the order of the narrative, but it is the first in logical ordor, in the body of the work, and so I take it up first. Here is our author's viow of what slavery is: "This curst!d business, accursed of God and man, what is it? Strip it of a11 its ornament, run it down to the root and nucleus of the whole, and what is it? Why, because my brother Quashy is ignorant and weak, and I am intelligent and strong,-because I know how, and can do |