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Show 172 NOTES ON where. The only difference is this,-thal in free Statts Legree is chained and restrained by Jaw; in the slave Stntcs, the law makes him an absolute, irresponsible despot." A word, now, upon these extracts. As to the first one, I can assure llfrs. Stowe that tho "honorable Southern men, who are masters,'' are not the unreflecting persons she seems to think them, but that they have· thought upon the subject of slavery more than she has, and understands its practical working better than she does, if she could only be persuaded to think so. She tells us in this extract tha.t no test of CIIARACTE!t os required in order to be a master, and yet she admits, in tho next extract, that the master must have sufficient property to buy the slave, which, at the South, is, practically, a very stringent test. "It is only this office of MASTEn," she continues, "that is thrown out to every hand, and committed without inquiry to any man of any character," and yet she knows perfectly well that the office of fatlwr is " committed without inquiry" and without even the property test, "to any man of any character;" and she admits that there are Legrees among fathers at the North: "the only difference," she tells us, "is this,-that in free States Legree is chained and restrained by law; in the slave States, the law makes him an absolute irresponsible despot." What! Legree chained in free Stq.tes in any other sense than he is in the slave States! Many a poor wife could tell a different story, and so could many a poor child, the victim of domestic tyranny. Oh, but the law! tho law ! Don't you know that Legree is chained by it, in free States, and that his wife or child is thereby protected ? Indeed ! "What a charming freshness of nature is suggested by this assertion! A thing could not have happened in a certain State because there is a law against it!" This is the way you dispose of a law r'NCJ,E TOM'S CABIN. 173 that "chains Legree" in J.ouisia.na! It is a p~or rule, nfrs. Stowe, tha,t won't work both ways. The truth is, Legree is chainctl as really in the sln.vc States as in the free, only his chain is a little longor,-a. disadvantage that is more than made up for by the cOmparative rarity of the animal in these States and by the operation of self-interest which protects the slave from the bad master ten times as often, in proportion, as parental afl"cction protects the child from the bad father. In proof of the comparati1 ·e rarity of the animal at the South, I myself couhl name at least half a dozen in my native village in 1\fassacbusctts, (a village of less than a thousand inhabitants,) now living, or that have been living within the last tw.cnty years, that never ought to have been parents, and if I were to take my cue fro~ U1·s. Stowe, I should seck to procure the enactment of a law prohibiting men like them from becoming such, or else, I should seek to take away from all parents that power which at least one in twenty of them (a far greater proportion than among masters) usc to so bad purpo~e; but in doing this, I sh"ould be acting very foolishly, for the restriction of the parent's power would work miscl~ ief, and only mischief to children as a class, however it m1ght protect 110w nncl then an individual; and what is true in this respect of the power of the parent over the child is equally true of the power of the master over the slave, if Mrs. Stowe could only be brought to sec it. I have gone thus far in these remarks upon the hypothesis of the pos~ibility of such a character as Legree; but, as the rca.Ucr 1s aw:Lre, I have already denied that possibility. "But," says 1\lrs. Stowe, "the render will have too much reason to know of the possibility of the existence of such m~n as Legree, when he comes to read the records of the tnals and judicial decisions in Part II." I have read those records, ~nd I finU no instance of a Legree, or anythin~ npproaclung to one. Inst,n..n ces of cruelty, I find,-ay, |