The Sun.
London, England, 1852-10-20 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, WEDNESDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 20, 1852.

Union, there seems to be no moral price which they
will not pay to preserve it. At one time, a fugitive
slave had some chance if be once crossed into the free
States. Benevolence could then aid him till he reached
Briti'h soil. But that most disgraceful of modern
enactments, the Fugitive Slave Law, dispelled the
last glimmer of universal freedom from the free
States. Free States, indeed, exist no longer. Slave-
holding and slave-catching States is now the only
difference. Over some twenty degrees of latitude,
and more than as many of longitude, a man is a
thing, a chattel, a saleable commodity. The whole
United States is the land of the slave. Law requires
the freeman there to aid in returning to his purchaser
the man (slave we should say) who pants for free
dom ; it fines and imprisons the freeman who aids
his escape ;—it bribes the judge before whom he
is taken with a double fee if he gives him up to his
infuriated pursuers, and it places the question of the
fact of his freedom in the hands of that bribed judge,
not in those of a jury. All Christendom feels the
law to be an affront on its moral sentiments and its
common civilization. It must be abolished ; nothing
so horrible exists even in Austria or Tuscany ; and
justly did M. HULSRMANN, when Mr. WEBSTER lec-
tured Austria on despotism, lecture that low-prin-
cipled politician on the vile slavery of America. Yet,
we are sorry to say, this iniquitous law found innu-
merable defenders in the Free, or as we must now
call them, the slave-catching States.
,Reverend Doc-
tors of Divinity and Professors of Moral Philosophy
in Colleges pleaded for obeying a law to do iniquity.
The clergy of every denomination were excusing it
from the pulpit; or, at least, advocating obedience to
it while it was law, though making no effort at elec-
tions, or otherwise, to get it repealed; and after a few
violent efforts of fugitives to resist at first, the passive
North began to slumber in the political embraces of
the South. England witneastd the spectacle with
settled, but half hopeless, disgust. When an English-
man went into America, he found the negro an object
of aversion ; of the aversion which the oppressor feels
for the victim he wrongs and depresses, but whose will
he can never quite subdue. Scarcely anything gave
signs of amendment. The noble, indignant voice of
CHANNING was silent in the grave ; eloquence was
left, but not like his. Statesmen and clergymen,
more sickening in their apologies for slave laws than
the statesmen themselves, seemed banded together,
At last a woman with a little book
a book of tales—" of fiction founded on fact"—sud-
denly appeared on the scene. HARRIET BEBCIIER
STOWE, with her " Uncle Tom's Cabin," has com-
pletely awakened the States, and completely shamed
the Senators and the Parsons. With a kind of spe-
cial inspiration by the genius of liberty, of religion,
and of romance at once, she has pictured the thing
to every man and woman who had a heart to feel.
Faults some may find in her little book—others will
think these faults beauties,—her gift was to write
with a charm for all, with nothing that could much
displease any. The power of her appeal lay in the
verisimilitude of her descriptions. At first a whisper
was heard of exaggeration—it died away. Every
reader felt, that—given human nature, and the slave
laws of America—and the worst she has described is
but nature itself. It is as vain to deny the truth of
SHAYSPERE'S portraits as of HARRIET BEECHER
STOWE'S. While novels stand on English book-
shelves, and when slavery, as a fact, shall have long
passed away, this little faithful miniature of the great
abomination will still be read. It is not our purpose,
however, to write an eulogium of a book over which
most of our readers have laughed most heartily, though
they certainly dropped tears also. It is rather our object
to shake hands with the Americans over it. With
them it has been as popular as with us. Their cordial
welcome of it shows that they and we are in heart
one. There was more soundness at the core than was
supposed—more disposition to welcome a book which
rebuked the slave-catchers as well as the slave•hold-
ers, but spoke kindly of all, and most kindly of the
negro, than we had supposed. "Uncle Tom" will
cement good fellowship between the thousands of
native Americans and the hundreds of our country-
men who visit them by our ocean steamers. 'We
value the book for this. We think, moreover, that it
must attain its object. CLUBBING spoke to them like
a man of a higher world. His morality seemed too
pure for imitation. Abolition Societies irritated by
their strong, though just language ; but " Uncle Tom"
fills the imagination, and takes captive the heart, and
the judgment too. It seems almost an honour to sur-
render to it—almost a disgrace to profess insensibility,
Never have slaveholders before, never will they again
hear the " truth so spoken in love " as it is in " Uncle
Tom's Cabin." Most heartily do we wish, therefore,
success to the authoress in her noble attempt. Wo-
men have been chief actors in many a revolution;
may she be among the foremost in one of the most
desirable the world has yet to witness !

America has (apart from the plague• spot of
slavery) a noble future. Already she is per-
haps the most energetic nation upon earth ; she
will soon be the most populous. With a country
that commands both oceans, rivers, and lakes without
parallel, a climate suited to almost every product of
the earth; a population as yet nearly free from pau-
perism ; no national debt, and entire self-government;
and a thorough-going Religious Freedom, which Lord
CARLISLE himself declared he quite envied—what
could hinder the advance of such a country, but the
crippling, enfeebling disease of slavery ? It is this
which paralyzes all her political principle, which ut-
terly destroys her moral weight as a nation, and
which prostrates half her States, before any enemy
who could put a few thousands of muskets into the
hands of her slaves. Slavery it is which corrupts her
in peace, which would enfeeble her in war; which
lessens the cordiality of her intercourse with really
free England, and which places her on lower ground
before the nations of the Old World. Let America
emancipate her slaves ; let her make a sacrifice such
as we did, if needful, to duty, and the hearty shout
of approval from England would do more to cement
good feeling between the two countries than all the
diplomacy of our most friendly Statesmen.

As Englishmen, we wish CO give even Mr. PRYNNE
his due, and the Bishop of EXETER his also. About
a month ago we felt constrained to denounce the at-
tempt of the former to introduce the impurities and
priestly tyranny of the Roman Confessional into the
Church of England. Being so unfortunate as to be
able to decipher the Latin of DENS and Mumma, we
hare seen with our own eyes the unbearable prurience
of thought imparted to Romish confessors, for the be-
nefit of such wives and virgins as their husbands and
fathers will suffer to enter the Confessional ; and we
told, and we tell again, these Anglican confessors,
that if they are to be tolerated in their practices, and
if their number is to increase, it is all over with the
Church of England. The result of the extrajudicial
investigation by the Bishop of EXETER of the charges
against Mr. PRYNNE, was so utterly discordant with
the evidence produced on the occasion--" an acquittal
of even indiscretion," " freedom from all blame," " a
hope that many young sinners had been reclaimed by
him !"—that Mr. P.'s accusers could hardly remain
satisfied and quiescent. They convened, accordingly,
the and
m armyayo
Mayor
of DEVONPORT, four physicians, one banker of great
a most respectable meeting, by a requisition compris-
ing, it appears, the signatures not only " of 19 clergy-
men, but two admirals, two generals, three colonels,
of manyvar othero
various
s ranks,
ankofficerss
MAJESTY'S
sea navyce
fivef r M
o justices of
least is the Bishop's statement. Well, at the nume-
opulence, and solicitors without number." This at
nume-
rous meeting collected by such an invitation, after a
resolution affirming that " the confession as practised
at St. Peter's Church, Plymouth, and sanctioned by
the Bishop, is characterized by the most revolting
features of the Romish Confessional "—another was
moved by the Rev. H. A. GREAVES, seconded by
Captain AYLMER, R.A., " That the system of confes-
sion carried on at St. Peter's, Plymouth, is contrary
to the doctrine, practice, and spirit of the Church
of England." Barest, HENRY of Exeter takes spe-
cial umbrage. The Confessional might be as Popish
as the first resolution depones, but that its Popery
should be contrary to the doctrine, &c., of the Angli-
can Church, that is quite another thing ! In that case
the Bishop and his Tractarian clergy must walk the
plank of preferment, and the Evangelicals and the
Moderates completely man the good ship. His Lord•
ship, therefore, in a letter which we gave last Satur-
clay, summonses the mover of the resolution to try
the question fairly in the Archbishop of CANTERBURY'S
Court. He will, himself, by letters of request trans-