The Sun.
London, England, 1846-09-10 00:00:00

A SLAVE STORY.

A slave girl belonging to the Hon. C. James Faulkner,
of Virginia, recently accompanied him and his family to
the Bedford Springs, Pennsylvania, where- she was of
course free. Some of her own colour persuaded her to
quit her master and mistress, and escape with them to
freedom. (They seem to have supposed tbat she must
run and hide, whereas she was free without this, having
been brought into a free state by her master, and could
not have been legally held in slavery another moment.)
She went off with her new friends a dozen miles, but
her heart misgave her on finding herself entirely among
strangers, and with a rather gloomy prospect before her.
Freedom to a poor, ignorant woman, among entire
strangers, and with no probable means of getting a
living but the hardest and meanest drudgery, was
not the blessed thing Fancy had painted it. She
resolved to return t 6 her ever kind master and mis-
tress, and actually took her way to them on feot and
alone in the dark, and arrived at their lodgings
about midnight, way worn indeed but right happy
to be once more with those who loved and had ever
cherished and befriended her. Mr. Faulkner told her
she was welcome to her liberty, and should have money
to go where she chose, but she rejected all such proffers,
and begged only to be received back into her old station.
This is by no mead a singular case. Thousands have
seen Mr. Clay's black servant Charles, who has ac-
companied him nol- only in repeated journeys through
portions of the free states, but for hundrtds of
miles through Canada. Some one spoke to Mr. Clay,
at Niagara, of the danger that this servant would
desert him to Canada; but he answered that if he chose
to do so he might and welcome, whether on one side
of the Niagara or the other. Charles is au intelligent,
shrewd man, and we presume he loves liberty ; but he did
not find that sort of liberty enjoyed by men of his colour
in free states very inviting, and be chose to stay where he
was sure of kind treatment and a perpetual home.
Yet the abolition papers have recently given columns to
the tale of a runaway slave from Ashland, named Lewis
Richardson, who complains of great cruelty from Mr.
Clay's overseer, in being whipped for disobedience
of orders. Half a dozen of the neighbours have
united with the overseer in refuting these ca-
lumnies, showing that Lewis had been an exceed-
ingly vicious and troublesome fellow for years, had
been forbidden to set foot on sundry plantations for
misconduct, and has grossly exaggerated the whipping
he received, and misrepresented the whole affair. It ap-
pears further that after Lewis had run away a man wrote
Mr. Clay from Ohio that he could be apprehended and
sent back; but Mr. Clay replied, "By no means; I am
very glad to be rid of him." But to return more espe-
cially to the recent occurrence at Bedford Springs,
though these two together best illustrate the
thought we would impress on the reader's mind—
to wit : that of the entire practicability the perfect
facility of emancipation. The mass of the southern
people are deceived on this point. . They speak and
seem to think of emancipation as would not only
derange but destroy southern cultivation, uproot every-
thing precious or pleasureable about them, and speedily
involve the whole country in conflagration, rapine,
and massacre. But nothing like this would bo the
case. The actual change any way would be in-
finitely less than they imagine. Their good
servants would remain with them and in good
part be servants still, receiving wages indeed, but earn-
ing them as well, by the exercise of a skill, diligence, and
intelligence which a slave forbidden to read and write can
never acquire. They would raise cotton as cheap as now,
and, if nut so much of it, their crop would bring as much
in the aggregate as at present. A more diversified, and
therefore more profitable industry would soon be exhibit-
ed. Lands would rise in value everywhere,and all that they
paid for wages and schools would be more than saved
ie the increased efficiency and experience of their la-
bourers, and in the diminished cost of whips, police,
negro-dogs, man-hunters, &c. The best servants and
the best treated would stay where they are, and if the
idle and the vicious should in part wander off into the
Northern States, the South surely would not be the
loser. Why will they not consider these things ? What
need of slavery to retain such servants as Mr. Faulkner's ?
What wisdom or profit in it to retain such as LevCis
Richardson ?—New York Tribune.

A correspondent writes from Rome, 25th ult., in
the Augsburvh Gazette—" Deputations are daily arraing
from different parts of the R .man states, with add•cesses
of thanks to the Pope for the amnesty, The Bolognese
have addressed a letter to the Romans, thanking them
for their sympathy on this occasion. Copies of this
letter, finely written on parchment, have been distri-
buted to the high,..st members of the clergy, the Roman
Princes, and several savans and artists. Rossini is en-
gaged to compose the music of a hymn, writtencll Count
Marchetti, in coramenkration of the waemiy."