The Sun.
London, England, 1859-04-20 00:00:00

of his friends as the place would hold. (Laughter.)
He:begged to propose as the next toast, " The
Drama," and to associate with it the name of a con-
summate actor, an efficient manager, a benefactor
to the fund, and one who had built the most ele-
gant and commodious theatre in which the drama
could find a home—Mr. Benjamin Webster.
Mr. WEBSTER, in acknowledging the compli-
ment, said he felt himself honoured by hearing his
name and his theatre associated with the drama of
this country. He wished he could do justice to so
important a theme, which required no ordinary
talent to describe its humanizing qualities and its
civilizing powers. He might truly say that he had
cherished an affection for the drama in his heart of
hearts—that it had grown with his growth,. and
that it would endure as long as he lived. (Hear,
hear.) But after the light and the eccentric a omedy
they had heard—the episodes and the domestic drama
—he felt it would not do for him to commence the
heavy business, or to descant upon its merits from
the day when Roscius was an actor in Rome. The
subject, however, was too dignified to be passed
lightly over, and therefore his remarks should be as
brief as Shakspere said was " woman's love." The
history of the drama was the history of the aristo-
cracy of intellect and civilization, and it was an
aristocracy that never perished because it was not
hereditary. (Applause.) The destruction of civili-
zation alone could destroy it. The English drama
stood alone. It was a noble inheritance, and should
be guarded as carefully as the nation's honour. It
was the sovereign of literature ; and, as was said of
the Sovereign when he ceased to exist, " Long live
the King," so let it be said, even when its most dis-
tinguished exponents have passed away, " Long
live the Drama." (Applause.)
The CHAIRMAN next proposed " The Bar," and
especially the members of it who patronised the
drama, coupling with it the name of Mr. Haw-
kins, Q.C.

The toast was duly honoured and responded to
by Mr. Hawkins.
Some other complimentary toasts were then pro-
posed and responded to, after which a subscription
list was read, amounting to nearly £5OO, inclusive
of an annual donation of £lO5 from her Majesty.
The musical arrangements were under the man-
agement of Mr. Lovell Phillips, the principal
vocalists being Miss Poole, Miss Eyles, Miss G.
Ellis, and Miss Ransford.

The dinner was excellent, and served in good
style.

A GREAT SLAVE AUCTION IN
GEORGIA.

(From the New York Tribune.)
The largest sale of human chattels that has been
made in Star-Spangled America for several years
took place ,on Wednesday and Thursday of last
week, at the race course near the city of Savannah,
Georgia. The lot consisted of four hundred and
thirty-six men, women, children, and infants, being
that half of the negro stock remaining on the old
Major Butler plantations which fell to one of the
two heirs to that estate. Major Butler dying left
a property valued at more than a million dollars,
the major part of which was invested in rice and
cotton plantations, and the slaves thereon, all of
which immense fortune descended to two heirs, his
sons, Mr. John A. Butler, sometime deceased, and
Mr. Pierce M. Butler, still living, and resident in
the city of Philadelphia, in the Free State of Penn-
sylvania. Losses in tho great crash of 1857-8, and
other exigencies of business, have impelled the latter
gentleman to realise on his Southern investments,
that he may satisfy sundry pressing creditors, and
be able to resume business, with the surplus, if any.
This necessity led to a partition of the negro stock
on the Georgia plantations, between himself and
the representative of the other heir, the widow of
the late John A. Butler, and the negroes that were
brought to the hammer last week were the pro-
perty of Mr. Pierce M. Butler, of Philadelphia,
and were, in fact, sold to pay Mr. Pierce M.
Butler's debts. The creditors were repre-
sented by General Cadwallader, while Mr.
Pierce M. Butler was present in person, at-
tended by his business agent, to attend to his own
interests.
The negroes came from two plantations, the one
a rice plantation near Darien, in the State of
Georgia, not far from the great Okefonokee swamp,
and the other a cotton plantation on the extreme
northern point of St. Simon's Island, a little bit of
an island in the Atlantic, cut off from Georgia main
land by a slender arm of the sea.
Though most of the stock had been accustomed
only to rice and cotton planting and culture, there
were among them a number of very passable me-
chanics, who had been taught to do all the rougher
sorts of mechanical work on the plantations. There
were coopers, carpenters, shoemakers, and black-
smiths, each one equal in his various craft to the
ordinary requirements of a plantation—that is, the
coopers could make rice tierces and possibly, on a
pinch, rude tubs and buckets ; the carpenter could
do the rough carpentry about the negro quarters ;
the shoemaker could make the shoes of the fashion
required for the slaves, and the blacksmith was
adequate to the manufacture of hoes, and similar
simple tools, and to such trifling repairs in the
blacksmithing way as did ilot require too refined a
skill. Though probably no one of these would be
called a superior, or even an average workman
among the masters of the craft, their knowledge of
these various trades sold in some cases for nearly as
much as the man—that is, a man without a trade,
who would be valued at 900 dols., would readily
bring 1,600 or 1,700 dots. if he was a passable
blacksmith or cooper.
None of the Butler slaves have ever been sold be-
fore, but have been on these two plantations since
they were born. Here have they lived their simple
lives, and loved their simple loves ; here they were
born, and here have many of them had children born
unto them ; here had their parents lived before them,
and are now resting in quiet graves on the old
plantations that these unhappy ones are to see no
more ; here they have left not only the well known
scenes dear to them from very babyhood by a thou-
sand fond memories, and their homes as loved by
them, perhaps, as brighter homes by men of brighter
faces, but the clinging ties that bound them to liv-
ing hearts were torn, for but one half of each of
these two happy little communities were sent to the
shambles, to be scattered to the four winds, but the
other half were left behind, and who can tell how
closely intertwined are the affections of a little band
of 400 persons living isolated from all the world
beside, from birth to middle age ? Do they not
naturally become one great family, each man a
brother unto each ?

It is true they were sold "in families ;" but let
us see. A man and his wife were called " a family,"
their parents and kindred were not taken into ac-
count, the man and wife might be sold to the pine
woods of North Carolina, their brothers and sisters
be scattered through the cotton fields of Alabama
and the rice swamps of Louisiana, while the parents
might be left on the old plantation to wear out
their weary lives in heavy grief, and lay their heads
in far off graves over which their children might
never weep. And no account could be taken of loves
that were as yet unconsummated by marriage, and
how many aching hearts had been divorced by this
summary proceeding no man can ever know.
It seems as if every shade of character capable of
being implicated in the sale of human flesh and
blood was represented among the buyers. The
Georgia fast young man with his pantaloons tucked
into his boots, his velvet cap jauntily dragged over
to one side, his cheek full of tobacco, which he bites
from a huge plug, that resembles more than any-
thing else, an old rusty bit of waggon tire, and who
is altogether an animal of quite a different breed
from your New York fast man, was there. His
ready revolver and his convenient knife, were
ready for instant use in case of a heated argu-
ment. White neck-clothed, gold-spectacled,
and silver-haired old men were there, resem-
bling in appearance that noxious breed of sancti-
monious deacons we have at the North, who are
perpetually leaving documents at your door that
you never read, and the business of whose mendi-
cant life is to eternally solicit subscriptions for
charitable associations of which they are treasurers.
These gentry with a quiet step and subdued voice,
moved carefully about among the live stock, ignor-
ing, as a general rule, the men, but tormenting the
women with questions which, when accidentally
overheard by the disinterested spectator, bred in
that spectator's mind an almost irrepressible desire
to knock somebody down. And then, all imagi-
nable varieties of rough backwoods rowdies, who
began the day in a dispirited manner, but who, as
its hours progressed, and their practice at the bar
became more prolific in results, waxed louder
and talkier, and more violent, were present, and
added a characteristic feature to the assemblage ?
Those of your readers who have read " Uncle Tom"
—and who has not ?—will remember, with pecu-
liar feelings, Legree, the slave-driver and woman-
whipper. That that character is not overdrawn or
too highly coloured there is abundant testimony.
Witness the subjoined dialogue :—A party of men
were conversing on the fruitful subject of managing
refractory " niggers ;" some were for severe whip•
ping, some recommending branding, one or two
advocated other modes of torture, but one huge
brute of a man, who had not taken an active part
in the discussion, save to assent with approving
nod to any unusually barbarous proposition, now
broke his silence by saying, in an oracular way," You
may say what you like about managing niggers :
I'm a driver myself, and I've had some experience,
and I ought to know. You can manage ordinary
niggers by licking 'em and giving 'em a taste
of the hot iron once in a while when they're
extra ugly ; but if a nigger really sets himself up
against me, I can't never have any patience with