The Express. — 1861-11-20 (London, England)

THB OCTOROON AND THE SLAVERY QUESTION.  The following interesting letter from Mr. Dion Bone-Wank appears is the Times : "Sir,—la your criticism as my drama, The Octoroon, it is stated that the reception of tile fifth act, in which the slave girl commits suicide in order to escape the embraces of her purchaser, contrasts strongly with the enthusiastic applause which had accompanied the &rut four sots of the Play. •• The question involved in these few words is not one of merely the craft of the playwright. I candidly admit that your estimate of public sympathy, as expressed last night, as just as it is inexplicable. Since the Uncle Tom mania, the sentiments of the English public on the subject of slavery have seemed to be undergoing a great change ; but I confess that I was not prepared to rind that change so radical as it appeared to be when the experiment wss tried upon the feelings of a miscellaneous audience. Mar I shim your attention to this view of • subject fraught with much sous interest? _ _  " A long maidence in the Southern States of America had oreviaced ma that the delineations in Unde Tun's Cabin of the condition of the slaves, their levee and feelings, were not faithful. I found the slaves, u a ram, a happy, gentle, kindly-treated population, and the restrainta upon their Liberty so slight as to be rarely perceptible. A visitor to Latham, who might expect to find his vulgar sympathies aroused by the exhibition of corporal punishment and physical torture, would be much disappointed. For my part, with every facility for observation, 1 never witnessed soy indreatment whatever of the servile clam ; on the contrary, the slaves are in general warmly attached to their masters and to their homes, and this eseditioa of thinp I have faithfully depicted. " But, behind all this, there are features in slavery far more objectionable than any of those hitherto held up to human execration, by the side of which physical suffering as a vulgar detail. Some of these features are, for appears as time, boldly exhibited in The Octoroon. The audience hailed with every mark of esthusisam the sunny views of negro life ; they were pleased with the happy rerlYa existing between the slaves and the family ch they were dependanta ; they enjoyed the hear*Me with which these slaves were sold and cheered the *oaten who bought them. But, when the Octoroon e t was purthased by the ruffianly overseer to become , her suicide to prmarve her purity gsweetarpar sympathy whatever. Yet, a few years ago Ow mow public, in the earns them" witnessed with ticepues•ha the death of Uncle Tom under the lash, and scsupbullas lublisu of the poor old negro, his millet stained with w blind from his lacerated back, crawling Meal the Meg% eaddylim la slow torture. 'lathsilleth al the Octoroon lice the moral and teaching of the whsle work. Had this girl bees saved, and the drama Mw happy end, the horrors of her position, frreme. a 11.11.111 very ostun of cub S"rake the condition rfe a tat4uli ni.jtam aslavery, annoyance." Whil.l admit most fully the truth of your statement that the public was disappointed with the termination of the play, sad would hays been pleased with a happier issue, I feed strangely bewildered at such a change of feeling. Has public sentiment in thisessiatry veered so diametrically esi this subject, cod is it posethis that this straw indicates that the feeling of the English people is taking another course!  -.. • Yours respectfully, "Hereford Hones, Nov. 19." "