Page:A Key to Uncle Tom's Cabin (1853).djvu/263



is a favorite maxim that "figures cannot lie." We are loth to assail the time-honored reputation for veracity of this ancient and most respectable race. There may have been days of pastoral innocence and primitive simplicity when they did not lie. When Abraham sat contemplatively in his tent-door, with nothing to do, all the long day, but compose psalms and pious meditations, it is likely that he had implicit faith in this maxim, and never thought of questioning the statistical tables of Eliezer of Damascus, with regard to the number of camels, asses, sheep, oxen and goats, which illustrated the prairie where he was for the time being encamped. Alas for those good old days! Figures did not lie then, we freely admit; but we are sadly afraid, from their behavior in recent ages, that this arose from no native innocence of disposition, but simply from want of occasion and opportunity. In those days, they were young and green, and had not learned what they could do. The first inventor, who commenced making a numeration table, with the artless primeval machine of his toes and fingers, had, like other great inventors, very little idea of what he was doing, and what would be the mighty uses of these very simple characters, when men got to having republican governments, and elections, and discussions of all sorts of unheard-of questions in politics and morals, and to electioneering among these poor simple Arab herdsmen, the nine digits, for their votes on all these complicated subjects. No wonder that figures have had their heads turned! Such unprecedented power and popularity is enough to turn any head. We are sorry to speak ill of them; but really we must say, that, like many of our political men, they have been found on all sides of every subject to an extent that is really very confusing. Of course, there is no doubt of their veracity somewhere; the only problem being, on which side, and where. Is any great measure to be carried, now-a-days? Of course, the statistics, cut and dried, in regular columns, on both sides of the question, contradict each other point-blank as two opposite cannons; and each party marshals behind them, firing them off with infinite alacrity, but with no particular effect, except the bewilderment of the few old-fashioned people, who, like Mr. Pickwick at the review, stand on the middle ground. If that most respectable female person, Mrs. Partington, who, like most unsophisticated old ladies, is a most vehement and uncompromising abolitionist, could only hear the statistics that are to be shown up in favor of slavery, she would take off her spectacles and wipe her eyes in pious joy, and think that the millennium, and nothing less, had come upon earth. Such statistics they are, about the woe, and want, and agony, and heathenish darkness of Africa, which, by that eminent foreign missionary operation, the slave-trade, have been turned into light and joy and thanksgiving; here she has them, in round figures; she only needs to put on her spectacles and look. "Here, ma'am, you have it," says the illustrator; "look on this side of the column: here are three hundred million of heathen,—don't spare the figures,—down in Africa, sunk in heathenism—never heard the sound of the gospel—actually eating each other alive. Now, turn to this side of the column, and here they all are, over in America, clothed and in their right mind, going to church with their masters, and finding the hymns in their own hymn-books. Now, ma'am, can you doubt the beneficial results of the slave-trade?"

But Mrs Partington has heard something about that middle passage which she thought was horrid.

"By no means, my dear madam," says the illustrator, whisking over his papers. "I have that all in figures,—average of deaths in the first cargoes, 25 per cent.,—large average, certainly; they didn't manage the business exactly right; but then the rate of increase in a Christian country averages twenty-five per cent, over what it would have been in Africa. Now, Mrs. Partington, if these had been left in Africa, they would have been all heathen; by getting them over here, you have just as many, and all Christians to boot. Because, you see, the excess of increase balances the percentage of loss, and we make no deduction for interest in those cases."

Now, as Mrs. Partington does not know with very great clearness what "percentage" and "average" mean, and as mental philosophers have demonstrated that we are always powerfully affected by the unknown, she is all the more impressed with this reasoning, on that account; being one of the simple, old-fashioned people, who have not yet gotten over the impression that "figures cannot lie."

"Well, now, really," says she, "strange what these figures will do! I always thought the slave-trade was monstrous wicked. But it really seems to be quite a missionary work."

The fact is, that these nomadic Arabs, the digits, are making a very unfair use, among us, of the family reputation gotten up during the palmy days of their innocence, when they were a breezy, contemplatively unsophisticated race of shepherds, and, to use an American elegance of expression, had not yet "cut their eye-teeth." All that remains of their Oriental origin in this country seems to be a characteristic turn for romancing. Not an addition of slave territory has been made to the United States, wherein these same Arab brothers have not, with grave faces, been brought in as witnesses, to swear, by the honor of the family, that it was absolutely essential, for the best interest of the African race, that there should be more slavery and more slave territory. To be sure, it was for the pecuniary gain of the American race, but that was not the point insisted on. O no! we are always very glad when our