Page:A letter on "Uncle Tom's cabin" (1852).djvu/10

6 reference to this, I think it is very important to notice that there are throughout the world, unless your world differs very much from ours, many persons of that dubious sanity, that, although the law cannot interfere with them, they are lamentably unfit to have the management of inanimate property, much more of live property of any kind, infinitely more of intelligent human beings.

But if there be no exaggeration, or at least no such exaggeration as would seriously impair the merits of the work, as regards the condition of slaves in America, there is, I am sorry to say, an exaggeration in the statements which are made in the course of the volume, and are not contradicted, respecting the condition of the English laborer.

It is worth while to make some reply to these statements, for it is not the magnitude of an error, so much as the number of people who hold it, which renders it important and dangerous. I have no doubt there are many shrewd people in your country who say, and many shallow people in both countries who echo the saying, that there is very little substantial difference between the condition of the English laborer and that of the American slave. There is, however, even in our poorest districts and in the worst of times, all the