Page:Letters on American slavery from Victor Hugo, de Tocqueville, Emile de Girardin, Carnot, Passy, Mazzini, Humboldt, O. Lafayette.djvu/17

Rh In 1856, Baron von Humboldt caused the following letter to be inserted in the Spenersche Zeitung:—

"Under the title of Essai Politique sur l'Isle de Cuba, published in Paris in 1826, I collected together all that the large edition of my Voyage aux Regions Equinoxiales du Nouveau Continent contained upon the state of agriculture and slavery in the Antilles. There appeared at the same time an English and a Spanish translation of this work, the latter entitled Ensayo Politico sobre la Isle de Cuba, neither of which omitted any of the frank and open remarks which feelings of humanity had inspired. But there appears just now, strangely enough, translated from the Spanish translation, and not from the French original, and published by Derby and Jackson, in New York, an octavo volume of 400 pages, under the title of The Island of Cuba, by Alexander Humboldt; with notes and a preliminary essay by J. S. Thrasher. The translator, who has lived a long time on that beautiful island, has enriched my work by more recent data on the subject of the numerical standing of the population, of the cultivation of the soil, and the state of trade, and, generally speaking, exhibited a charitable moderation in his discussion of conflicting opinions. I owe it, however, to a moral feeling, that is now as lively in me as it was in 1826, publicly to complain that in a work which bears my name, the entire seventh chapter of the Spanish translation, with which my essai politique ended, has been arbitrarily omitted. To this very portion of my work I attach greater importance than to any astronomical observations, experiments of magnetic intensity, or statistical statements. "I have examined with frankness (I here repeat the words I used thirty years ago) whatever concerns the organization of human society in the colonies, the unequal distribution of the rights and enjoyments of life, and the impending dangers which the wisdom of legislators and the moderation of freemen can avert, whatever may be the form of government.

"It is the duty of the traveller who has been an eye-witness of all that torments and degrades human nature to cause the