From the account of the experience of Joshua Steele, given by W. Dickson in his Mitigation of Slavery, it is manifest that much of the evil usually attendant on slavery was remedied without actual emancipation. If the laborers did not receive the rewards for their services which justice demands, they were at least partially remunerated, and an interest in their work was excited, which is unknown under the usual procedure. He was a member of Little Egg Harbor MonthFrom what I have been able to learn, I appre.ly Meeting, and his residence being convenient hend that upon the decease of Joshua Steele, his to the meeting house, he took great pleasure in

HAVERFORD SCHOOL.

The Winter Term will commence on the second

Fourth-day of the Tenth month next. Application dent, at the school, in person or by letter addressed may be made to JONATHAN RICHARDS, Superintento West Haverford, Delaware County, Pennsylvania, by whom all the information required will be given. When more convenient to do so, parties applying may register the names of applicants with the undersigned.

THE SEMI ANNUAL EXAMINATION will commence ou Second-day, 9th mo. 11th, and close on the morning of Fourth-day following. The presence

As you have strongly and justly remarked, in your reply to Mr. Goodell, that non-slaveholding States have exactly the same rightful power over Slavery in Virginia or Alabama that we have over slavery in Cuba or Brazil-not one The strong argument with Southern slaveparticle more." The power of moral influence holders against even gradual emancipation is, belongs equally to all parts of the Union, to the that it would be interfering with vested rights; citizens of the non-slaveholding States. To give but there cannot be a vested right in a child uneffect to moral influence, the subject should be born. Consequently, objectors would be shorn so treated as to convince the judgments and not of this argument by making the system apply to excite the passions and prejudices of the slave- only to children thereafter born. If any object holding community in the South. A system of to this, because such discrimination would be gradual emancipation is the only one which is unjust, I reply,-better take the system thus repracticable. There are numerous advocates of stricted than not at all. As gradual emancipa

tion can only prevail with the assent of the peo- | be obeyed; and any one who don't obey me and ple of the slaveholding States, policy and wisdom behave himself will have to leave." require that it should be so modified as to secure the popular support.

As all strong excitement, on the subject of Slavery, has a tendency to check the progress of public opinion in favor of gradual emancipation, it is greatly to be regretted that the present Congress should have deemed it necessary to repeal the Missouri Compromise. That Compromise had, in a great degree, given peace to the country on the subject of slavery for more than thirty years. The repeal has thrown the whole subject open again. The only remedy for the mischief, thus done, is to elect Members and Senators, who will stand pledged to re-enact that Compromise. I fully agree with you, that that object should be kept in view at every election, until the voice of the nation shall emphatically decide that the wrong done shall be repaired. Let this be accomplished, and no Douglas or Dixon will ever again dare to propose to annul the solemn compact. The reinstatement of the Missouri Compromise may not accomplish all that some of the abolitionists of the North desire; but if a measure secures in part what they wish, reason dictates that they should heartly support it. The accomplishment of a partial good will not prevent them from urging additional measures, on a future occasion, which they may deem just and proper. But they should always recollect that they are not to be the exclusive judges of what measures are best calculated to relieve the country from an acknowledged evil.

A FRIEND OF GRADUAL EMANCIPATION. Mason County, Kentucky, July 13, 1854.

Remarks.

Now, we feel confident that a slaveholder who should adopt this course and firmly pursue it would soon have the finest plantation and the best crops in his county-keeping all his good blacks and getting rid of the bad ones, and with all his laborers working under the stimulus of personal interest, and impelled by pride to make as good a show as possible in the settlement at the end of the year. We believe the great majority of any planter's slaves might thus be quietly educated into fitness for freedom and self-direction, as well as into a competent knowledge of letters and the elemental arts, while the planter would find himself, at ten years' end, not only wiser but actually richer than if he had continued to hold his laborers in hopeless Slavery. Rely on it, friend! it can never be dangerous nor impolitic to do right! and what Washington, John Randolph and many other eminent Southerns saw fit to do on their death-beds you may safely and wisely do while you live.

We will not remark further on our correspondent's suggestions, except to say that, while we believe in the Colonization of Western Africa by civilized and Christianized blacks, we have no idea that the Negro race will ever quit this country entirely, whether from choice or compulsion. We believe the South could not afford to spare them, and do not see how they could well be got away. Were Slavery abolished, the South would not wish to be rid of her black laborers, any more than they would wish to go. Freedom reconciles where Slavery antagonizes. Blessed be Liberty-N. Y. Tribune.

PARIS AND THE FRENCH.

BY HARRIET BEECHER STOWE.

I have been now, in all, about a month in this gay and flowery city, seeing the French people, not in hotels and cafes, but in the seclusion of domestic life; received, when introduced, not with ceremonious distance as a stranger, but with confidence and affection as a friend.

Though, according to the showing of my friends, Paris is empty of many of her most brilliant ornaments, yet I have been so fortunate as to make the acquaintance of many noble and justly celebrated people, and to feel as if I had gained a real insight into the French heart.

It seems to us that a conscientious man convinced of the wrong of slaveholding should begin the work of redressing that wrong at once. And if we were in our correspondent's place, and the laws of that State forbade emancipation on her soil, and the teaching of slaves, we should remove with them at once to some convenient locality where no such tyrannical statutes existed. Then (or on our old plantation if the laws did not forbid) we should say to those slaves, "You are free, and may leave if you choose; but I advise you to stay with me till I shall have taught you how to use and enjoy your freedom. I will either myself teach you two hours daily or I will employ some competent persons to do so; and I I liked the English and the Scotch as well as will share fairly with you the proceeds of my land I could like anything. And now I equally like and your labor. At the year's end, I will settle the French. Exact opposites, you will say. For fairly with you, and any one who chooses may that reason all the more charming. The goodtake his portion and leave, while I withness and beauty of the Divine mind is no less those who remain will endeavor to raise a better crop next year. I think you can all learn more, live better, and save more, by staying with me, than by going off; if you don't think so, go; or, you stay now, go whenever you shall have come to think so. But while you stay here, I must

if

shown in the traits of different races than of different tribes of fruits and flowers. And because things are exact opposites, is no reason why we should not like both. The eye is not like the hand, nor the ear like the foot; yet who condemns any of them for the difference? So I

regard nations as parts of a great common body, I shade of Lafayette, it would seem, might rise and national differences as necessary to a common and say, 'Et tu, Brute !'"' humanity.

I thought, when in English society, that it was as perfect and delightful as it could be. There was worth of character, strength of principle, true sincerity and friendship, charmingly expressed. I have found all these, too, among the French, and, besides them, something which charms me the more, because it is peculiar to the French, and of a kind wholly different from any I have ever had an experience of before. There is an Iris-like variety and versatility of nature, a quickness in catching and reflecting the various shades of emotion or fancy, a readiness in seizing upon one's own half expressed thoughts, and running them out in a thousand graceful little tendrils, which is very captivating.

I know a general prejudice has gone forth that the French are all mere outside, without any deep reflection or emotion. This may be true of many. No doubt that the strength of that outward life, that acuteness of the mere perceptive organization, and that tendency to social exhiliration, which prevail, will incline to such a fault in many cases. An English reserve inclines to moroseness, and Scotch perseverance to obstinacy: so this ærial French nature may become levity and insincerity; but then it is neither the sullen Englishman, the dogged Scotchman, nor the shallow Frenchman, that we are to take as the nation's ideal. In each country we are to take the very best as the specimen.

Now, it is true that, here in France, one can find people as judicious, quiet, discreet, and religious, as anywhere in the world; with views of life as serious, and as earnest, not living for pretence or show, but for the most rational and religious ends, Now, when all this goodness is silvered over, as it were, reflecting, like mothero'-pearl, or opal, a thousand fanciful shades and changes, is not the result beautiful? Some families into which I have entered, some persons with whom I have talked, have left a most delightful impression upon my mind; and I have talked, by means of imperfect English, French, and interpretations, with a good many. They have made my heart bleed over the history of this beautiful country. It is truly mournful that a people with so many fine impulses, so much genius, appreciation, and effective power, should, by the influence of historical events quite beyond the control of the masses, so often have been thrown into a false position before the world, and been subjected to such a series of agonizing revulsions and revolutions.

"Oh, the French are half tiger, half monkey!"' said a cultivated American to me, the other day. Such remarks cut me to the heart, as if they had been spoken of a brother. And when they come from the mouth of an American, the very

It is true, it is a sarcasm of Voltaire's; but Voltaire, though born a Frenchman, neither embodied nor was capable of understanding the true French ideal. The French head he had, but not the French heart. And from his bitter judgment we might appeal to a thousand noble names. The generous Henry IV., the noble Sully, and Bayard, the knight sans peur et sans reproche-were these half tiger and half monkey? Were John Calvin and Fenelon half tiger and half monkey? Laplace, Geoffrey, St. Hilaire, Cuvier, Des Cartes, Malebranche, Arago-what were they? The tree of history is enriched with no nobler and fairer boughs and blossoms than have grown from the French stock.

It seems a most mysterious Providence that some nations, without being wickeder than others, should have a more unfortunate and disastrous history.

The woes of France have sprung from the fact that a Jezebel de Medici succeeded in exterminating from the nation that portion of the peoEngland, and Germany. The series of persecu ple corresponding to the Puritans of Scotland, tions which culminated in the Massacre of St. Bartholomew and ended with the dragonades under Louis XIV., drained France of her life-blood. Other nations have profited by the treasures then cast out of her, and she has remained poor for want of them. Some of the best blood in America is of the old Huguenot stock. Hugue nots carried arts and manufactures into England. An expelled French refugee became the theological leader of Puritanism in England, Scotland, and America; and wherever John Calvin's system of theology has gone, civil liberty has gone with it; so we might almost say of France, as the Apostle said of Israel, "If the fall of them be the riches of the world, and the diminishing of them be the riches of the Gentiles, how much more their fulness!"

When the English and Americans sneer at the instability, turbulence, and convulsions of the French nation for the last century, let us ask ourselves what our history would have been, had the "Gunpowder Plot" succeeded, and the whole element of the Reformation been exterminated. It is true, vitality and reactive energy might have survived such a process; but that vitality would have shown itself just as it has in France

in struggles and convulsions. The frequent revolutions of France are not a thing to be sneered at; they are not evidences of fickleness, but of constancy; they are, in fact, a prolonged struggle for liberty, in which there occur periods of defeat, but in which, after every interval of repose, the strife is renewed. Their culty has been, that the destruction of the Reformed Church in France, took out of the country entirely that element of religious rationalism which is at once conservative and progressive.

great

diffi

Decision of A. D. Smith, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the State of Wisconsin, in relation to the Fugitive Slave Law.

(Concluded from page 794.)

islature of Ohio. So also, about the same time, in regard to Indiana, and I believe Illinois. Up to 1837, the States esteemed it their duty, and slave States demanded its performance, to provide by law for the execution and faithful obserVance of this compact. All seemed to regard it as a compact and nothing else; binding, it is true, and operative as law equally upon all, but still a compact, and a compact only.

the duty of the Federal Government to enforce the right of the owner secured by the compact, and then infers that it must necessarily have the power; and then, if Congress has it, the States

cannot have it.

I ought not to dismiss the consideration of this question without particularly adverting to the case of Prigg vs. The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 16 Peters' Rep. 540. The opinions in the other cases cited are so conflicting, casual or incidental as to be of no force; and Again, it is respectfully suggested that the of the case of Prigg vs. Penn., it may be justly whole argument of Mr. Justice Story is based remkared that the discrepancy of opinion among upon what is sometimes called the petitio princi the members of the Court was so wide and fun-pi. He assumes that the Constitution makes it damental as greatly to impair the authority of that decision. It affirms the constitutionality of the act of 1793 upon contemporaneous exposition in one respect and expressly defies the same rule in another, for it pronounces the act constitutional in part, and unconstitutional in another part. Whatever of authority may attach to it in consequence of the character and eminence of the men who passed it, and of him who signed it, is effectually counteracted by the decision of the Court that in one part of it at least the Constitution was violated. Cotemporaneous construction confers the power of legis lation and execution upon the States as well as Congress; for long before Congress assumed to act upon the subject, the State Legislatures had passed laws in fidelity to the compact, in most of which some of the framers of the Constitution had seats, and all of the slave States, and all or nearly all the free States, continued to exercise the power up to a very recent period.

Cotemporaneous history, cotemporaneous exposition, early and long-continued acquiescence, all go to show the interpretation given to this provision of the Constitution by the States and the people. The slave States passed acts to execute the compact. The free States did the same. The action of the several States, or many of them, shows conclusively that they interpreted the provision as a compact merely addressed to the good faith of the States. The slave States appealed to the free States for legislative action to carry into effect this provision of the Federal Constitution, and demanded of the latter the stern exercise of a power which it is now sought to wrest from them. In 1826, the State of Maryland appointed Commissioners to attend upon the session of the Legislature of Pennsylvania, and induce the latter to pass an act to facilitate the reclamation of fugitive slaves. Their mission was successful. Pennsylvania yielded to the solicitations of Maryland's Commissioners, and passed the act of 1826, which was afterward declared void by the Supreme Court of the United States in Prigg vs. Pennsylvania. In 1836 or 1837, similar Commissioners were appointed by the State of Kentucky to the State of Ohio, whose mission resulted in the passage of a most stringent fugitive act by the Leg-I

All admit that there is no express power in the Constitution to legislate upon this subject, but it is claimed to be necessarily implied, as incidental to the grant of judicial power. The reclamation of a fugitive is first decided to be a "case" arising under the Constitution of the United States, and hence within the judicial power. But this mode of implying powers can never be sustained. The judicial power is extended in several respects beyond the legislative power. The judicial power has jurisdiction in cases arising between the citizens of different States. A citizen of New York may sue a citizen of Wisconsin upon a promissory note, bill of exchange, covenants in a deed, in partition of real estate, or even in ejectment for the possession or title to lands. If a power of legislation may, therefore, be grafted by implication upon a judicial power, Congress may assume the whole power of legislation over those subjects in the respective States, and necessarily exclude State legislation, and accomplish at a blow, the complete prostration and overthrow of the State sovereignty.

Again, this case explicitly decides the claim of the owner to a fugitive slave to be a “case” within the meaning of the Constitution. Hence it is a suit not in admiralty or equity, and hence at common law within the meaning of the Constitution. It also decides the determination of the claim to be a judicial proceeding, and bases the power of the Federal Government in the premises upon the grant of judicial power, and the power of legislation assumed to be incidental to that. All these points, which are held to be res adjucata, strike at the very vitality of the act of 1850, which attempts to confer such judicial power upon Commissioners. Time will not permit a further review of this case. ment, the opinion of the Chief Justice completely In my judgoverthrows that of the Court, and, so far as he attempts to argue his points, beyond doubt or controversy establishes the doctrine here contended for.

In view of the dissentient opinions of the