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These things are elementary, and I am ashamed to tell them to a studious and intelligent man like you; but it is so important for nations to understand one another, that it is worth while to enter into the fullest detail about our poor people, if by so doing one could disabuse an American of the idea that the English laborer is the least like a slave,—a comparison which may help to soothe the bewildered conscience of many a man who seeks to justify slavery; and which, I dare say, is, and has been, repeated many times in every hour of the day, by some Southern slaveholder or other.
Throughout this book, which has been the cause of my inflicting such a long letter upon you, I find the authoress again and again endeavoring to meet a set of arguments which are so thoroughly exploded in our part of the world, that, to use one of your American words, we find it difficult to "realize" them. These arguments profess to be founded on the Bible; and no doubt it must be a charming thing, when a man is steeped all over in iniquities, to find it said by grave men with black coats and white neck-cloths, that there is no harm in any thing he has done; but that the institution which he adores is based upon the soundest religious principles. To a man steaming
