"Dear me," said the operator, looking at his watch, "'tis just twelve o'clock; how pleasantly the night passed over." "Ay, indeed," replied Mr. John Smith, with a yawn; I think 'tis time for us to see about beds. But how are we to manage? There are but two beds inside here;" and he drew back the curtain that separated from the little parlour an alcove, in which were two small beds. "Oh, as for that matter, you can take one and I the other; as for our friend here, you might hang him up from one of the kitchen hooks by the waistband of his trousers.' "Faith, I believe so. Well, then, here goes for a turn in." CHAP. III.-HOW THEY ALL WENT THEIR WAYS NEXT MORNING. ABOUT five o'clock on the following morning, the gentleman of the shepherd's plaid arose, and stepping into the little parlour, opened the windows. Twas a glorious morning; the whole heaven was glowing in the sunlight, and the landscape laughed out as cheerily as if no rain had ever fallen to dash its brightness. From the window one could see the distant peaks of the Twelve Pins, upon which the sun was now shining, and the whole range of the Maam hills was just catching the glow, while the valley beneath still looked dim and drowsy as the white vapour was slowly exhaling from the ground, and creeping upwards along the hill-side. The man was apparently a lover of nature, for he stood long at the window, admiring the scene. Then surveying the room, and perceiving Mr. Joseph Smith still sleeping profoundly, he returned to the alcove, and touching the occupant of the other bed, said, in a low voice "I am going to have a stroll in the morning air; just assist me to lift our friend outside into my bed to finish his nap." Mr. John Smith arose, and they carefully lifted Mr. Joseph Smith, and deposited him in the bed, without that gentleinan being in the least disturbed by the operation. Mr. John Smith then returned to resume his sleep, and the other made a hasty toilette, and stept out into the kitchen. They knock up a capital breakfast for you at Flynn's Halfway House-fried bacon and eggs, fish, tea, coffee, and excellent hot cake. The three gentlemen were seated at such a breakfast as this about eight o'clock. Mr. John Smith looked uncommonly fresh and lively, and addressed himself to the good fare with a famous appetite. Mr. Joseph Smith_looked a little "seedy," and seemed rather "peckish" in the way of eating. The other gentleman had nothing particular to say for himself. "Well, what an uncommonly pleasant night we had of it to be sure, said Mr. John Smith, as he came to a momentary pause. "Very," said the plaid-coat. "My dear sir, you are not making any way this morning. May I trouble you for another slice of bacon and an egg." "Well, I can't say that I am inclined to do justice to our host's viands," replied Mr. Joseph. "Ah, perhaps you did not sleep well last night?" "Oh, yes, I slept like a top; but, to tell you the truth, I don't know exactly how I got into bed." "Oh, you took yourself to your repose the first of us all." "And by that means deprived you of your chance of getting one of the two beds: we ought to have tossed up for them." "Pray don't mention it, my dear sir. I slept as well as if I had been in bed the whole night, though, I confess, it is not desirable to lie in one's clothes if it can be helped." "No, indeed," said Mr. Joseph, with a confused look, which neither of his companions appeared to notice. All pleasure must come to an end, and therefore the breakfast was at last finished; then came the supplemental pleasure of paying the bill, which likewise came to an end. "Well, gentlemen," said Mr. Joseph Smith, "what are your routes to-day? I'm going to Cleggan to see my friend Twining's improvements. I hear he has done a vast deal in these parts.' " "You have heard but the truth. The energy and judgment of Mr. Twining, added to the ability which his large means afford, have done much for the district in which happily he has become a proprietor. For myself, I shall stroll through the mountain-pass over to Kylmore." "And I," said Mr. John Smith," must go to Clifden." "Then," said Mr. Joseph, "we are all destined to part here; but, as our worthy friend and namesake said last night, I hope we may yet spend many pleasant evenings together. Here is my card, gentlemen, and when either of you shall be in London I trust you will not forget to call upon Joseph Foster Smith. You will find me in the morning at Leadenhall-street, or if you drop in at Bayswater-terrace about seven o'clock any day, you shall be more welcome still." The cards were received with due acknowledgments by the two others, when Mr. John Smith said— "Here's my card; and whenever either of you knock-I mean ring-at my door, -street, St. James's, John Frederick Smith will be heartily glad to see you." By this time the third gentleman had slung his fishing-basket on his back and taken up his rod and net. He paused a moment, and then said 66 My dear friends, I lead but a lonely sort of a life in a retired part of the country; but should either of you make the tour of our southern counties, which I strongly advise you to do, and that chance should bring you near my residence, I shall be delighted to see you." He shook each warmly by the hand as he gave him his card, and then passed from the room. It so happened, however, that he loitered a moment in the kitchen, and while so doing, he could not avoid hearing the observations of those he had just left. "A capital fellow, that," said Mr. Joseph Smith. "I don't know when I met a better of the name." "What name?" asked the other. "Smith, to be sure." "Why, look at the card in your hand." Mr. Joseph Smith did so, and they stared at each other, and then they burst out laughing "MR. JONATHAN FREKE SLINGSBY, Carrigbawn." "Do you know who he is?" asked Mr. Joseph. "I've a notion I heard the name before," said Mr. John. "The fact of it is, my dear sir, I'm greatly afraid your friends in Leadenhall-street may hear of your having sung a good song in the wilds of Galway." "And," retorted the other, "Mrs. Smith may learn your notions of bachelor's life." "Well, it can't be helped now. At all events the worst he can tell is, how we made a night of it in the far west." THE SLAVE TRADE, FROM AN AMERICAN POINT OF VIEW. It is wise to recall to memory, now and Of with a treatise upon slavery in general, or even upon rousing the public spirit from the narcotic influence of the Russian war, by the enlivening incidents of a Yankee Abolitionist sortie into the Nebraska territory. Our object is merely to show how an intelligent American may see this subject from a point of view very different from that chosen by Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe and our English philanthropists, and yet be, perhaps, as sincere an enemy of slavery and the slave trade as any one of them. No one, indeed, that we know of, now-a-days, ventures to profess himself an advocate of either the one or the other. In truth, the questions uppermost in the mind of every calm thinker are constantly" How can the slave trade be most effectually abolished? How can the slave be most securely and speedily set free?" But it by no means certainly follows that every one will admit that the mode of solving these questions, adopted by England twenty years ago, would be safe and suitable for the solution of the more complicated and difficult problem now under consideration in the United States. The number of slaves in the American Union in 1850, was above three and a-half millions; those emancipated in the whole of the British possessions in 1834, were under 800,000. These facts alone very materially vary the two cases; but an American writer,* whose speculations have lately fallen under our eye, explores the subject to a greater depth; and, examining the causes of slavery, determines (to his own satisfaction at least) that it has not been abolished, even within British bounds, by the English Act of Emancipation, and that it must subsist and grow throughout the world as far as English influence extends, so long as the commercial policy of England shall retain its present character. We do not profess to be converts to all Mr. Carey's views, and we own to some doubts as to the logical soundness of many of his argu "The Slave Trade, Domestic and Foreign: Why it Exists, and How it may be Extinguished." By H. C. Carey. London: Sampson Low, and Co. 1853. ments; but our political philosophy is of the eclectic school, and we may not refuse to accept a truth, either because it is not set before us in the technical form of a legitimate conclusion, or because its distinctness may be impaired by a crowd of concomitant fallacies. We love, too, to examine both sides of every shield; and we see no harm in turning that now in our hands for the benefit of some of our respected fellowcountrymen, who seem occasionally to forget that "there be livers out of Britain." It will no doubt be a strange surprise to many of those who have been long admiring their own re flection in the act of embracing "a man and a brother" black as ebony, to be shown, by a simple turning of the mirror, a counterfeit presentment of the same image ruthlessly tearing Uncle Tom from his peaceful though servile Northern home, or, vampire-like, draining the life-blood of a coolie immigrant amid the cane-pieces of Jamaica. Yet no less frightful than this is the picture of the slave-trade, as shown to us from the American point of view, which we propose now very slightly to sketch out. The root of slavery, black and white, is, we are told, the commercial policy of England, which, "adverse to the civilisation and the freedom, not only of the negro race, but of mankind at large, seeks to make of herself a great workshop, and necessarily, of all the rest of the world one great farm." The proposition is startling, and not the less so, that the primary design ascribed to England, and to the carrying out of which so unhappy a consequence is attributed, has really been the ruling idea of the most active and successful of our politicians of late years. We do not ask Mr. Cobden to admit that his unadorned but triumphant eloquence has barbarised and enslaved, howeverit may have charmed, the world; but he will not deny that its theme has been the wisdom and necessity of drawing food from every quarter of the globe for the supply of the workers of England. Free trade has so operated, says Mr. Carey, and in the course of its operation a quasi slavery has been imposed upon every nation within the sphere of its influence; the chains have been rivetted upon the American negro of the United States, and the domestic slave trade of America has been stimulated and extended. The argument upon which these conclusions are based is easily stated, when stripped of the illustrations with which it is profusely garnished. The earth is the sole producer, and agriculture, consequently, the basis of all wealth. From the earth man extracts corn and cotton, which he can change in form and place-but there his power ends; he cannot add to their quantity, except by means of the art of cultivation. The higher the degree of proficiency attained in that art, the greater, therefore, will be the produce of the material of wealth; but, on the other hand, the surplus rude produce of the land, after the personal wants of the cultivators have been supplied, possesses no value until it be subjected to the skill of the manufacturer. Thus the conditions desirable come to be such as shall be favourable to the largest production from the land, and to the easiest subjection of the produce to the hand of the artisan. Both will be attained, more or less completely, in proportion to the approximation or separation of the seats of agriculture and manufacture with regard to each other. When manufacturers settle in the neighbourhood of fertile and well farmed lands "they (in the words of Adam Smith) give a new value to the surplus part of the rude produce, by saving the expense of carrying it to the waterside, or to some distant market; and they furnish the cultivators with something in exchange for it, that is either useful or agreeable to them, upon easier terms than they could have obtained it before. The culti vators get a better price for their sur plus produce, and can purchase cheaper other conveniencies which they have occasion for. They are thus both encouraged and enabled to increase this surplus produce by a further improvement and better cultivation of the land; and as the fertility of the land has given birth to the manufacture, so the progress of the manufacture reacts upon the land, and increases still further its fertility. The manufacturers first supply the neighbourhood, and afterwards, as their work improves and refines, more distant markets. For, though neither the rude produce, even the coarse manufacture, could, without the greatest difficulty, support the expense of a considerable land carriage, the refined and im nor proved manufacture easily may. In a small bulk it frequently contains the price of a great quantity of the raw produce. A piece of fine cloth, for example, which weighs only eighty pounds, contains in it the price, not only of eighty pounds of wool, but sometimes of several thousand pounds, weight of corn, the maintenance of the different working people, and of their immediate employers. The corn, which could with difficulty have been carried abroad in its own shape, is in this manner virtually exported in that of the complete manufacture, and may easily be sent to the remotest corners of the world." Thus, the more wheat raised and the more cloth made, the greater will be the demand for labour, the higher the wages of the labourer; and the more sought for, and the better paid the labourer is, the more free is he. An exclusively agricultural population must be poor, because the market for their surplus produce is distant; being poor they are dependent, and bound to the soil. An exclusively manufacturing population cannot be rich and free, because the cost of the raw material upon which their labour is to be exercised is enhanced by the expense of carriage, and because the market for their produce must also be distant. But the policy of Englandof mixed free trade and protectiontends to draw all the surplus raw produce of the earth into her own lap, and to force all other nations to supply their wants of manufactures at her own shop; thus impoverishing and enslaving the families of the world, and preventing her own artisans from becoming rich and free; and thus is the England of Messrs. Cobden and Bright the great author and promoter of the slave trade, domestic and foreign.— Q.E.D. The The conclusion may seem to be hastily arrived at; but some of the facts upon which the steps of the argument are laid are curious and worthy of attention, for their intrinsic value if not for the effect they may be expected to produce upon the ci-devant members of the Anti-Corn Law League. manufacturing industry of the United States may be fairly estimated by the proportion of its raw cotton retained for domestic use as contrasted with the quantity of the material exported; and that stands but as one to five in a comparison with the exports to the whole world, and as two to seven in a comparison with those to Great Britain alone. In the year 1849 a thousand and some odd millions of pounds' weight of raw cotton were exported from the Union, of which more than seven hundred millions were received by Great Britain. The consumption in the different manufacturing establishments in the whole Union during the same year is believed (according to Mr. McCulloch) to have amounted to about two hundred thousand pounds. With this enormous quantity of raw material for the labour of the factory hands of England, a corresponding store of food was transmitted for their support. Great Britain's share of the bread-stuff of the United States, in the year 1849, was close upon a million of barrels of flour, upwards of a million of bushels of wheat, and more than twelve millions of bushels of Indian corn in round figures a twelve month's food for nearly two millions of people. But it is a strange fact, that this monster development of a market does not seem to have had the effect of inducing a more careful cultivation, or of improving the system of agriculture; and, coincidently with it, there has been an extensive emigration from the older States. The average return of wheat, even in the State of New York, is not more than fourteen bushels per acre, while in Virginia it is only six or seven bushels, against thirty or thirty-two as the average produce of the like crop in England. The wheat-exporting capabilities of the Union," says Mr. Johnston, in his "Notes on North America," "are lessening, rather than increasing. The virgin soils are already, to a considerable extent, exhausted of their fruitfulness, and a comparatively expensive culture, likely to make corn more costly, must be adopted if their productiveness is to be brought back and maintained." As this exhaustion of the soil proceeds, farmers migrate to seek fresher lands and a better crop elsewhere; and thus, while the Union at large doubles its population every twenty-five years, the increase in some of the old States is very slow. New York increased ten-fold in sixty years, while Virginia barely doubled in the same period. The population of North Carolina did not double in sixty years; that of Iowa was multiplied by ten in a single decade. "There is, in fact |