Charles E. Stowe, Harriet Beecher Stowe compiled from her letters and journals by her son Charles Edward Stowe

[167] details. In dealing even for the ransom of slaves, in learning market prices of men, women, and children, I feel that I acquire a horrible familiarity with evil.

Here, then, the great, wise, and powerful mind of England, if she will but fully master the subject, may greatly help us. Hers is the same kind of mind as our our own, but disembarrassed from our temptations and unnerved by the thousands of influences that blind and deaden us. There is a healthful vivacity of moral feeling on this subject that must electrify our paralyzed vitality. For this reason, therefore, I rejoice when I see minds like your lordship's turning to this subject; and I feel an intensity of emotion, as if I could say, Do not for Christ's sake let go; you know not what you may do.

Your lordship will permit me to send you two of the most characteristic documents of the present struggle, written by two men who are, in their way, as eloquent for the slave as Chatham was for us in our hour of need.

I am now preparing some additional notes to my book, in which I shall further confirm what I have said by facts and statistics, and in particular by extracts from the codes of slaveholding States, and the records of their courts. These are documents that cannot be disputed, and I pray your lordship to give them your attention. No disconnected facts can be so terrible as these legal decisions. They will soon appear in England.

It is so far from being irrelevant for England to notice slavery that I already see indications that this subject, on both sides, is yet to be presented there, and