forbearance of the better class of slave-owners of the South. The
genuine affection of an unspoiled child for negro friends is made
especially emphatic. Miss Ophelia objected to Eva's expressions
of devotion to Uncle Tom. Her father insists that his daughter
shall not be robbed of the free utterance of her high regard,
observing that "the child is the only true democrat." There is
only one Simon Legree in the book, and he is of New England
extraction. The story is as distinctly intended to inform
Northern ignorance and to remove Northern prejudice as it is to
justify the conduct of abolitionists.

What was the effect of the publication? In European countries far
removed from local partizan prejudice, it was immediately
received as a great revelation of the spirit of liberty. It was
translated into twenty-three different languages. So devoted were
the Italians to the reading of the story that there was earnest
effort to suppress its circulation. As a drama it proved a great
success, not only in America and England but in France and other
countries as well. More than a million copies of the story were
sold in the British Empire. Lord Palmerston avers that he had not
read a novel for thirty years, yet he read Uncle Tom's Cabin
three times and commended the book for the statesmanship
displayed in it.

What is in the story to call forth such commendation from the
cold-blooded English statesman? The book revealed, in a way
fitted to carry conviction to every unprejudiced reader, the
impossibility of uniting slavery with freedom under the same
Government. Either all must be free or the mass subject to the
few--or there is actual war. This principle is finely brought out