252 ALEXANDEK VON HUMBOLDT. 



I have brought to notice in this essay how much less inhu- 

 man and atrocious were the old Spanish laws on slavery than 

 the legislation now in practice in the slave states of North 

 America.' Since that time Humboldt never ceased to exert 

 himself in the prosecution of this idea. Even in ' Cosmos ' it 

 found expression. 1 In the portfolios filled with the material 

 collected for his various works was a packet inscribed ' Slavery,' 

 which contained, besides various pamphlets on the question 

 of abolition, a number of historical and statistical notes in 

 his own handwriting, as for instance: 'As early as 1769, 

 long before the Congress of Vienna, the words " the unnatural 

 and unwarrantable/' custom of enslaving mankind " were em- 

 ployed in the House of Representation,- of Massachusetts.' At- 

 tached to these papers are various notes and fragmentary 

 extracts upon the judicial inquiries, ini which illiberal senti- 

 ments, wherever expressed, are denounced by comments in his 

 own hand, such as- ' All the world is mad ! ' and similar ex- 

 pressions. So completely did he regard himself as the re- 

 presentative of this idea, that it was with almost jealous 

 astonishment he noticed the unparalleled effect produced by 

 Mrs. Beecher-Stowe's ' Unele Tom's Cabin.' 'What can she have 

 to say new upon that subject ? ' he, inquired of Dove. 2 In the 

 year 1856 an opportunity occurred of showing himself a valiant 

 champion in the cause of freedom. 



Thrasher, an American writer, had, towards the close of 

 1855, translated for a New York publisher the ' Essai politique ' 

 a translation he had made not from the original, strange to 

 say, but from an old Spanish version, and while enriching the 

 work by new statistical data, he had suppressed the whole of 

 the seventh chapter, which was upon the subject of slavery. 

 Humboldt's displeasure was greatly excited : he forthwith pub- 

 lished a remonstrance on the. subject, in July 1856, in the 

 ' Spener'sche Zmtung,' which from the friendly relationship 

 in which he stood to the editor, Spiker, was to him almost a 

 second ' Moniteur,' and vehemently complained of the mutila- 



1 ' Kosmos,' vol. i. p. 385 ; vol. ii. p. 24. See also 'Briefe an Varnhagen,' 

 No. 173, and 'Briefe an Btmsen,' p. 98. 



2 See < Briefe an Bunsen/ pp. 164, 166. 



