254 ALEXANDER VON HUMBOLDT. 



tific labours was expected to have great influence with many 

 voters. Notwithstanding every effort, Buchanan was eventually 

 successful, but the result of the election only led Humboldt to 

 hold still more tenaciously to the ideas he had seen with sorrow 

 and indignation 1 once more subverted. The incident, in the 

 meantime, of the Eitter slave trials turned his attention to the 

 state of the law in Prussia on this question, and led him to 

 exert all his influence towards effecting an alteration in the 

 common law of his country. On December 29, he wrote to 

 Bockh : ' I have accomplished the project which I have so long 

 sought to bring about, namely, the negro law : every slave 

 will now become free upon touching Prussian soil, with the 

 exception of Neuenburg and the distant colony of Neu-Barnim, 

 in Morocco.' The exceptions thus playfully introduced bear 

 reference ironically to the events of the day, the renunciation 

 of Neufchatel, which was then in process of accomplishment, 

 and the skirmish of Prince Adalbert of Prussia with the reef 

 pirates 2 Humboldt's habit being to introduce passing events 

 of a piquant character into serious subjects. ' The law that 

 has to-day come into force,' wrote Simons, the Minister of 

 Justice, on March 24, 1857, while sending Humboldt an official 

 copy of the same, ' is indebted for its existence to the humane 

 views of your Excellency.' 



In January, 1858, Humboldt once more lifted up his voice 

 against slavery in a letter to Julius Frobel, the publication of 

 which he readily permitted, to show that he was not unwillino- 

 to avow publicly his connection with a man proscribed on ac- 

 count of revolutionary proceedings. 4 Do not cease to stigma- 

 tise,' he wrote to him, ' the scandalous vindication of slavery, 

 and the deceitful practice of importing negroes, under pretence 

 of making them free, which is only a means for encouraging 

 the nefarious trade of negro hunters in the interior of Africa. 

 What abominations one lives to witness when one has the mis- 

 fortune to live from 1769 to 1858!' He little suspected how 

 near America was to the expiation of her crimes. Long before, 

 in 1825, he had himself given expression to the opinion that 



1 < Briefe an Varnhageo/ p. 332. 

 8 Ibid, No. 176, 



