This passage is very suggestive in two ways. In the first place, we humbly venture to think that it contains many excellent reasons why the ladies of America should mitigate their inordinate desire for sharing in what hitherto have been considered the appropriate employments of men. It appears, by Mrs Stowe’s evidence, that they have already so much domestic work to perform, that they are compelled to sacrifice both their health and beauty, which certainly are the two last things that a woman would be inclined to part with. Therefore it seems to us unwise, and even preposterous, that any portion of them should be clamorous in demanding a further increase of duty, unless, like the gude-wife of Auchtermuchty in the old Scots ballad, they are prepared to make an entire interchange of occupation with their husbands, and can persuade the latter to whip cream, concoct soup, wash the dishes, and arrange the table, whilst they are pleading at the bar, prescribing for half the young fellows in the neighbourhood, gesticulating at public meetings, or receiving the incense of deputations. In the second place, these particulars of American society may, in reality, have more to do with the evident dislike to emancipation of the slaves which evidently prevails in many parts of the United States, than Mrs Stowe was aware of when she penned the passage. If it is true that the ladies of America—using the term in the same sense as Mrs Stowe does, for she is comparing the personal appearance of women of the richer and more independent class in the two countries—if it is the fact that the American ladies in the free States have to undergo the drudgery which she describes, and that not from choice, but from absolute inability to obtain proper assistance; then we have a distinct and intelligible motive assigned to us why many excellent and humane people in the slave States hesitate to join the movement in behalf of emancipation. We have often suspected that some strong social reasons, unknown to us and to the British public, must exist, to account for the continuance of the slave system; and we think that Mrs Stowe has, albeit unwittingly, disclosed one of them. For what does her sentiment amount to, but an acknowledgment that, in the great enlightened republic of America, it is impossible to procure decent or permanent service—that, as there is no acknowledgment of anything like rank or gradation, the servants consider themselves in all respects as good as their master or mistress, will not obey them unless it suits their humour, and are always ready to decamp? That must be the case, unless we are to suppose that the American ladies, answering to the aristocracy here, have a diseased appetite for performing the offices of scullion, cook, and table-maid. Now, it may be thought a very strong statement on our part, but we venture to say, that were slavery existing at the present time in Great Britain, and were the