BY HARRIET MARTINEAU. ‘Till now, ye have gone on and filled the time With all licentious measure, making your wills The scope of justice: till now, as many such As slept within the shadow of your power, Have wandered with their traversed arms, and breathed Their sufferance vainly. Now the time is flush When crouching marrow, in the bearer strong, Cries of itself—NO MORE,’—SHAKSPEARE. _THIRD EDITION._ LONDON: CHARLES FOX, 67, PATERNOSTER-ROW --- 1833. PREFACE. --- Instead of encumbering my small pages with references to authorities and acknowledgments of suggestions, I give notice in this place that I am indebted to various authors and to some private friends, not only for the information on which the argument of this tale is founded, but for lights respecting negro character and manners which have enabled me to impart whatever truth may be recognized in my slave personages. My object having been to appropriate every thing, properly authenticated, which could illustrate my subject, I leave it to those who may be amused by the employment to point out whence I derived this argument, or that anecdote, or those elements of scenery. At the same time, I cannot admit that I have _copied_. The characters are intended to be original, the arguments are recast, the descriptions recomposed, and, to the best of my knowledge, no part of the work is a mere republication of what has been written before. If it be objected that the characters for which sympathy is claimed might have been made more interesting, I reply that our sympathy for slaves ought to increase in proportion to their vices and follies, if it can be proved that those vices and follies arise out of the position in which we place them, or allow them to remain. If the champions of the slave had but seen how his cause is aided by representing him as he is,—not only revengeful, but selfish and mean,—not only treacherous to his master, but knavish to his countrymen, indolent, conceited, hypocritical, and sensual,—we should have had fewer narratives of slaves more virtuous than a free peasantry, and exposed to the delicate miseries of a refined love of which they are incapable, or of social sensibilities which can never be generated in such a social condition as theirs.