'' Setting out from this too much disputed example,
M. Cochin shows what has been done for humanity in the
colonies of two powerful nations, and of two others no
less civiUzed ; and also how many slaves still remain in
the Christian world, — more than 4,000,000 in a portion
of the republican States of America, where appears at
this moment that great civil war, that convulsion of an
empire substituted for a question of philanthropy, as if to
attest how great peril and calamity are comprised in so-
cial injustice. We read the eloquent summary of facts
prior to the war, the fatal symptoms, the aggravated dif-
ficulties which preceded the formidable crisis, the great-
ness of which retards the catastrophe, without ceasing to
render it inevitable. The heart of the author does not
falter, but, in the face of the vicissitudes of war, while
invoking peace, he counsels, he demands, he predicjs, the
abolition of slavery ; then, turning from a land desolated
by war, he more forcibly repeats the course that policy as
well as humanity should hasten to adopt where slavery is
not yet attacked and defended by arms, where it is still
at peace, and where it only risks drawing on the masters



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Viu TRANSLATOE'S PREFACE.
the dangers of foreign conquest, and tempting other
slave states by calculations of ambition or solidarity.
