Another Beecher Stowed.
The London Athenæum applauds, in terms of extravagant eulogy, a book which Mrs. Fanny Kemble Butler has published against the South. The Athenæum says Mrs. Butler went to the South willing to judge slavery fairly, but the scenes of oppression and cruelty she witnessed were too much for her, and she had to return to the North. Her book, in the opinion of the Athenæum plays havoc with Southern chivalry and with Southern women, and even throws into the shade Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe.We recollect, many years ago, (we do not like to say how many, for gallantry would forbid us to intimate even indirectly that Mrs. Fanny Kemble Butler is an old woman,) seeing the popular Fanny Kemble when she first appeared upon the boards in the United States. She personated, on that occasion, Juliet, and never was passionate and self-sacrificing love more powerfully represented. But when she came to be linked in the bonds of matrimony with a real Romeo, she made the poor victim the the day he was born. The Romeo of Shakespeare met a fate which was mercy itself compared to marrying such a Juliet. A more complete virago and termagant never afflicted an unhappy son of Adam. Finding that she could not be master and her liege lord a slave, Juliet betook herself to the independence of separation, and the book she has just published is but one of many ebullitions of interminable spleen and rancor against her husband.--She is one of the most strong-minded, strong bodied, bilious, and spiteful old women who infest the cold latitude, and our only wonder is that she has not long since received a commission of Colonel of horse from the Lincoln Government.
The wrath and vengeance of this desperate old female are of little import in comparison with the anti slavery bigotry and intolerance manifested by the London Athenæum in its comments on her book. Mrs. Butler has spent most of her life in Yankeedom, and never, since she left the stage, has been considered a person whose sayings and doings were of importance on any subject. But the Athenæum is one of the oracles of English literature, and it is sad and astonishing to see how prejudice and bigotry can blind the eyes of those who ought to be instructors of the people. English abolitionism is the most rabid, inveterate, and insensate of all abolitionism. It is totally blind to the fact that England stocked the South and the whole world with slaves, forced them upon the South in opposition to her remonstrances, and never abolished slavery till she hoped by so doing, in the little island of Jamaica, to ruin the negro labor which she had herself introduced into the United States. She ignores, what all the rest of mankind knows, that, whether to negro slaves, Coolies or Sapoys, she has ever been the hardest master on the planet. To these things, which ought to make her at least charitable and tolerant to those upon whom she forced slavery, and who treat their slaves better than-she did, she seems perfectly insensible. She has used the slavery issue to break up the United States and avenge herself for the Revolution and the late war. One would think she might be satisfied now with her work, but blood enough has not flowed yet. Well, let her go ahead and hug the negro to her heart, and hound on the Yankee villains to their deeds of robbery and rapine. The end is not yet. Whichever way this war terminates, she will not be the gainer. She has offended the North mortally, and, should the North succeed, there will be a debt to pay which will bankrupt the prime agent of this Exeter Hall war. Should the North fail, which all enlightened Englishmen predict, the South will remember who it was that prevented other nations from recognizing her independence, and give to France — chivalric and generous France — every advantage for obtaining the trade, commerce, and manufactures of this country.
