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This is certainly more like our idea of a Turkish Sultana , than the wife of an American citizen ! There is a tragical catastrophe in the story , occasioned by the prejudice which the Americans entertain against all descendants from the negroes , even when the difference of colour has been lost , and all the
distinction that remains appears to be a peculiar beauty of physical form . This prejudice is a fair subject of attack , and we are therefore ready to excuse some exaggeration and bad taste in Mrs Trollope ' s mode of dealing with it . The character of Edward Bligh , the missionary and martyr , is very interesting . The authoress indeed seems to fear she has committed an error in making a hero of a reformer , for she has felt it necessary to add a caution on the subject , lest any one should imagine that she has espoused the cause of truth and free
enquiry : — " In a country so thickly peopled with slaves as Natchez and its vicinity , it was but too easy for the enthusiastic and persevering- Edward Bligh to discover a multitude of human beings totally deficient in that knowledge which it was the sole passion of his young-heart to spread abroad . And never did a hope more holy , an ambition more sublime , engross the soul of man . Remote as is good from evil was the principle which sent him forth , thus self-elected and self-devoted , to raise the poor crushed
victims of an infernal tyranny from the state of grovelling ignorance to which they were chained by their well-calculating masters , from that which swells with most unrighteous vanity the hearts of many among ourselves , inclined to separate from the established faith in which they were educated , and to hold themselves apart , as chosen saints and apostles of another .
" As well might a philanthropist labouring in a desert where no abler hand could be found to minister relief to the sick and suffering—as well might such a one be compared to the audacious quack who , thrusting instructed science aside , claims reverence for his own daring ignorance , as Edward Bligh to the self-seeking fanatics who canker our establishment /'—Vol . i , p . 181 .
We should advise Mrs Trollope to let such comparisons alone . If she has suggested that a likeness may exist between our " Establishment" and the slave-holders of America , and if it should be found upon enquiry that she is not very far wrong , she has her&elf to blame . Those who read her statement of the question , and do anything more than smile at its absurdity , may perhaps employ themselves in instituting a comparison , and may think they discover a very striking and curious resemblance . They may , for instance , think of the ministers turned out of their livings and wandering about by hundreds , beggared and homeless , oecause they could not conform to the royal standard of faith , as it happened to exist in the sixteenth century ; or of the prisons crowded with people who had not the advantage of pos-Se&siite consciences sufficiently accommodating ; or of the rack
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of Jonathan Jefferson Whitlaw . 6 ife
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1836, page 639, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2662/page/51/
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