The 'Observer,' the 'Journal of Commerce,'
and all that sort of fellows, are astonished and nonplussed. They do
not know what to say or do about it."
While the English editions of the story were rapidly multiplying, and
being issued with illustrations by Cruikshank, introductions by Elihu
Burritt, Lord Carlisle, etc., it was also making its way over the
Continent. For the authorized French edition, translated by Madame
Belloc, and published by Charpentier of Paris, Mrs. Stowe wrote the
following:--
PREFACE TO THE EUROPEAN EDITION.
In authorizing the circulation of this work on the Continent of
Europe, the author has only this apology, that the love of _man_
is higher than the love of country. The great mystery which all
Christian nations hold in common, the union of God with man through
the humanity of Jesus Christ, invests human existence with an awful
sacredness; and in the eye of the true believer in Jesus, he who
tramples on the rights of his meanest fellow-man is not only inhuman
but sacrilegious, and the worst form of this sacrilege is the
institution of _slavery_.
It has been said that the representations of this book are
exaggerations! and oh, _would_ that this were true! Would that
this book were indeed a fiction, and not a close mosaic of facts! But
that it is not a fiction the proofs lie bleeding in thousands of
hearts; they have been attested by surrounding voices from almost
every slave State, and from slave-owners themselves.
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