Charles E. Stowe, Harriet Beecher Stowe compiled from her letters and journals by her son Charles Edward Stowe

[176] however, which we of the freedom party draw from it, is not that the slave is, on the whole, in the best condition because of this striking difference; that in America the slave has not a recognized human character in law, has not even an existence, whereas in England the law recognizes and protects the meanest subject, in theory always, and infact to a certain extent. A prince of the blood could not strike the meanest laborer without a liability to prosecution, in theory at least, and that is something. In America any man may strike any slave he meets, and if the master does not choose to notice it, he has no redress.

I do not suppose human nature to be widely different in England and America. In both countries, when any class holds power and wealth by institutions which in the long run bring misery on lower classes, they are very unwilling still to part with that wealth and power. They are unwilling to be convinced that it is their duty, and unwilling to do it if they are. It is always so everywhere; it is not English nature or American nature, but human nature. We have seen in England the battle for popular rights fought step by step with as determined a resistance from parties in possession as the slaveholder offers in America.

There was the same kind of resistance in certain quarters there to the laws restricting the employing of young children eighteen hours a day in factories, as there is here to the anti-slavery effort.

Again, in England as in America, there are, in those very classes whose interests are most invaded by what are called popular rights, some of the most determined supporters of them, and here I think that the balance