HUMBOLDT'S PROTEST.

[J. S. Thrasher, the American Fillibuster, having printed an old book of Humboldt's about Cuba, expurgating it of his decided aversion to slavery, the old philosopher has published the following protest, in which he spurns, with deserved scorn, the base attempt to make him a party to that literary cowardice of our day which fails to speak its honest sentiments on slavery.

"Humboldt," says a correspendent of the Evening Post, "is no fanatic, but upon the question of property in human blood his Germanic love of justice glows with a depth which he never conceals.

I learn from a person who is frequently in his society that he looks upon the attempts now making in the United States to take slavery to the Pacific through the free Western prairies, and across the Rocky Mountains, with an utter abhorrence.

'To attempt to introduce, in 1856, slavery where it does not now exist, Humboldt regards as a great crime,' said my informant."]

Under the title of Essai Politique sur l' Isle de Cuba, published in Paris in 1826, I collected together all that the large edition of my Voyage aux Regions Equinoxiales du Nouveau Continent contained upon the state of agriculture and slavery in the Antilles.

There appeared at the same time an English and a Spanish translation of this work, the latter entitled Ensayo Politico sobre la Isla de Cuba, neither of which omitted any of the frank and open remarks which feelings of humanity had inspired.

But there appears just now, strangely enough, translated from the Spanish translation, and not from the French original, and published by Derby and Jackson, in New York, an octavo volume of 400 pages, under the title of The Island of Cuba, by Alexander Humboldt; with notes and a preliminary essay by J. S. Thrasher.

The translator, who has lived a long time on that beautiful island, has enriched my work by more recent data on the subject of the numerical standing of the population, of the cultivation of the soil, and the state of trade, and, generally speaking, exhibited a charitable moderation in his discussion of conflicting opinions.

I owe it, however, to a moral feeling, that is now as lively in me as it was in 1826, publicly to complain that in a work which bears my name the entire seventh chapter of the Spanish translation, with which my essai politique ended, has been arbitrarily omitted.

To this very portion of my work I attach greater importance than to any astronomical observations, experiments of magnetic intensity, or statistical statements.

I have examined with frankness (I here repeat the words I used thirty years ago) whatever concerns the organization of human society in the colonies, the unequal distinction of the rights and enjoyments of life, and the impending dangers which the wisdom of legislators and the moderation of freemen can avert, whatever may be the form of government.

It is the duty of the traveller who has been an eyewitness of all that torments and degrades human nature to cause the complaints of the unfortunate to reach those whose duty it is to relieve them. I have repeated in this treatise the fact that the ancient legislation of Spain on the subject of slavery is less inhuman and atrocious than that of the slave States on the American continent, north or south of the equator.

A steady advocate as I am for the most unfettered expression of opinion in speech or in writing, I should never have thought of complaining if I had been attacked on account of my statements; but I do think I am entitled to demand that in the free States of the continent of America people should be allowed to read what has been permitted to circulate from the first year of its appearance in a Spanish translation.

Alexander von Humboldt.

Berlin, July, 1856.