BARON VON HUMBOLDT versus THE AMERI- CAN PROSLAVERY CENSORSHIP.

Baron von Humboldt has caused the following article to be inserted in the Spenersche Zeitung:--"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. Trasher.

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 numercial 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 fecling, 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 thoroughly examined (I here repeat the words which I used thirty years ago) the organization of society in the colonies, the unequal partition of the rights and enjoyments of life, the manacing dangers which the wisdom of legislators and the moderation of freemen may remove, whatever be the form of government.

It is the duty of the traveller who has had the opportunity of narrowly observing those things which afflict and degrade human nature, to convey the complaints of the unhappy to those who have the power to console them. I remarked in my Essay how much less inhuman and atrocious is the ancient Spanish Slave Code than those of the American Continental Slave States on either side 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."