St. Clare also has the ironic self-knowledge that allows him to speak honestly against slavery despite being unable to reject its comforts for himself; he is like a principled vegetarian who, despite alternate amusement and self-loathing, cannot give up eating meat. His long conversations with Ophelia express many facets of the abolitionist arguments of Stowe's time, including Stowe's own disgust with the hypocrisy of the churches — which, St. Clare says, provide scriptural support for slavery because it is economically profitable, but would provide scriptural opposition to it if it suddenly became unprofitable. But St. Clare's personal opposition to the system that provides him and his family with a comfortable, not to say luxurious, life has itself more than a whiff of hypocrisy, with which St. Clare seems generally unconcerned — until first Eva and then Tom are able to shake his complacency. St. Clare has been satisfied with avoiding sins of commission but has not recognized, until very late in his life, that sins of omission are as deadly. He does recognize this at last, and he fully intends to right his wrongs — soon, any day now. Ironically, although his intention and Tom's prayers are apparently enough to gain entrance to heaven for St. Clare in the end, his habits of idleness and materialism (habits instilled by the practice of slavery) have doomed the slaves he ought to have freed, including Tom, to a living hell.
Only one is saved. Because Ophelia insists on having legal control of Topsy, this child alone avoids the general sale of slaves when St. Clare dies and Marie inherits his property.
