here, while the shipping interest would acquire a clear addition to their profits. With respect to the former objection, it should be recollected that no analogy can be drawn from a great continent to a small island;-that independence can scarcely be established in this by mere resistance of the natives; and that it is perfectly evident that the West Indies must always be an appendage to that nation which commands the ocean. The nation, which can secure their exports and protect their coasts, must always possess their allegiance and affection! Common origin, and mutual benefits, are strong ties;-but the secure possession and profitable enjoyment of property are much stronger and whether England and the whites, the Emperor of Hayti and the blacks, or America and the creoles, shall ultimately rule over the narrow American seas;-the territorial sovereignty of the islands must as inevitably follow, as the regulation of their commerce must attend upon those who command the avenues of intercourse with the European states.

A word or two more in conclusion, on a topic to which we have already slightly adverted. We are well aware that in the colonies as well as at home, there is an ill-eyed magic in the word religion, that at once converts the dictates of common sense, solid argument, palpable facts, even the actual evidence of sight itself, into enthusiasm, cant, and imposture. But on this occasion the colonial legislatures have greatly outrun that of the mother country. For they have descended to the shifts of duplicity aud hypocrisy, and have thereby rendered a tribute to the justice of the system, and have precluded themselves from a decent objection to the steps necessary for realising their pretended views.

"The sixth clause of the consolidated slave act of Jamaica is as follows. And be it further enacted by the authority aforesaid, that all masters and mistresses, owners, or, in their absence, managers and overseers of slaves, shall, as much as in them lies, endeavour the instruction of their slaves in the principles of the christian religion, whereby to facilitate their conversion; and shall do their utmost endeavour to fit them for baptism, and as soon as conveniently can be, cause to be baptised all such as they can make sensible of a duty to God and the christian faith, which ceremony the clergymen of the respective parishes are to perform gratis.' This clause has been copied by the legislatures of other West India islands, and inserted into their respective slave acts. The guardian act of Grenada has this addition to the clause, that the clergymen shall attend slaves in their sickness when their spiritual aid shall be required."" (Gaisford, p. 56.)

After citing this clause, Mr. Gaisford proceeds roundly to

accuse the legislatures, which are exclusively composed of slave masters, of holding out a false show of moral consideration for their slaves, for the purpose of deceiving the government of the mother country, where all colonial legislative acts are previously submitted to his majesty and the privy council. And we must candidly admit that he makes good the accusation.

"For I would here," he indignantly exclaims, "with earnestness ask any impartial individual, who has been in the West Indies, can there be any thing more suffocating to common sense than this clause is, compared with the practical usage manifested by the British planters towards their slaves. Put the Bible, said a colonist, into the hands of our slaves, or enable them to read it, and these hewers of wood and drawers of water' will soon be told that the labourer is worthy of his hire." (P. 57.)

Neither have these Solons preserved more consistency in their legislative than in their individual capacities, as we shall presently see; but we must first present our readers with the following quotation from Mr. Collins.

"The efforts (of a few churchmen to convert the negroes) were neither very general nor long persisted in; being commenced without experience, perhaps with a zeal too languid for the end proposed, being accompanied with the ridicule of others who neither hoped nor wished their negroes to be better christians than themselves, and not followed with the immediate effect which impatience expected, the attempt was abandoned under the persuasion that negroes were beyond the possibility of a reform. Further experience, however, has proved that this judgment was erroneous; for new attempts of the same nature have been made with better success by those who were more competent to the undertaking;—I mean the Methodists and Moravians.

"These missionaries, in many instances themselves but little elevated above the meanest class in society, supplying by the energies of zeal the defects of education, have found means to attract to their lectures very numerous congregations in many of the islands, among whom are to be found some proselytes, imbued with a true spirit of christianity, so far as the penury of their faculties enables them to comprehend its dogmas. The greatest proof of this is exhibited in the regularity of their lives, their respect for their pastors, and their pecuniary contributions for their services; for religion surely must have made some progress in the minds of men, who part voluntarily with their scanty stores, whilst we find so many in this and other countries who elude by every art of chicane the payment of legal ecclesiastical dues." (Practical Rules, p. 187.)

The missionaries certainly found out the way to procure the cheerful and ready payment of ecclesiastical dues. The Moravians had under their care in 1807, converted brethren as follows.

In the committee of the Privy Council, p. 3, detached pieces, no. 2, two respectable planters gave evidence to the following effect. Mr. Entwistle stated that after a residence in the West Indies of more than thirty years, and having had the care and direction of more than 2000 negroes for full twenty years of that time, he is enabled to bear the most unequivocal testimony to the moral amendment introduced among the slaves by the example and exertions of the teachers and missionaries; their general conduct and outward behaviour underwent the same improvement. Mr. Gordon expressed his perfect coincidence in the opinion of Mr. Entwistle.

Now let us see what measures the colonial legislatures, who pretended to be so anxious for the conversion of their negroes, have taken under these circumstances of zeal and success by the missionaries. It appears by the colonial statutes that they have absolutely enacted severe and persecuting laws against them. They have placed the preaching of christianity to those benighted and miserable heathens on the same scale of crime and punishment, with picking pockets or any other felonies within benefit of clergy. The legislature of Jamaica has thought it reasonable to punish a first offence against their persecuting laws with a month's imprisonment and hard labour in the common workhouse, (a place where slaves deemed refractory are sent to be worked if possible harder than on their master's plantation;) and for a second offence the same pains are enjoined for six months at least, or such further punishment short of death as the courts might adjudge. In order to suppress the tremendous sin of preaching the Gospel to negroes, these punishments are left to the discretion of any justice of peace, with two associated justices of his own choice, (all slave masters recollect), and to be adjudged by them on a summary conviction, without trial by jury.

These are the penalties enacted against what are termed "ill disposed, illiterate, and ignorant, enthusiasts," that is to say, persons so deemed by the aforesaid justices; and that they are not very discriminating on these subjects, the actual persecution of Mr. Campbell, a person duly qualified as a dissenting teacher at the quarter-sessions in England, together with other persecu tions, as of Mr. Lumb in St. Vincent's, Mr. Fish, &c. all on re

cord, have sufficiently proved. That private malice and outrage would not be dormant under such a public system was to be expected. And we accordingly find from Mr. Collins, who says the anecdote came to him from respectable authority, that in one of the towns of a sugar island, "where the white inhabitants are without a church or any place of regular worship, and have been so for the last twenty years, the missionaries built a decent chapel with the assistance of their well frequented black congregations. One day during the divine service therein, a party of persons, mostly military, made a gallant attack upon the audience, and after dislodging the minister from the pulpit, proceeded to other acts of outrage too scandalous to be detailed." (P. 189.)

In many countries this might well be considered as merely a drunken (though a very disgraceful) frolic; but it is evidently part of a regular system in the West Indies, in which the interest of the sensual appetite, as well as the objects of avarice are secretly implicated.

That these epithets do not contain a gratuitous accusation, appears from Mr. Gaisford, (p. 150.) who states, that the laxity of morals inseparable from a construction of society, where the virtue of one part of the community is the absolute property of the passions of the other, has multiplied illicit connections between the Europeans and Creole women, to an extent that has made each island one scene of shameless prostitution. And if we may believe the writers who have visited the West Indies, the warm temperament and constitutional attractions of those women are such as to enlist the sensual passions of the vulgar and ignorant youths, who are often sent out as overseers, very strongly against any reform that would be a bar to the facilities of seduction.

It is singular, and not a little disgraceful to us, that in the French, Spanish, and Portuguese colonies, much more attention was paid to the protection and instruction of their slaves, and much greater facilities afforded them of obtaining their freedom. Unfortunately the difference has always been found greatly to the disadvantage of the negro whose master enjoys the largest share of civil and political liberty. It is certain that the Code Noir of the French, and the laws of the Spanish and Portuguese colonies, are as much milder than ours, as the constitutions of the mother countries are decidedly the reverse. Their slaves also are well instructed in religion. But then they are fed, clothed, and governed, with liberality and kindness. Christianity then, as we see by their experience, may at least be safely admitted as an inmate in West Indian settlements, since

those of Spain and Portugal were tranquil to a proverb, and free from internal commotions. It is also a welcome guest among masters, when their slaves are treated with humanity. But where the case is grossly otherwise, as in our islands, it is eagerly caught at indeed by the slave, but neglected, if not detested, by the master. The conclusion may easily be drawn, and attests the sublime efficacy of the christian religion.

We have at length completed the task of laying before our country what appears to us to be the true state of one of the most important moral and political questions, that ever was submitted to their decision; and if we have at all succeeded in convincing them, that the West Indies possess no exclusive patent for reconciling the prostitution of every divine and moral law, with the prosperous conduct of affairs; that there is no magic in a passage across the Atlantic, which can give to the base alloy of vice the currency of virtue, or the glow of humanity to sensual and sordid ferocity; we trust that they will manfully act up to the conclusions that inevitably result from the premises.

We urgently press upon their attention, that the planters, who, in the face of a fair notice, have reduced themselves to difficulties by an obstinate perseverance in a reprobated system, have no claim either in justice or expediency to any remuneration or indemnity, much less to such a disgraceful sacrifice of consistency and morality, as would be implied in any relaxation of the abolition act. They should be referred with firmness to those expedients, which they ought to have adopted long ago, and which alone can render their welfare compatible with their duty. Even then, enough is left in their detestable polity, to excite the horror and indignation of every man of British habits and sentiments. We wish with all our hearts it were felt as a hardship by the small body of proprietors in these colonies, to be condemned to the diabolical distinction of subsisting upon the blood, the stripes, the misery, both mental and corporeal, of thousands of their fellow-men? of subsisting did we say? The event has shown, that in this as in all other cases, the counteraction of the ways of Providence will ever bring its own punishment. Vice has an irresistible tendency to ruin itself in its own

excesses.

We will boldly, therefore, declare our conviction, that the abolition of the slave trade is but the commencement of the career of justice and sound policy; that it has done enough to make a continuance in the old system impossible, but not enough to establish the new one upon a solid foundation. It is in the gradual, but not very tardy, abolition of slavery itself, that the