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PIGS AND BACON.

will taint meat sooner than the mid-day sun accompanied by a breeze. The author then directs that the bacon should be smoked, and not dried; that the flitches should be hung up in a chimney, where no rain could fall upon them, and not so near the fire as to melt; that the smoke should proceed from wood fires, not coal. If there be a fire constantly by day, a month would be long enough for the flitches to remain in the chimney; but if not, rather more time must be given, taking care not to leave them long enough to get rusty; that the flitches should be dried to the hardness of a board, but yet not quite dry; that before the bacon is hung up in the chimney, it should be laid on the floor, powdered over pretty thickly with bran, that this should be rubbed on the flesh, and patted well down upon it. The lard must be taken care of, and put away in bladders ; mixing a little salt with it will make it keep good for a much longer time. I have been very desirous of collecting for you all the knowledge I could about the pig, for he will furnish you with a great number of good, hearty, and nourishing meals after your day's toil throughout the year; and I hope you will not only attend to all I have written, but collect all the information you can as to the best plan of feeding and management. Never regard a little additional trouble, for there are no gains without pains.'"

SCRAPS.

ORIGINAL AND SELECTED.

SPEED OF THE HORSE.-Common report says that Flying Childers could run a mile in a minute, but there is

We take the following from a letter lately addressed by a gentleman, to the labourers on his brother's estate :-"I have word or two to say about your pigs, as I expect every one of to keep one. In the first place, it is very material that the be kept quite dry; you must, therefore, always be attentive the roof of the stye, and see that it does not let in wet. The en part of the stye, where the pig feeds and exercises, should planked, and sloped sufficiently from the covered part or bed, for all wet to drain away to the dung heap. The stye must be kept clean; it should be cleansed every day. Dry leaves and fera collected in the autumn, are good substitutes for straw for the bed, when straw is scarce. I would recommend ya not to buy in your pig before May, as you would have me difficulty in finding sufficient food for him earlier without to expense; he should then be not less than six or seven ths old. As there is very little common or waste on which per pigs could be turned to graze, you must treasure up all the euve cabbage leaves, pods of peas and beans, &c., to supply thes with sufficient food in the stye during the summer. One bo tub you must have, and as soon as you can afford it you should get another, that one may be filling while the other is being emptied; moreover, it is an advantage not to give the rash while it is fresh, for pigs are found to thrive better on it en stale. Let the potatoes and carrots intended for the pigs boiled, and then mashed up with the wash. As soon as the cars and beech nuts are ripe, set the children to collect them, they are very nourishing food for pigs. In the beginning of letober, you must prepare for fatting, by giving less green food, d more spotatoes and carrots, which you will then have in no authentic record of this. He ran over the Round Course Stance. A pig will require about two bushels of potatoes, dose of carrots or parsnips, boiled, and mixed with the of Newmarket (three miles, six furlongs, and 93 yards) in week during this month; but as the appetites of six minutes and 40 seconds; and the Beacon Course (four will vary, you must watch them when feeding, and give a miles, one furlong, and 138 yards) in seven minutes and 30 ttle more or less at a meal, taking care not to give at one feed seconds. In 1772 a mile was run by Firetail in one minute than they eat up clean. They should be fed three times and four seconds. In October 1741, at the Curragh Meetday at the least; I should say four times during Novembering in Ireland, Mr. Wilde engaged to ride 127 miles in December, while fatting. During the last week of October, nine hours. He performed it in six hours and 21 minutes. about half a peck of barley-meal with the allowance of sh for the week; each of the two first weeks in November, He employed ten horses, and allowing for mounting and peck; each of the two last weeks, a peck and a half; the dismounting, and a moment for refreshment, he rode for a árst weeks in December, two pecks each; the third week, six hours at the rate of 20 miles an hour. Mr. Thornhill, pecks; and the fourth week, four pecks. It is necessary in 1745, exceeded this, for he rode from Stilton to London be careful in increasing the barley-meal-this must be done and back, and again to Stilton, being 219 miles, in 11 hours radually in order to prevent surfeit, which will throw the pig and 34 minutes, which is, after allowing the least pos** If your crops of pease should be very abundant, and sible time for changing horses, 20 miles an hour for 11 duce more than you want as a vegetable food, let them ripen hours, and on the turnpike road and uneven ground. Mr. , and pet them by for fatting the pigs, to save meal. By Shaftoe, in 1762, with ten horses, and five of them ridden be end of December, if you have managed the pig well, he twice, accomplished fifty miles and a quarter in one hour he fat; if he be not, you must give him a little more time, and forty-nine minutes. In 1763 Mr. Shaftoe won a more The ought to be thoroughly fat before he is killed. I cannot Lapse of the pig when killed and burned, better than in the extraordinary match. He was to procure a person to ride rds of Cobbett's Cottage Economy.' He proceeds as fol- one hundred miles a-day, on any one horse each day, for The inwards are next taken out, and if the wife be twenty-nine days together, and to have any number of at a slattern, here, in the mere offal-in the mere garbage, horses not exceeding twenty-nine. He accomplished it on is food, and delicate food, too, for a large family for fourteen horses; and one day he rode 160 miles on account , and hogs puddings for the children, &c. The of the tiring of his first horse. Mr. Hull's Quibbler, howher, the next day, cuts the hog up, and then the house is ever, afforded the most extraordinary instance on record of ed with meat; souse, griskins, blade bones, thigh-bones, the stoutness as well as speed of the race-horse. In Decem are ribs, chines, belly-pieces, cheeks, all coming into use, one the other; and the last of the latter not before the end of ber 1786, he ran twenty-three miles, round the flat at Newat four or five weeks.' 'All the other parts taken away market, in fifty-seven minutes and ten seconds. sides that remain, and that are called flitches, are to be AMERICAN COURts of Justice.—I never went into a courtrd for bacon. They are first rubbed with salt on their in-house in the west, in summer, without observing that the or flesh sides, then placed one on the other, the flesh uppermost, in a salting trough, which has a gutter round to drain away the brine; for, to have sweet and fine the fitches must not lie sopping in brine, which gives it ad taste. Every one knows how different is the taste of from dry salt, from that of salt in a dissolved state-the one is tary, the other nauseous; therefore, change the salt oftenfour or five days; let it melt, and sink in, but not lie g; change the fitches-put that at bottom which was put on the top; do this a couple of times. As to the time ed for making the flitches sufficiently salt, it depends on stances the thickness of the flitch, the state of the wher, the place where the salting is going on. It takes a time for a thick than a thin flitch; it takes longer in 7 than in damp weather; it takes longer in a dry than a damp But, for flitches of a hog of twelve score, in weather very dry nor very damp, about six weeks may do; and as to be fat, which receives little injury from over-salting, time enough, for you are to have bacon till Christmas again. The place for salting should be cool, and where tre is a free circulation of air. Confined air, though cool,

judges and lawyers had their feet invariably placed upon the desks before them, and raised much higher than their heads. This, however, is only in the western county; for in the courts at Orleans, New York, and Philadelphia, the greatest order and regularity is observed. I had been told, that the judges often slept upon the bench; but I must confess, that, although I have entered court-houses at all seisons, during the space of fifteen months, I never saw an instance of it. I have frequently remonstrated with the Americans on the total absence of forms and ceremonies in their courts of justice, and was commonly answered by, "Yes, that may be quite necessary in England, in order to overawe a parcel of ignorant creatures, who have no share in making the laws; but, with us, a man's a man, whether he have a silk gown on or not; and, I guess, he can decide quite as well without a big wig as with one. You see, we have done with wiggery of all kinds, and if one of our judges was to wear such an appendage, he'd be taken for a Merry-andrew, and the court would become a kind of showbox; instead of such arrangements producing, with us, solemnity, they would produce nothing but laughter and the greatest possible irregularity."-Farrall's Rambles in America.

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girl within the same period. This finesse procured him the interest of the women. One of the borough once made a strenuous effort to procure a resolution, that no man should ever be received as a candidate, who did not offer himself to their consideration, upon the same terms.

Zachariah Macaulay has a servant whom he purchased at Sierra Leone, who affords a very satisfactory proof, that if the mental faculties of the blacks were properly cultivated, they would possess extraordinary reasoning powers. One morning as Cudjoe was lying in bed longer than usual, his master called out to him, and asked him what he was about? "I am doing some head work, massa."-" Head work,what is that?" asked Zachariah. "Why, massa," continued Cudjoe; "suppose three crow on dat tree, and massi fire, and kill one, how many left ?"" Two, of course," observed Zachariah. "No, massa, wrong dere," replied Cudjoe, showing his teeth, "de other two fly away." [I this anecdote is meant to convey a sneer against the friends of Negroes, it misses the aim. One thing it does effect; i: shews what cheerful happy creatures Negroes are when kindly treated.]

fied terms, that it deposits its eggs in the nest of the com. mon tit-lark, or moss-chipper. Had any of the sceptics visited Handax Wood, in the parish of West Calder, during last summer, he might have seen a young cucko hatched in the nest of a moss-chipper, and tethered there for several weeks, and all the while fed by the tit-lark, until full grown, when it was carried to Edinburgh by a respectable carter, and sold for eighteenpence.

NATURAL PROPENSITIES.-There are now living in THE CUCKOO. With much deference to the opinion Sicily, three boys who appear to be gifted with a similar of the learned gentlemen who think proper to reject the aptitude for mathematical calculations. At the head of testimony of the Scottish peasantry respecting the singu the triumvirate stands Vincent Zucchero, to whose extra-lar nestling of this bird, we assert, in the most unqualiordinary feats in calculation the public curiosity has of late been repeatedly directed. Two years ago he was ignorant even of his alphabet; but in consequence of the pains taken with him by the Abbé Minardi, who has been engaged as his tutor through the liberal interposition of the Government and Corporation of Palermo, he is at this moment able to read off-hand the most difficult of the Latin and Italian classics, and has given public proofs of the unprecedented extent of his acquirements. Two other boys, by LIFE AT DERRYNANE.-A person from Kerry, communiname Ignatius Landolina and Joseph Puglisi, have come cates some interesting particulars of the domestic repose of forward to enter the lists against him. The former has not our great Irish giant. He still keeps his fortress in the mons reached his tenth year, though he has already attended se- tains, where he lives like a patriarch or a Brehon Prince, surveral public meetings, and resolved some of the most rounded by his kindred of all ages and degrees of consangu abstruse questions in the highest branches of geometry,nity. Fi ty, persons of both sexes meet around his plentiful which were put to him by Professors Nobili, Scuderi, and board each day, exclusive of the countless retainers in the va Allessi, of the University of Cambria. On these occasionзrious departments of serving men and waiting women, dog boys, pipers, boatmen, runners, shulers, &c. &c. &c. What with the Landolina did not confine himself to a mere dry answer, family and guests above stairs, and the tribes below, the but assigned the reason for the result; and entered acutely Abbey is seldom beholding to fewer than a hundred inmates, into the metaphysics of the science. The third child, who, inhaling "an eager and a biting air," some thousand Puglisi, who is about seven years old, afforded no less strik- feet above the level of the Atlantic, are every one of the ing and indisputable proofs of his extraordinary talent in fully qualified to perform their part in the allotted feast.giving off-hand answers to problems which usually require A Kerry cow per diem is moderate store for such a tedious arithmetical calculations. The precocious talents garrison, whose fare is diversified with the delicious mutof these three infantine mathematicians would seem to in- ton of those high regions, brown as venison, and redolent of the dicate that the spirit of Archimedes still lingers on its na-sweet heath, as often as they can catch a wether on the

tive soil. From a Sicilian Journal.

CONTAGION.-Miss Seward relates an extraordinary instance of contagion in one of her letters. The plague raged in 1666 at Eyam in Derbyshire, of which place she was a native, to a great extent. "In the summer of 1757," says Miss S.," five cottagers were digging in the heathy mountain above Eyam, which was the place of graves after the churchyard became too narrow a repository. These men came to something which had the appearance of having once been linen; conscious of their situation they ing stantly buried it again. In a few days they all sickened of a putrid fever, and three of the five died. The disorder was contagious, and proved mortal to numbers of the inhabitants. My father, who was Canon of Lichfield, resided in that city with his family at the period when the subtle, unextinguished, though much subdued power of the most dreadful of all diseases awakened from the dust in which be had slumbered 91 years.

CANVASSING A HUNDRED YEARS SINCE.-Sir Richard Steele, the celebrated author of the Tatler, who represented a borough in 1714, carried his election against a powerful opposition by the laughable expedient of sticking two apples full of guineas; and declaring to the electors, before whom he held them up, that the largest should be the prize of that man whose wife should be the first to bring forth a boy after that day nine months, and that the other would belong to him who should become the father of a

Dountains. To number the flocks of geese, turkeys, and barutridges, wild ducks, and plovers, which yield up their happy door fowis, together with the salmons, bares and rabbits, parlives to this perpetual festival pro bono publico, would be to lay a burden upon John Bull's credulity, which none but an eyewitness should presume to impose. O'Connell partakes freddy in the manly sports and exercises of the mountains, and wil return to the wordy strife with lungs repaired and strength recruited.

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THE

AND

EDINBURGH WEEKLY MAGAZINE.

CONDUCTED BY JOHN JOHNSTONE.

THE SCHOOL MASTER IS ABROAD.-LORD BROUGHAM.

No. 17.-VOL. I. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 24, 1832. PRICE THREE-HALFPENCE.

HOLYDAY RAMBLES.

NO. IV.

THE EILDON HILLS.

at leisure look round us; for we have long thought
that climbing either Scotch mountain or the hill
of life, is alike a cheerless, profitless, fagging work,
if the climber cannot take leisure to enjoy the
extended prospects he has achieved.
And now,
from our first stage, or breathing place, look round.
That snug white house by the burn, and among
the trees, is St. Mary's, pretty and fitting name
for even a Protestant Nunnery-yet the sisters and

As we cannot afford time to creep on at a snail's
pace, mile by mile, over the face of Scotland-
well-featured, though somewhat high in her cheek-
bones-fair, though ferny-tickled, suppose we
at once don our seven-league boots, and stride
from our old station, the ROMAN CAMP, command-novices of St. Mary's, however
ing the Lothians, with

"Fair Fife, and a' the land about it."

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even over moors and mosses many, O," the
vale of the Gala, and part of Tweeddale, and take
post at or about the next ROMAN STATION, that
on the shoulder of the eastern cone or peak of the
Trimontium of that splendid people; though, we
believe, tradition ascribes the cleaving of the
Eildon mountain into three conical summits, to
the poet and prophet, and Man of Power of this
region, Thomas the Rhymer, and thus makes the
date of disjunction some twelve hundred years
later than the invasion of the Romans. This is
an affair which properly belongs to antiquaries
we only aspire to be guides to the Schoolmaster's
pupils. Such of them as, during St. Martin's
summer, which extends from this season often on
till Christmas, choose to make the perambulation
we now trace, had best take the wings of the Chevy
Chace, any fine morning, and be set down at
Melrose Cross, in time to make the ascent with
us. If their object be Abbotsford, or a pilgri-
mage to Dryburgh, they will require more time,
and further counselling. The EILDON HILL, and
all that it commands, is our present object.
But
we are not in the least dictatorial: go to Abbots-
ford first, visit Dryburgh, return by St. Boswells,
we care not; provided you start with us from
Melrose Cross any mild clear day, and at your
own hour, (for the affair is not very prodigious,)
we promise to guide you well.

So up

"Devout and pure,

Sober, steadfast, and demure,"

are not, so far as ever we heard, "ladies vowed and dedicate" to celibacy. Au contraire-but let the gallant yeomen of Tweeddale and Tibbydale look to this: to them, then, we commit the gentle sisterhood of St. Mary's, and turn to yonder summit rising behind their nunnery, where it is proposed to rear the monument of Sir Walter Scott, intended for his own immediate neighbourhood. The good folks hereabouts feel a natural, and honest pride, even in their vicinity to Abbotsford, and to the immortal dust lately deposited in Dryburgh Abbey ; and they are, therefore, proceeding with great zeal in their plan of doing outward homage to their illustrious late neighbour. One of the summits of the mountain we are ascending has been spoken of as the site of this monument, and the idea is too magnificent to be easily abandoned. The majesty of the situation would amply recompense for the rudeness of the structure. A cairn on the top of the Eildon Hills, visible over so much of the ground he has rendered classic, would form, with the true pilgrims of his genius, a much nobler monument to Sir Walter Scott than any little fiddle-faddle nicky-nacky piece of Grecian architecture that could be raised. His genius was lofty, stupendous, massive, simple, and Gothic; and such should be his monument,—at least in the heart of his own land.-But let us on.-We have now passed the regions of the plough. The rest the of the Eildons are sheep pastures, and, we hope, may remain such till the end of the world. Yonder lies a sheep-fold, about midway up the hill, quiet, and pastoral, and suggestive of every sweet and pastoral image; the bughting hour," "Tween the gloamin and the mirk," the "Ca'ing the ewes to

lane to Dingleton, a cluster of snug feus-not quite so picturesque as a Swiss village, though mountainish ;—and now we cross the burn, and zig-zag up the foot-path till we reach the utmost limit of the arable land, and have our foot on the green springy sward which clothes the Eildon Hills. And here let us make pause the first, and |

* Teviotdale, so pronounced in local speech.

the knowes," and, finer still, before daybreak, on most splendid of his ballads, The Eve of St. John. the hill-side,

But of that we dare scarce tell you now. That highest eminence is, he says, still called the Watchfold, a frequent name in the olden time; and this height, during the interminable Border wars, was the "eerie beacon hill" of the district

A

"When from height to height, the beacons bright Of the English foeman told."

half-hour's gaze from the summit of Eildon, on nights like those, might have made a poet. With some reluctance we turn from this point, recommending the reading of Scott's ballads of Thomas the

"The lasses a-lilting at the ewes, milking." This primitive custom has nearly shared the fate of the quern, and of our beloved spinning-wheel. All those old habits have been swept away in the march of society, and will soon only live in their few scanty relics, embalmed in the songs, and preserved in the traditionary legends, of the southland dales. However, our legs and the world are moving in the midst of our lamentation and pensive regrets after what we could scarce wish to see restored; and now we have gained the flat, lying be-Rhymer, and The Eve of St. John, as by far the best tween the main ridges of the hill. Even here the course of preparation for ascending the Eildon view is fine and expansive; but this is not yet our hills. In the same line of view as Smailholm, station of survey. Following the soaring of the but lying nearer us, are the heights and crags of old Roman eagle, we shall have an imperial range. Bemer-side,* clothed with ancient woods and We have the choice of three summits. This on modern plantations, overhanging the Tweed.— the right, the highest; that on the left, next in There-mark that craggy bushy bank. At the altitude; the southern peak, the lowest. We base of it, the Tweed, making a beautiful sweep, at once choose the loftiest. "There are no gains nearly encircles the delicious little vale of Drywithout pains," as poor Richard says. So set a burgh, the loveliest spot in the whole course stout Scotch heart to a steep Scotch hill-and up of this march stream of kingdoms, Dryburgh, we go, and make our stand some 1330 feet above where " they keep his dust," must be the business where" The boat rocks at the pier of Leith," with of another pilgrimage; nor shall we detain you a sweep of horizon extending from his Majesty's long on yonder white speck, at this distance not town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, or the ocean, west-unlike a pipe-stopple, or peppermint lozenge, and ward to Ettrick Pen; from the Cheviots to the girdling Frith of Forth, and the dim hills beyond it; while at our feet- -But we shall quote the

recent words of a local bard:

"We've all, within our valley to cheer the heart and eye,

Yet when we want to see the world, we climb our mountain

high,

And there behold the grandeur of half a kingdom spread;
And its ground all around
And its ground all around,
In its summer beauty clad."

This, of course, refers to the Vale of Melrose, to
which one great name has of late years attracted
several inhabitants, eminent in literature and
science, whose biding-places we shall notice after
our grand survey.-Now look eastward, and tell
us what you see? Berwick on the verge of the
horizon-at a distance, as the crow flies, of 30
miles, but on a clear day distinctly visible. And
in the sunned glimpses of the opening skies of this
breezy day, one by one, how many storied heights,
and memorable and legendary spots are revealed to
sight, and revived to memory. Yon little cloud
is the smoke of Kelso, and, just nearer, these are
the noble woods of Fleurs overshadowing the
Tweed. Over from them, yet, from this, seeming
to approximate Fleurs, these are the romantic and
umbrageous crags and heights of Maxwellheuch,
and the champaign of opening Teviotdale. Revert-
ing from these, let us course the unseen Tweed
upwards, and to us homewards, dwelling in suc-
cession on the plantations of Mackerston, and "on
Mertoun's woods," as we glance on to the high,
square, desolate horder Tower of Smailholm, and
those eminences beside it, which give the descrip-
tive name of Sandy Knowes to the home of Sir
Walter Scott's childhood, and form the scene of the

yet a colossal statue of Wallace Wight in Roman costume! As we detest all colossal statues, and all masses of marble, metal, or stone, done into monstrosities, in mockery of the human form divine, we cannot except this frail memorial of the good taste of the late Earl of Buchan. The next

* We are tempted to repeat the prophecy of the Rhymer regarding this old family, for the sake of giving Sir Walter Scott's modern parody on it, as it is the only piece of mirthful innocent malice we ever heard attributed to his gallless muse :-the RHYMER's prophecy runs thus

"Betide, betide, whate'er betide,

Haig will be Haig of Bemer-side."
And for five hundred years, it has held, though sometimes
in great apparent danger of non-fulfilment, as some time
back, when about a dozen daughters were born, before the
heir made his appearance. Sir Walter's prophecy regards
the ancient house of a Scottish Tory baronet, and is equally
pithy and comprehensive—

"Befa' befa' whate'er befa',
The'll be a gowk in
ha"

Since we are dealing in notes, we must give another. The above noble Mecanas, in an evil hour, thought, after having raised Washington to a Pantheon of plaster of Paris, of taking the shade of Thomson under his protection. A large party of blues, and belles, and bardlings, were ac cordingly collected, year after year, far and wide, to assist his Lordship in the apotheosis of the Poet of the Seasons; who, being a man that detested fuss and fudge, had he been able to look up, would assuredly not have thanked them. This annual celebration was again to be held at Eduam, the birth-place of the poet, a sweet spot on the Tweed, and upon his birth-day; every thing worked well, if not easily. The company assembled the bust, crowned with bays, was already enshrined behind a curtain, which, at the proper time, was slowly to ascend, to slow music, and reveal the divine Thomson, and the classic labours of the Earl. And so it did; and discovered the placid good-humored bard with a black cuttie pipe stuck in his mouth literally a Scotch cuttie or Irish doodhen. The comic effect of this piece of

widening of the river banks encloses the beautiful Vale of Old Melrose, an ancient site of the first Schoolmasters that came abroad in Scotland, the Culdees. Around this point of the Tweed, mansions and villas, and cots and granges, orchardslopes, woods, and crags, and swells of arable land, are scattered and clustered, in that charming, picturesque, yet natural confusion, which gives so much gusto to landscape. There is Gleidswood; and here, exactly opposite Gleidswood is Ravenswood; and there, the Leader Water, the stream of True Thomas, having some time since left the Leader Haughs, steals through the woods of Drygrange, and falls chiming into the Tweed. But now that cone-like green hill, tapering regularly from its round base to its pyramidal top, seems to attract you. That is Colding Knowes-The Cowdenknowes of one of the sweetest of our Scottish pastoral songs. The mansion, at its western base, is one of those lovely places which the lavish charter of imagination instantly appropriates, and never again parts with. But we must, for another week, leave the "Bonny broom to wave around it uncelebrated. Then we shall return to True Thomas, his modern successors in the Vale of Melrose, and the romantic territory not yet surveyed.

CIVILIZATION OF AFRICA.

OLD SPEECHES IN PARLIAMENT.

NO. 1.-THE SLAVE-TRADE.

We intend to give a few of these old speeches on topics now of interest ;and shall set out with Mr. Pitt's speech on the Slave-trade; or, more properly, on the debt of justice Britain owes to Africa.

I rejoice that the debate has taken a turn which contracts the question into such narrow limits. The matter now in dispute is merely as to the time at which the abolition shall take place. I therefore congratulate the House, the country, and the world, that this great point has been gained; that we may now consider this trade as having received its condemnation; that this curse of mankind is seen in its true light; and that the greatest stigma on our national character, which ever yet existed, is about to be removed! Mankind, I trust, are now likely to be delivered from the greatest practical evil that ever afflicted the human race-from the most severe and extensive calamity recorded in the history of the world.

I will now proceed to the civilization of Africa, which, I confess, is very near my heart; and first I will say, that the present deplorable state of that country, especially when we reflect that her chief calamities are to be ascribed to us, calls for our generous aid, rather than justifies any despair, on our part, of her recovery, and still less a repetition of our injuries. On what ground of theory or history do we act, when we suppose that she is never to be reclaimed? There was a time, which it may be now fit to call to remembrance, when human sacrifices, and even this very practice of the Slave-trade, existed in our own island. Slaves, as we may read

burlesque was irresistible. It ought to be told, to scare impertinent people from such outrages in future, upon the sacred memory of genius, and from all absurd profanities "in manner of the ancients."

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in Henry's History of Great Britain, were formerly an established article of our exports. "Great numbers," he says, "were exported, like cattle, from the British coast, and were to be seen exposed for sale in the Roman market."-" Adultery, witchcraft, and debt," says the same historian, were probably market with British slaves-prisoners taken in war some of the chief sources of supplying the Roman were added to the number-there might be also among them some unfortunate gamesters, who, after having lost all their goods, at length staked themselves, their wives, and their children." Now every one of these sources of slavery has been stated to be at this hour a source of slavery in Africa. If these practices, therefore, are to be admitted as why might they not have been applied to ancient proofs of the natural incapacity of its inhabitants, Britain? Why might not, then, some Roman senator, pointing to the British barbarians, have predicted, with equal boldness, that these were a people, who were destined never to be free; who were without the understanding necessary for the attainment of useful arts; depressed by the hand of Nature below the level of the human species; and world? But happily, since that time, notwithstandcreated to form a supply of slaves for the rest of the ing what would then have been the justness of these predictions, we have emerged from barbarism. We are now raised to a situation which exhibits a striking contrast to every circumstance by which a Roman might have characterized us, and by which we now characterize Africa. There is, indeed, one thing wanting to complete the contrast, and to clear us altogether from the imputation of acting even to hour a barbarous traffic in slaves. We continue it this hour as barbarians; for we continue to this even yet, in spite of all our great pretensions. We were once as obscure among the nations of the morals, as degraded in our understandings, as these earth, as savage in our manners, as debased in our unhappy Africans. But in the lapse of a long series of years, by a progression slow, and for a time almost imperceptible, we have become rich in a variety of acquirements. We are favoured above measure in the gifts of providence, we are unrivalled in commerce, pre-eminent in arts, foremost in the pursuits of philosophy and science, and established in all the blessings of civil society: we are in the possession of peace, of liberty, and of happiness: cent religion; and we are protected by impartial we are under the guidance of a mild and a benefilaws, and the purest administration of justice: we are living under a system of government which our best and wisest, and which has become the admiraown happy experience leads us to pronounce the tion of the world. From all these blessings we must for ever have been excluded, had there been any truth in those principles, which some have not hesitated to lay down as applicable to the case of Africa; and we should have been at this moment little superior, either in morals, knowledge, or refinement, to the rude inhabitants of that continent.

in the fetters of brutal ignorance would have been If, then, we feel that this perpetual confinement the greatest calamity which could have befallen us; if we view, with gratitude, the contrast between our think of the misery which would still have overpresent and our former situation; if we shudder to whelmed us, had our country continued to the present times, through some cruel policy, to be the

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