ture practised by a Catholic farmer on a beneficed clergyman, by regular attendance at a church, where, but for the presence of this unwelcome visitor, there would seldom have been a congregation. The neophyte soon brought the pastor to terms, and obtained a reduction of his tithes as the price of his relapse to the errors of the Church of Rome. It is evident, that the larger the incomes of the parochial clergy are, the less important the voluntary contributions of their parishioners, the more unmixed will their motive be to keep the Protestant religion out of their parishes.

When we see the quantity of evil inflicted on Ireland by the levying of tithe,-when we see the good prevented, in a hundred ways, for the want of that wealth which is mischievously lavished on the clergy, we can hardly believe that a reform of the Church of Ireland will not take place. A reform of that Church is, from the large proportion of its patronage in the hands of the Crown, or the nominees of the Crown, as easy as it is desirable. We Presbyterians can hardly conceive that there will be any one found bold enough to affirm, that a bench of twentytwo bishops, to superintend 860 resident incumbents, and to watch over 4 or 500,000 Protestants of the Establishment, is either useful or ornamental. According to the estimates of Mr Wakefield, the property of six of these bishops, when out of lease, would produce 580,000l. a year,-a sum which would give an income of 650l. a year for each of the resident incumbents of Ireland; or, which would be quite as well, an income of 500l. for each of the clergy, and a fund for the establishment of a school in every parish in Ireland. All this could be done, and the tithes, as far as they are paid to the clergy, could be rapidly abolished by the mere sequestration of six bishopricks as they became vacant, without injury to the feelings, or violation of the rights of any man. The details by which it would be necessary that such a plan should be filled up, are very simple and obvious. When this reform should be accomplished there might still remain sixteen bishops to superintend a smaller number of Protestant clergy, and a smaller number of Protestant laity, than one bishop is very easily able to superintend in England. We do not mean to insinuate that they should be allowed to remain; but as our purpose is to do good, we would show, in passing, that even after an incalculable benefit had been conferred on Ireland, the Episcopal establishment might still remain extravagantly large, and form a very pretty fund for the purposes of Parliamentary influence, the real purposes for which it is suffered to exist.

Armagh, Derry, Kilmore, Clogher, Waterford, Cloyne,

As to the Church of England, an inquiry into its actual condition must appear equally desirable to those who do, and to those who do not think highly of its efficiency and utility. The smallness of the incomes of many of its livings is not complained of so loudly by any persons as by its most zealous friends. Now, if this clamour be meant as any thing more than a pretext for the maintenance of the extravagant parts of the Establishment, by making the members of it who are made inefficient through poverty, a set-off against those who are made inefficient through opulence, the general means of remedying the evil are obvious, and nothing but an inquiry is required to develop the details. The Table which we referred to above as the cause of the mistake of the author of the Remarks,' as to the numbers of places of worship in England, shows that, in 1812, the 1881 parishes, to which it referred, contained 4,937,782 people, so that each of those parishes had 2650 inhabitants on the average. The 8812 remaining parishes contained 5,564,718 inhabitants, or about 630 people, each as the average. In 1809 there were 3998 livings under 150l. a year; and there were also in the same year, out of 11,194 livings from which returns were made, 7358 cases of non-residence. Though we have shown, by the comparison of the state of different dioceses, that the smallness of the livings is not the real cause of the prevalence of non-residence, it is at least one of the pretexts for it. The consolidation of small parishes, where circumstances admit of it, would at once remove this pretext, and the poverty of the greater part of the small livings; and the sequestration of some of the superfluous dignities of the Church, or the levying of first fruits and tenths, according to their real value, upon the overpaid preferments which might hereafter become vacant, would speedily raise the incomes of the remainder. The different distribution of the Church patronage, the property of advowsons, to which we always suppose attention to be paid, renders a general reform in England a less easy and straightforward work than in Ireland. According to Bishop Watson's computation, in his Charge, 1809, seven-tenths of the patronage of parochial livings were in the hands of lay individuals or lay corporations; three-tenths being in the hands of the Crown, of ecclesiastical corporations (chiefly composed of nominees of the Crown), and of the Universities; and the greater part of the poor livings are the property of individuals. These circumstances, however, though somewhat untoward, oppose no insurmountable obstacles to reform. It is the interest of the patrons to submit to a consolidation of poor livings, making arrangements for alternate presentations; because, as a mere matter of merchandise, two livings of this de

scription would be worth considerably more in their united, than in their divided state.

Whatever other steps may be taken with respect to the Church of England, a Parliamentary inquiry into its condition is imperatively called for. It is called for, if it needs reform, to show the degree in which reformation is needed, and the way in which it may be effected. It is called for, if it needs no reform, to show that the imputations on it are unfounded. It is needed to prevent the repetition of the waste of the public money, of which we had such gross instances, when, in the time of the greatest drain on our resources, 100,000l. was granted yearly for the augmentation of poor livings, in utter ignorance of the manner in which the fund already available for that purpose had been mismanaged. It can only be resisted. by those who, conscious of the grossness of the abuses by which they profit, think the Church alone cannot bear that exposure to the light, to which every other institution in the country is happily subjected.

ART. VIII. Negro Slavery; or a Creed of some of the more Prominent Features of that State of Society, as it exists in the United States of America and in the Colonies of the West Indies, especially in Jamaica. 8vo. pp. 117. London, Hatchard. 1823.

THE publication of this most interesting and important tract, gives us the opportunity of at once expressing our regret, we might almost say remorse, at having so long delayed to follow up the statements and warnings repeatedly given in former pages of our Journal, upon the crying sin of this country, the Slavery of our Colonial Population, and lamenting that we have so little space left for any thing like an attempt to handle the subject as it deserves.

During the whole course of the controversy upon the Aboli. tion, protracted as it was for so many dreadful years of suffering to a whole quarter of the world, by the interested hostilities of some, the luke-warm, faint-hearted, alas! we fear we may add the interested, support of others, nothing was more remarkable than the attempts of one party to involve their adversaries in the consequences of mixing Abolition with Emancipation, and the careful disavowal, by these adversaries, of any such doctrine. In truth, the best friends of the stability of the colonial system, were those who desired to prevent any new slaves from being added to the mass of servitude, wretchedness and discontent, already existing in those ill-fated set

tlements; and no man who really understood the merits of the question, ever dreamt of promoting an immediate emancipation of the slaves already imported into, or born in, the Colonies. But here it is fit to observe what were the grounds of this opinion. We hold it to be altogether impossible for any rational. being to maintain the abstract right of one class of men to keep another in the state of slavery. Upon this point, it is most material to state, that no doubt whatever can exist. If one man, or a class of men, pretend to absolute dominion over the mass of their fellow-creatures, although what is called political power alone may be in question, and no attempt made to exercise a mastery over the persons of individuals, it is quite manifest that the people are fully justified in rising up and overthrowing their oppressors, and, if it be needful, in utterly destroying them. But far more unrighteous is the horrible attempt at making a property of men, holding them in the state of personal slavery, and treating them as cattle or as inanimate objects, the absolute property of the owners. To terminate a state so repugnant to every principle, so abhorrent to all the feelings of our nature, is clearly and undeniably not merely a right, but an imperative duty. Why, then, it may be asked, did the Abolitionists uniformly disavow all views of emancipation?-Because, we would answer, the interest of the slaves, as well as of the masters, required this consummation to be postponed. If the interests of the masters only had been in question, no man capable of reasoning could for a moment pretend that the benefit-the pecuniary profit of one man in a hundred, or say only in ninety, ought to be thought of, when put in competition with the property, limbs, liberty, ease, and life of all the rest of the community. But it was unhappily too true, that the accursed system had given birth to a state of things in which a sudden retracing of our steps must have brought evils still more horrible than could flow from persisting for a while in our path; it was plain that the attempt suddenly to free our enslaved negroes must produce to themselves greater misery than could arise from continuing them in their present state, miserable though it be; it was admitted on all hands, that slavery (nor could a worse stain be stamped upon it) unmanned its victim, and, by incapacitating him from enjoying freedom, made an endurance of thraldom in some sort indispensable to his existence. This reason alone, let it never be forgotten, reconciled the abolitionists, some of them most reluctantly, a few scarcely at all, to continuing, for however short a time, the present iniquitous and cruel system. The interests of the negroes alone was given as the reason for it; the maintenance of slavery being uniformly considered as an evil of the greatest mag

nitude; and only to be endured because of its necessity, and because of the greater evils which a sudden change must entail upon its victims.

But he would commit a most grievous mistake indeed, who should imagine that the abolitionists, even for a moment, lost sight of the condition and the fair claims of the negro population, the bulk of our fellow-subjects in the colonies. Their whole reasonings were at all times directed towards their comforts and happiness. Of their main arguments, that which regarded the improvement in the lot of those hapless creatures, ranked next after that which denounced the crying and unbearable enormity of tearing men and infants by violence from their homes, and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, As long as you permit the planter to have an unstinted supply of new slaves (it was argued), so long will he neglect his native bands, and so long will every kind of ill treatment accumulate upon their heads. Cut off the supply, and the treatment will naturally be amended, the condition of the negro be improved; and his improvement will fit him for acquiring those rights of a free man which it is the worst effect of slavery to have hitherto rendered him unfit for being intrusted with.

The ultimate Emancipation of the negroes, therefore, never was for one moment absent from the contemplation of the friends to the abolition of the Slave Trade. All their arguments distinctly led to this point; they never at any time concealed their looking towards this object; they constantly, and in great detail, traced the steps by which they expected that it would, in the process of time, and through the gradual improvement of the negro race, be safely and easily attained. Men of all descriptions joined in taking this view of the question; and we doubt if one single instance can be produced of a speaker or writer, on the side of the abolitionists, who has not plainly avowed the freedom of the negroes as the ultimate point towards which all his efforts were directed. No rational person ever thought of at once conferring upon that ill-fated race that freedom which would (through our own detestable enormities) have been converted into a curse, rather than a boon; but no one once doubted that the principal good of the abolition was to be its improving the negro's condition, and gradually raising his character to the level at which he might become fit to enjoy personal freedom.

After a delay which is sufficient to stamp the character of our Legislature with indelible disgrace; a delay altogether its own, seeing that the voice of the Community was, from the beginning, unanimous and loud for the abolition; but after above twenty years deliberation, checkered with every disgusting va