derstand, and must highly respect, this conscientious feeling; and far should we be from wishing to see the Christian temple desecrated by unhallowed topics. But if our readers will take the trouble to consider the arguments in the first paper of our last Number, we think they will be of opinion that the abolition of slavery is not a theme abhorrent to the Christian pulpit; that, on the contrary, it is connected with subjects of exhortation and duty, which imperatively demand the serious consideration and sympathy of every humane and religious member of the community. To the arguments of that paper we refer our readers; and we shall not therefore feel it necessary on the present occasion to repeat them. We see not with what consistency any clergyman who discerns no impropriety in preaching for a school, a hospital, a benefit-club, or a humane society; or who scruples not to address his congregation on the usual topics of a national fast or thanksgiving; can evince any hesitation as to the propriety of touching upon a theme, to say the least, far less removed from the most appropriate subjects of pulpit instruction than the sounds of Trafalgar or Waterloo, or the death of warriors or statesmen. Indeed it is somewhat remarkable, that, while the national guilt of the slave-trade constituted, and justly, for many years a regular theme of pulpit lamentation, any doubt should be felt as to whether the extinction of slavery is a legitimate subject for similar addresses. If it be said, that the ministers of Christ ought to leave the question of ameliorating and ultimately abolishing slavery to the legislature, it may be fairly asked, And why not the slave-trade also? to which it may be added, that, in declaring the judgments of God for the national guilt of the traffic in slaves, the clergy were actually in opposition to the government and legislature of the country; while, in exhorting their flocks to seek for the amelioration and final abolition of slavery, they are co-operating with both, and assisting them to triumph in their humane intentions over the intrigues and opposition of interested dissentients to their measures. But we forbear to enter further into this question, trusting that it is not necessary, at least for those who are accustomed to honour our pages with their perusal. How keenly some of our most venerated divines felt on the subject of slavery, even before the abolition of the Negro slave-trade was proposed in Parliament, may be seen in many passages, incidental or direct, in their writings. Thus, Bishop Wilson, in his deeply devotional and affecting Sacra Privata, has a prayer for "the Lord's day," in which he supplicates Him who hath made all men of one blood, that he would "relieve and comfort all that are in prison, in slavery, or under persecution for a righteous cause." Bishop Andrews, in his Devotions, prays every day for these our desolate and oppressed fellow-creatures: thus, on Sunday, he has "an act of intercession for captives and slaves;" on Friday, for those who are in hard slavery;" and on Wednesday, for " all our poor brethren [and Africans, as well as others, we 'conclude are, in the language of Scripture and humanity, our brethren,] in captivity, in chains, in bitter and barbarous slavery." If it be not a mockery to offer such prayers to God, it surely is not unbecoming the Christian minister to exhort his hearers to use such lawful means as lie in their power towards effecting the object for which they pray. The friends of Bible and Missionary institutions justly remark upon the inconsistency of their forefathers in praying in the desk for the conversion of Jews, Turks, infidels, and heretics, while they did not follow up their prayers with suitable exhortations from the pulpit; and may not our children allege a simi lar inconsistency against the present generation of our clergy if they act in the same manner as respects the unhappy slaves in our colonies; pitying them indeed, and praying for them, but shrinking from stirring up their flocks to a zealous co-operation for their benefit? Mr. Townsend, at least, will not incur this censure. He has both preached on the subject, and published his discourse; and has thus enabled us to state, that it is not only a well-meant and zealous, but a well-argued and convincing address, and that it constitutes altogether such an appeal as could not be uttered in vain before a Christian auditory. We trust the writer may find his best reward in the success of his benevolent exertions. The object of this discourse is twofold; first, to shew that there exists, under the sufferance and direct encouragement of the people of this country, a case of most flagrant oppression; and, secondly, what line of conduct, under such circumstances, it is the duty of the British public to pursue. To prove the first of these points Mr. Townsend refers to a few of the more prominent features of oppression which characterise WestIndian slavery. These have been so often detailed in our pages, that we shall spare our readers the recital, extracting only one passage as a specimen. "From the concurrent testimony, then, of the friends and advocates of colonial slavery themselves, and from the daily practices which they undertake to defend and justify, we find that the slaves are held to be the absolute property of their owners; that they are considered in the light of mere instruments of profit, liable to be disposed of, and dealt by, in almost all respects, as the beasts of the field, for the benefit of their possessors. Like beasts they are, many of them, branded in different parts of their body with whatever marks the caprice or cruelty of their masters may direct. Like beasts they are 7 are exposed, either in lots or separately, to public sale, without regard to the rending asunder any ties of consanguinity; or to the anguish of soul which the unoffending victims may endure, in being torn away for ever from the objects of their dearest affections. Like beasts they are made to work under the lash without wages, by night and by day; and under the lash they may expire, with scarcely the remotest probability that the arm of justice will ever, in this world, overtake their murderers. The value set upon their lives, and the guilt incurred by the wilful destruction of them, are estimated, not on the principle which would recognize their participation in one common nature with the rest of mankind, viz. Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed,' (Gen. ix. 6,) but on a principle which regards them as an inferior order in the creation, raised but little, if at all, above the brutes, and but little more entitled than the brutes to the benefit of legal protection. In one of the islands, (Bermuda), if a master stand fully convicted of the crime of wilfully killing or destroying his own slave, his guilt is to be expiated by the payment of a small pecuniary fine. And, lest even this punishment should be too heavy for the venial offence he has committed, he is screened effectually against the infliction of it by the inadmissibility of slave-evidence against the privileged class he belongs to." pp. 5, 6. The author gives several notes and references illustrative of these statements, with more of detail and specification than could be admitted into the body of a sermon. Many of his notes are very valuable, as they throw much light upon the actual condition of colonial slavery. In reference, for example, to the atrocious law of Bermuda noticed in the last extract, he gives the fol lowing parallel from the slave code of Barbadoes. "Bishop Porteus, in a note to his xvii th sermon, page 399, speaks of a law then in existence in Barbadoes, punishing the wilful murder of a Negro from wantonness (as the law expresses it) and bloody mindedness, only by a small pecuniary fine.' This law has been repealed: but by the recently amended slave code of the colony, if any slave shall be killed while committing, or attempting to commit, any robbery, or theft, or in the attempt to injure any White person, the person killing any such slave shall not be punished for the same, either criminally or otherwise.'" p. 48. But rigorous as is the system of oppression under which the WestIndian Slave labours, in every aspect under which his condition can be contemplated, there is one which, to a Christian mind, is especially appalling, and on which, as might be anticipated, our author has felt it important to dwell with great emphasis in a discourse from the pulpit: we allude to the effects of the system upon its helpless victims considered as reasonable, accountable, and immortal beings. If slaves were destitute of souls, or Christianity were a fable, their condition would be a matter of less importance; though even then, on the mere footing of their being sensitive animals, the pulpit might well advocate their cause, and the legislature interfere in their behalf, as has been often done in behalf of the brute creation; but how much more important is this humane care, this truly Christian sympathy, when we reflect, that, like ourselves, they are heirs of an eternal world, like ourselves partakers of a fallen and corrupt nature, needing the same pardon, interested in the infinite atonement of the same common Saviour, and requiring to be prepared for an existence beyond the grave, by the same spiritual process of regeneration and newness of life. That our colonial slaves are, as a body, utterly destitute of those religious instructions which these considerations imperatively demand, is so notorious, that we need not at present wade through the melancholy items of proof. Indeed, to make the slaves a body of intelligent Christians would be, according to the statements of some of the colonists themselves, to sap the very foundations of slavery. It is true that a Christianised slave is found to be more diligent, docile, and trustworthy than before his conversion; for the missionary has inculcated these duties upon him; but at the best, it is but a mutilated Christianity that can safely be preached before slaves: nor can all the obligations of Christianity be urged with effect upon them. The following passage from Mr. Town send's discourse exhibits some of the difficulties under which a conscientious Christian teacher labours in addressing a slave population. "With what reasonable hope of sucis a Christian teacher to inculcate on the cess, under the present order of things, minds of the slaves the practice of the several religious and social duties enjoined in the holy Scriptures? If he begin by teaching them, that their first duty is to worship their Creator in public and in private, and to honour his word by yielding obedience to its commands, may not most of them reply,-But how is it possible for us to join in public worship, as long as the Sabbath, instead of being to us a day ceaseless toil and traffic; and as long as of religious rest from labour, is a day of the labour exacted from us by our taskmasters, by night as well as by day, during five or six months in the year, is such as fresh our wearied limbs with needful rest not to leave us time enough even to reand sleep? "If, next, it be attempted to teach them, that it is the duty of every Christian 'to keep his hands from picking and stealing, be true and just in all his dealings,-to and his tongue from lying,' &c. is it to be supposed they will easily be convinced, that it is a crime in them to commit petty depredations on those by whom they themrights and privileges ;-on those who purselves have been robbed of their dearest chased them of men-stealers, knowing them to be stolen; and who, when they far as was possible to do so, of every athad so purchased them, stripped them, as tribute of man which could distinguish them from the beasts of the stall? then, with respect to the sacred obligations of truth, can it be expected that a for them, at times when his only hope of slave should shew an inviolable respect escaping the dreaded tortures of the lash is, that he may be able to deceive his oppressor by a lie? And If again they are addressed on the subject of moral purity and virtue, and the sanctity of the marriage vow, how can it ever be imagined, that such admonitions as these would be listened to and obeyed, while the marriages of the slaves are protected by no legal sanction; while the wife daughter from her parents by a dissolute may be torn from her husband, and the and licentious overseer? Besides, to think of inspiring the mind of a female, doomed for every trifling fault, or without grading punishment in the open face of any fault at all, to receive the most deday, and in the sight of the other sex, with the sentiments and feelings which might be expected to inhabit her bosom, if prothe laws and usages of civilized society; tected from outrage, and from insult, by what were this, even supposing it a practicable achievement, but to add tenfold bitterness to the dregs of her cup of misery, which, without any stretch of imagination, we may conceive to be bitter enough already? "But if, in the last place, the Christian teacher or catechist should proceed, according to the excellent formulary of instruction provided by our church, to impress on the minds of his charge their incumbent obligation to learn, and labour, truly to get their own living, and to do their duty in that state of life unto which it has pleased God to call them,' in what a labyrinth of inextricable confusion would he immediately find himself involved! The duty of a subject to his sovereign, or of a hireling to his employer, is intelligible and definable. But, who shall undertake to define the duty of a Negro slave to his master? On what principles would you endeavour to convince him, that the man who bought him of the man who stole him has a good and valid title to his dutiful obedience? In what way it is to be shown, that such a right as this should bind the conscience to obedience, and make the performance of the exacted task a moral and religious duty, is a problem which I must leave to be solved by those who are able to persuade themselves that colonial slavery is not repugnant to the principles, and the precepts, of the religion of Jesus Christ. He is next to be told, that the services he is to perform for those who claim him as their property are to be performed without any feeling of dissatisfaction or reluctance, as necessarily appertaining to that state of life unto which it hath pleased God to call him;' and in which, therefore, he should be perfectly contented to remain! But can the Christian instructor of slaves conscientiously believe, and teach, that it is the duty of any man living to rest contented in a state which deprives him of his free agency; and in which, moreover, he is almost irresistibly impelled, in certain instances, to yield obedience to the commands of a fellow-creature in opposition to the commands of his Creator? Can any one passage of Scripture be produced, from Genesis to Revelation, which, without handling the word of God deceitfully,' can be construed into the inculcating, or the sanctioning, of such an opinion-I had almost said, such an impious opinion, as this? And then, as to its being the pleasure of the common Father of mankind, that hundreds of thousands of his creatures should be fixed in this dreadful state of moral and mental degrada dation, to say nothing at this time of the physical evils inseparably attending on it; this surely were an idea too monstrous to find admission for an instant into the mind of any one who knows how impossible it is for the God of righteousness and mercy to be pleased with injustice, inhumanity, and crime. While truth impels him one way, expediency drags him another. And if, at last, he can reconcile it to his conscience not to impart to his sable hearers the whole counsel of God, not to introduce them, on equal terms with the rest of mankind, to the knowledge of that Divine revelation which was designed by its blessed Author to be free as the light of heaven unto all who should be willing to possess it if he can do this, and can also bring himself to believe, that it is incumbent on him to satisfy the minds of the enslaved Negroes that they ought to rest contented in the wretched and abject condition they are held in, as being that which it is God's pleasure to allot to them; the arduous task to which he must address himself, in gaining their assent to this doctrine, will have this peculiarly adverse circumstance attending it, that the clearer the perception, the stronger the intellect, the more improved the faculties, of those whom he is labouring to convince of the justice of his position, the more difficult will he always find it to make them understand, or receive, his sayings." pp. 32-39. Such is the convincing manner in which our author proves the first position of his discourse. This grievous case of oppression being thus established, and the evils of slavery shewn to be most appalling, he proceeds to point out the duties which devolve upon the British public, in reference to this iniquitous system. These duties he comprises under four heads;-namely, to petition the legislature for its abolition; to diffuse information respecting it; to assist in the mean time in relieving the wants of discarded Negroes who are among its victims; and lastly, to refrain from the consumption of slave-grown produce. The first of these duties, namely, petitioning the legislature, is one which the public are at this mothy of the importance of the cause; ment performing in a manner worand we trust that their wishes so generally and warmly expressed will animate both the government and the legislature to proceed unshrinkingly in the good work which they have commenced, in spite of all the clamour or opposition that may attend their exertions. The second duty may be best performed by joining an Anti-slavery Society, or endeavouring to establish one where it is needed. The third respects a fund for the relief of slaves in Antigua, turned adrift by their masters to provide for themselves, claims its enormities, and enforces on the consciences of man the necessity of its abolition. The only argument in its favour, and even that a most false argument, is “filthy lucre ;" and well on this subject does our laureate bard exclaim, in his last and highly interesting and affecting poem; in alluding to the comparatively mild slavery to which the Indians in Paraguay were reduced by the Spaniards; when age or infirmity has rendered them burdensome to their owners, who have enjoyed the fruits of their former vigour; a measure, however, we must take leave to say, which is highly questionable, being in fact a premium on the violation of laws which expressly require, under heavy penalties, that slaves should not be abandoned*. The fourth relates to a question often referred to in our pages, and which we shall rejoice to see becoming more and more a question of conscience with individuals, who feel the moral turpitude of slavery. What we would now particularly urge upon the whole question of slavery is, that each of our readers should inquire, "Have we done what we could?" Grief and indignation, be it remembered, are not sufficient; we must exert a warning voice, and stretch out a helping hand: and when once this is done universally and zealously throughout the country, slavery will not exist one moment beyond the shortest period that may suffice for the protection both of the slave and his master from the evil effects of precipitancy. It is a state abhorrent to our natural feelings, to our laws, to our usages, to our religion. Our judges refuse to recognize it; our legislators denounce it; the public at large detest it; and the Christian pulpit solemnly pro The money would be better employed in prosecuting those masters who do abandon their slaves to starvation. LITERARY AND PHILOSOPHICAL INTELLIGENCE, GREAT BRITAIN. &c. &c. PREPARING for publication:-A Volume of Sermons; by the Hon. and Rev. Gerard Noel;-Historical Discourses, illustrating the Book of Genesis; by the Rev. F. Close; -Life and Reign of the Emperor Alexander; by Dr. Lyall ;-Critical Examina tion of the Seventeenth Article of the Church of England; by the Rev. J. Roquet. In the press: The Civil and Ecclesiastical History of Ireland;-The Book of Nature; by Dr. J. Mason Goode ;The Tourist's Grammar; by the Rev. T. D. Fosbroke. |