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VIEW OF PUBLIC AFFAIRS.

FOREIGN.

PORTUGAL. The new constitution, or royal charter, is stated to have been received with general satisfaction by the people. The priesthood also, as well as the public authorities profess their respect for it, and the cardinal patriarch of Lisbon has issued a long pastoral address in its vindication, which he enjoins his clergy to read publicly after mass, and to enforce upon their flocks. The tone of this metropolitan letter would seem to indicate that there is a powerful latent opposition to the new constitution on the part of the ultra royalist, and ultra Catholic portion of the community, lay and ecclesiastical, to whom his arguments in favour of a system of civil freedom, (we wish we could add, and religious freedom also,) are certainly very appropriate; for, far from descanting on the evils of despotism, and the blessings of liberty, the scope of the address is to recommend the new charter, on account of the reverential care which it evinces for the Catholic hierarchy; the alleged contrast which it forms with the discarded constitution, in its abhorrence of democracy, and its support of kingly authority; and above all from its being a free boon from the hand of royalty, whereas the former constitution was "the work of a rebellious faction,"—an usurpation of privileges which the people were not to claim, but which ought to be thankfully received by them when bestowed by the generosity of an absolute monarch. We notice this singular document chiefly because it has been adduced, on the one hand, by the friends of the Church of Rome, as an answer to the objection that the dominion of that church is incompatible with civil liberty; and, on the other, by some zealous Protestants as itself a proof of the validity of that objection. To our minds, the truth appears to be, that this, and most other of the political documents which have issued from Catholic authorities of late years, shew clearly that the established church in Catholic countries, as perhaps too often in Protestant ones also, is sufficiently ready to follow the path which self-interest and expediency seem to mark out for its steps. Where it can successfully maintain either civil or ecclesiastical despotism, to promote its own views,it will probably volunteer its services for that purpose; but where the public

mind is too decidedly fixed on opposite measures to be swayed by its influence, we doubt not that it can generallyconform to almost any existing mode of government. Our inference therefore is, that it is not the right plan for putting down the intolerance, the superstition, or the slavish principles of Rome, to oppose to them Protestant virulence or persecution in return, but to teach the public every where to outgrow them; to force RomanCatholic countries by the diffusion of general knowledge, and by the light of education and of Scripture to reform their own institutions instead of endeavouring to reform them by external force or hostility. We know that we are not inculcating a doctrine which will be universally acceptable: on the contrary, we lament to have witnessed, especially of late, and in some quarters where we might have hoped for a more Christian spirit, an intolerance towards Papists worthy only of Papists themselves; we mean not merely that deep abhorrence towards their corruptions of Christianity which should find a place in every Protestant bosom, but a virulence of language, almost an air of personal resentment, utterly inconsistent with the weapons of scriptural warfare;-as if to abuse Papists were the true method of converting them; as if it were a sin against Scripture and Protestantism, even to speak of a Roman Catholic under any other term than as a member of "the Beast;" using familiarly, even in current conversation, those denouncing epithets and parabolic reprobations, which inspired prophecy, in severe majesty, has most truly applied, as we at least believe, to the corrupt Church of Rome; but which, thus detached and wrested, answer no purpose but that of awakening hostile passions, at war with common charity, and which must seriously unfit the mind on either side for the investigation and cordial adoption of scriptural truth. It is not the most earnest disapprobation of popish error, or heresy, or evil practice, which we intend to denounce; far from it; but the intolerant spirit which we lament to find is in some quarters considered as necessary to accompany this disapprobation; and which is scarcely less warmly expressed towards those fellow Protestants who do not fall in with this dogmatical system, than against "the mother of abominations" herself. We dread and deprecate this rash and

unhallowed spirit, not only for its own unchristian complexion, but on account of the evils which it may and must produce, and the formidable obstacles which it interposes in the way of effecting any spiritual benefit in Catholic countries. For several years past, many pious and philanthropic individuals and societies have been exerting their zealous efforts in order to enlighten, and, by the blessing of God, truly convert from the error of their ways, those of the Roman-Catholic persuasion to whom they could obtain access. They have penetrated into various parts of Catholic Christendom, not as angry messengers of war; but as the heralds of "the Prince of peace;" they have conciliated hostile minds; they have widely promoted the circulation of the Scriptures, they have extended Christian education; and in many instances have been the means of great moral and spiritual benefit both to individuals, and through their instrumentability to others, by means of whom we might justly cherish a hope that the whole lump would be eventually leavened with sound doctrine and holiness of life. But all this, it seems, is wrong: we are to enter France and Italy, and Spain and Portugal, and every other popish land, only to decry and to denounce; all that is candid or conciliating is to be rejected we are to admit of no gradual or preparatory measures; our very first intercourse with Roman Catholics is to be to tell them, that they are utterly without the pale of salvation; and if, as may naturally be expected, they resent such a mode of address, we are to shake off the dust of our feet, and to repair to some other spot to deliver the same testimony with probably the same results. We are not to allow even an abstractedly good work to be performed, unless performed in our own way, or by persons of our own views. The Bible itself would almost seem to become contaminated by passing through the hands of persons whose sentiments respecting its contents may be exceptionable. We may not convey the sacred Scriptures to the perishing nations, unless we are first to choose the instruments for distribution; unless we may be allowed to dictate to the authorities and dignitaries, the clergy and laity, the subscribers to objects of charity, and the public at large in foreign countries, who shall be their domestic agents, and secretaries, and committee-men, in co-operating with us in this work of Christian mercy. But we shall not allude further, in this incidental connection, to a topic which may require from

us a distinct and more ample notice: all we mean at present is to protest against a spirit of intolerance, whether in Popish or in Protestant circles; that spirit which is ever too ready to call down fire from heaven on all who follow not us, even though they should be engaged in the same hallowed work, and be assisting towards expelling those demons of vice and irreligion, which unhappily it needs all the aid of all Christians effectually to oppose.

RUSSIA. The intelligence from Russia comprises the somewhat discrepant announcements, of the execution or banishment of the leading members of the late conspiracy; the splendours of the coronation of the new emperor, in which his elder brother who abdicated the throne in his behalf has taken a very prominent share; the appointment of a greatly enlarged board of censorship for the press; and the invasion of the south-eastern frontier of the empire by the Persians. The extent and objects of this invasion are not hitherto clearly known.

AUSTRIA. The emperor of Austria has issued an edict, enjoining on all his subjects their zealous co-operation for the suppression of the Slave Trade; and even commanding that every slave shall be set at liberty who but touches an Austrian ship. Austria has not indeed much to gain or to lose by such an edict, except in the article of humanity; but in that respect the edict is honourable to its government. Unhappily the great difficulty with the slave-trading nations of the continent, has not been so much to procure fair words and solemn stipulations, as a practical execution of their professed purposes of humanity.

DOMESTIC.

In consequence of the deficiency of the spring-sown crops of corn, Government have most judiciously, and on their own responsibility, opened the ports for the admission, till forty days after the meeting of Parliament, of several kinds of grain and pulse (not including wheat or barley), on the payment of a moderate duty. Parliament has been summoned for the 14th of November, to grant an indemnity for the issue of this Order in Council, and also, it is probable, to consider the whole question of the corn laws, with a view to abolish them under the safeguard of a reasonable duty. His Majesty's Ministers were unwilling to urge this vital question on the eve of a general election; but they seem anxious to redeem their pledge respecting it, even at the risk of the warm opposition

which it is likely to encounter from the landed interest. The present circumstances and feelings of the country will materially strengthen the hands of Government in their wish to act rightly on this important subject.

But while we are disposed to maintain that the removal of the present restrictions on the importation of corn is the clear duty of Parliament, we would also remind the agriculturalists, as well as the public at large, that they ought to require to be relieved from various other restrictions, which tend no less than those on corn to aggravate the prevailing distress, by adding to the expense of the necessaries of life, and by cramping the efforts of our commercial and manufacturing industry. We allude to the monopoly of the tea-trade enjoyed by the East-India Company, and which at least doubles the cost of that universal beverage to the public. This monopoly it may, indeed, be impossible to remove until the Company's charter shall expire; but we trust it will not outlive that period. But coffee, and especially sugar, are no less essential to the general comfort than tea and corn; and yet, in the supply of these articles of almost universal consumption, we are so blind to the plainest principles of policy, as to favour the slave-holders of the West Indies and the Mauritius with a protecting duty equal to 50 per cent. on their original cost; thus enhancing their price to the consumer, and actually preventing the extension of our trade among the hundred millions of our Asiatic subjects, by whom we might be supplied with them at a cheaper rate; and in both ways adding to the general pressure, and directly obstructing the expansion of our manufacturing industry. And let it be remembered (and surely Christians are bound to remember it), that the very measures by which every man in this country is thus more or less burdened, and by which our manufacturers especially are more or less deprived of bread, and thrown on the wretched sustentation of the poor rate, are those by which slavery is upheld, and even aggravated, in our colonial possessions; and by which the slave-holders are enabled to vie with the nobles of the land in the splendour of their establishments; while 820,000 human beings, the subjects of his Majesty in common with themselves, are doomed to hopeless and interminable bondage, and to all the horrors of the cart-whip and its accompaniments, for their sole benefit.

We rejoice to announce a second time

the close of the war in the East, after its renewal in consequence of the bad faith of the Burmese. Some additional advantages have been gained by the new treaty; but before either the splendour of conquest, or the addition of territory, can reconcile the mind of the Christian to this most destructive war, it would be necessary that he should know more of the springs and objects of it, which have never been satisfactorily laid open to the public.

With extreme grief we record the intelligence of the departure to his early but bright reward, of that eminent and justly revered prelate, Bishop Heber. All that is known on the subject is contained in the following passage from the Bombay Courier of the 22d of April, 1826:

"Our readers throughout India will receive with a universal sentiment of grief, the intelligence that the earthly career of our beloved and revered Bishop terminated at Trichinopoly, on the morning of Monday, the 3d inst. (April). His Lordship had reached that place on Saturday morning, and on the following day had preached, and held a confirmation in the evening; after which, he delivered another discourse, concluding with a solemn and affecting farewell to the congregation.

"On Monday, at an early hour, his lordship visited a congregation of native Christians, and, on his return, went into a bath, as he had done on the two preceding days. He was there seized with an apoplectic fit; and when his servant, alarmed at the length of his stay, entered the bathing-room, he found that life was extinct. Medical aid was immediately procured, but wholly unavailing."

His early departure to a better world, in the zenith of his life and usefulness, has called forth the deepest sympathy and regret, from all who knew the piety, and learning, and talents, and amiable virtues of the man, or who wished well to that best of causes with which he has identified his name in India. We doubt not that some interesting particulars of his life and character will be laid before the public; which we shall not anticipate by any few cursory notices which otherwise we should be ready to give respecting this revered individual. Of his chief writings, and the principal events of his public life, our readers will find many interesting records already inserted in our pages, by turning to his name in the indexes to our several volumes.

Our readers, without doubt, retain a

lively recollection of the atrocities which the report of the Fiscal of Berbice, printed last year by order of the House of Commons, and some extracts from which appeared in our last volume (p. 657), shewed to have been perpetrated in that colony. The exposure of these atrocities has powerfully excited the indignation of the colonists, not against the perpetrators of them, but against those who called to them the attention of the public. Since that time, a more formidable adversary has appeared in the person of the Fiscal of Berbice himself, the very officer on whose authority the whole statement rested. The Council of that colony, at a meeting held on the 11th of January 1826, resolved, "That, in consequence of the very injurious observations reflecting on the character and conduct of the inhabitants of this colony, arising from certain reports of his honour the Fiscal, relative to complaints made to him by the Negroes, transmitted to his Majesty's Government in a most imperfect state, they thought it but just, that the colonists, who were not only disposed to court inquiry, but anxious for the strictest scrutiny, should have every opportunity afforded them, to rebut the charges of their calumniators; and that, therefore, the Governor should be requested to call upon the Fiscal for a detailed report of the nature of the inquiry, instituted either by him or the Court of Criminal Justice, into the complaints alluded to, as also of the final judgments in each case, in order to meet, fairly, the unqualified attacks which, there is too much reason to believe, will be levelled against the West-India character, founded on garbled and imperfect documents." In obedience to this resolution of Council, the Fiscal drew up a second report, which, having been transmitted to Lord Bathurst, has been subsequently printed by order of the House of Commons. The substance of it, with a running comment, will be found in Number XVI. of the Anti-Slavery Reporter; to which we refer our readers. We copy the concluding paragraphs,only premising that the averments in them are amply sustained by the previous details.

"Having now gone through the various particulars of the Fiscal's attempted vindication, we would take a general view of the facts attending it.

"A motion was made in the House of Commons for a return of the proceedings of the Fiscal of Berbice, in regard to the complaints of masters and slaves respectively, during the preceding ten years. The return embraced only

four of those years; namely, from 1819 to 1823. In by far the majority of the cases specified in this return, (in at least we may say three-fourths of them,) the Fiscal gave the facts as they stood in his minutes of evidence, without stating the decision to which he had come on a full consideration of those facts. Of about fifty cases to which his decision was annexed, it appears, that only nine were so far decided in favour of the complainants, as that they escaped punishment for having failed to prove their allegations; and, in forty-one cases, the complainants underwent severe punishment by the sentence of the Fiscal, on the ground that their complaints were either unfounded or exaggerated; in short, that they had not been fully proved. Out of this immense number of cases, therefore, even with the aid of the Fiscal's second report, we, as yet, know certainly only of nine in which the complainants were not sentenced to punishment; and in which, therefore, the judgment of the Fiscal must, on the whole, be considered as favourable to them. But of these nine, we, as yet, know certainly of only THREE where any punishment has been inflicted on the persons proved to have been guilty.

"But this was not all. The Report contained a vast variety of details, stated in evidence before the Fiscal, and minuted by him, to which no contradiction was given, or even doubt appended, but which it was utterly impossible to peruse without feeling the most unmingled horror and disgust. It was to be presumed, and we conceive is still to be presumed, that these uncontradicted statements are substantially true; especially as by far the most atrocious and horrific of them are incontestibly proved, and also admitted to have been true. Taking, however, such only into account as have been thus established, they have not only confirmed all that the abolitionists had asserted of the nature and effects of West-India Slavery, but they have actually surpassed every thing which their fear of being charged with exaggeration had permitted them to attribute to that system. Those who doubt this have only to point out the single work of the Anti-Slavery Society, which can bear a moment's comparison with the Berbice Fiscal's official report, in exciting the abhorrence and indignation of the reader, as he peruses its unvarnished details. To the sickening influence of those details on the mind, no declamation can add force. They beggar the most intense epithets; and produce an im

pression which no description, however eloquent, could hope to rival in poignancy and effect. And it is the climax of these horrors that most of them are not only not judicially punished, but are not legally punishable.

"Then these transactions are recent. We had been accused of referring for our facts only to obsolete times. And when, quitting details, we took our stand on those impregnable general principles, which are of all times and countries, we were met with hardy affirmations of such improvements in the treatment of the slave, as placed him in point of comfort above the British peasant. In our misplaced philanthrophy, we were told, that we were actually wresting from the happy Negro the enviable state of repose and prosperity which his benevolent owner had been employing the plenitude of his power to secure to him. Look at the facts of the case,' said they, tauntingly: listen to the Governors, the Judges, the Magistrates. Hear their unqualified eulogies, in one accord, proclaiming the tender and sympathizing and sleepless humanity of the master; and the lively gratitude and confiding joyousness of the slave, who would not exchange his chains for freedom if he could.' Alas! alas! that such an illusion could possibly, even for one moment, have influenced a single mind that is considerate enough to appreciate the necessary effects of despotic power both on master and slave! In whatever degree the illusion prevailed, it must have vanished before the Berbice Fiscal's report. We feared, however, that when the sudden and palpable effect on the public mind, produced by that report became known, we should look in vain for further reports of the same kind. But we did not sufficiently comprehend the obtuseness of feeling which a familiarity with such scenes is calculated to generate for we have here a second report from the same source, not drawn forth reluctantly like the first, by a mandate of the House of Commons, but spontaneously proposed by the Council of Berbice, and, in compliance with their requisition, furnished by the Fiscal,

:

for the declared purpose of repelling the calumnies which some wicked persons in England had been so malignant as to vent against that pure, lovely, and beneficent system, denominated Negro Slavery!

Of the success of the second report of the Fiscal in accomplishing its declared object, those who have accompanied us thus far are in a capacity to judge for themselves. But we do not anticipate one note of dissent, when we state, that, for our own parts, we have risen from its perusal with every previous conviction of the enormity of the colonial system deepened, and with every resolution to promote its early and final extinction strengthened. That vile system cannot last. The press may pour forth in the next year, as in the past, pamphlets rich in practical considerations. Voluminous reports, which no one reads, may again load the table of Parliament, and may again bring forward the very strongest physical reasons for coercing the labour of Africans in tropical lowlands. The changes may continue to be rung on the increase of national wealth, to be derived from this coerced labour, which it nevertheless requires the sacrifice of an immense sum annually on the part of the public to maintain. In this course we may possibly persist for some time longer, notwithstanding the misery and waste of our slave population, and the deep injury to our own manufacturers, which are its direct and inseparable consequences;—but the day must arrive. and it cannot be far distant, when these refuges of lies will be swept away, and, in despite of all opposition, the oppressed slave, in every corner of the British dominions, will, at the persevering call of religion, humanity, and justice, be rescued from the yoke of his cruel bondage. May the Almighty hasten that happy period!"

Heartily do we add our Amen to this devout wish. Happily its approach cannot be very far distant; but it is assuredly the duty of every Christian and Briton to exert every nerve for its consummation.

ECCLESIASTICAL PREFERMENTS.

Rev. T. Carew, Bickleigh R. Devon. Rev. J. Beesly, Feckenham V co. Worcester.

Rev. Edmond Cartwright, Ferring Prebendary in Chichester Cathedral.

Rev. B. Howell, Haghley R. Salop. Rev. T. Mounsey, Owthorne V. Yorkshire.

Rev. J. Pratt, St. Stephen's V. Coleman-street, Worcester.

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