DIED, On 2d day the 16th inst., at her residence in SUFFERINGS OF FRIENDS UNDER THE CONVENTISolebury Township, Bucks County, Pa., Ruth Betts, aged nearly 62 years. She was the wife of William Betts, and the daughter of David Simpson, who was the eldest son of John Simpson, a faithful minister well known in this country in the latter part of the past, and beginning of the present century.

as were twelve more on the 17th, and about sixty others on the 19th, some for fourteen, and others for nine days. On the 21st the Mayor with the Sheriffs and Alderman Brown, came again to the Meeting at Bull and Mouth. Brown, with his usual rudeness, kicked some, pulled others by the hair, and pinched the women's arms until they were black; by this rude behavior, and shameful abuse, degrading the dignity of his office, and proving himself too vulgar for, and absolutely unworthy of, the magistracy he bore, in any well regulated government. The Mayor causing the doors to be shut, sent about one hundred and fifty nine of them to Newgate for four days, where they had not room to sit down, nor scarce to stand, being close shut up among the felons without respect to age or sex.

On the 28th one hundred and seventy-five were also sent to Newgate as privately as possibly; the magistrates, it is probable, being ashamed to expose their unrelenting severity to the public eye. On the 4th of Ninth month, two hundred and thirty-two more were committed.

the volume, this Judge undertook to show that their not swearing tended to subvert the Government, that no government can stand without swearing, and that though the Quakers did not indeed conspire, (in which case he should proceed another way, and try them for treason,) yet if suffered to meet, they would do it, and in a short time be up in arms. He intended immediately to have proceeded to the trial of some of them, for which purpose a young lad was brought from Newgate, who being asked if he were not at the Bull and Mouth Meeting such a day, he replied, I was not; whence the judge took occasion to reproach the Quakers with common-place reflections, saying, that for all their pretensions to truth, they could lie for their interest, and to evade suffering.

But this youth persisting in his denial, witnesses were called to prove he was there, but none could be found, which the Judge observing, said some should suffer for it. He then issued an order, that the jailor of Newgate and his men should attend the meeting, and be prepared to give evidence at the next sessions. At the next sessions, a bill of indictment was preferred against sixteen Quakers for the third offence. They were tried and convicted, and twelve of them sentenced to transportation, amongst whom was a young woman named Hannah Trigg, a person hardly sixteen years of age. after she was sentenced to banishment, she sickened in Newgate, and dying there, the same unfeeling inhumanity, insatiate with her life, was extended to her lifeless corpse. Her relations were deprived even of the consolation of paying the last office of natural affection by interring her as they desired, but she was carried to the burying place where they inter felons and others who die in the jail.

Soon

On the 15th of 10th month, about forty more were brought to the sessions of the Old Bailey, and called to the bar. They pleaded not guilty, and the court proceeded to try them.

The state of Newgate is thus described by a writer who visited it some years afterwards. "The prisoners are pushed so close together and the air so corrupted by their stench, that it occasions a disease called the jail distemper, of which they die by dozens; and cart loads of them are carried out, and thrown into a pit in the church yard without ceremony. And to this wretched place many innocent people are sometimes sent, and loaded with irons before their trial, not to secure them, but to extort money from them by | a merciless jailor; for if they have money to bribe him, they may have their irons as light as they please." By these commitments, the prisons being overfilled, it was intended to proceed to the trial of such as were in for the third offence; preparatory whereto, Judge Keeling, at the sessions of the Old Bailey, made a speech to the Grand Jury against the prisoners, that, as he observed, they might not be thought worthy of The witnesses against them were the under pity. He accused them of teaching dangerous keepers of Newgate and the marshal-men. The principles-this for one, that it is not lawful to first was one Dawson, a turnkey, who was greatly take an oath. The Quakers had affirmed only confounded in his testimony for having sworn that it was forbidden by Christ, and therefore that he took John Hope, who had been in prison unlawful to them who were disposed to obey this week, at the Bull and Mouth last Sunday, their Saviour's commands. You must not think, but the court endeavoring to set him right, he the Judge said, that their leaders believe this corrected himself, and said the Sunday before, doctrine, only they persuade these poor ignorant which was equally false. Afterwards, he said souls 80. But they have an interest to carry on the prisoner was brought out to him, and that against the Government, and therefore they will he did not see him in the meeting. Upon which not swear subjection to it, and their end is re- one of the jury, addressing the Judge, said, bellion and blood. He proceeded next to quote" My lord, I beseech you, let us be troubled the New Testament against them; and not finding it quite to his purpose, concluded that the Old is positive for swearing, and they that deny swearing, deny God a special part of his worship. By arguments equally sound and cogent, into which the reader may look for himself in

with no more such evidence, for we shall not cast man upon such evidence as this;" but the judge endeavored to palliate it, and reproved the juryman for being too scrupulous. Another turnkey testified that he saw one of the prisoners at the Bull and Mouth Meeting, but it was in evidence

This view of the case is remarkably confirmed by some very interesting statements made by Mr. Bushnell, who has spent the last eleven years as a missionary on the West Coast of Africa. A MISSIONARY'S OPINION OF THE AFRICAN SLAVE-TRADE.

From the N. Y. Evangelist.

that he did not see him till he came to Newgate. | chiefs over their subjects is, according to his repOne of the jury objecting to such testimony, the resentations, exceedingly limited, and the numJudge grew angry, and told him the court would ber of persons held in slavery, for any domestic punish him for undervaluing the king's witnesses. purposes, comparatively small. After a time the jury went out, and brought in their verdict that four of the prisoners were not guilty, and the rest they could not agree on. The Judge being displeased, sent them out again with fresh instructions; they returned with this verdict, guilty of meeting, but not of fact. The Judge inquiring what they meant by not guilty of fact, the jury applied, "There is evidence that they met at the Bull and Mouth, therefore we say, guilty of meeting, but no evidence of what they did there; therefore we say, not guilty of meeting contrary to the liturgy of the church of England." The Judge asked the jury whether they did not believe in their consciences, that they were there under the color and pretence of worship to which one of them replied, "I do believe in my conscience that they were met in deed and in truth." Another said, " My lord, I have that venerable respect for the Church of England, as to believe it is according to the Scriptures, which allow of the worship of God in spirit, and therefore, I conclude, that to worship God in spirit, is not contrary to the liturgy; if it be I shall abate of my respect to it." In short, neither persuasions nor menaces could induce the jury to alter the verdict; whereupon six of them were bound in £100 each to appear at the king's bench bar, the first day of the next

term.

The Rev. Mr. Bushnell, now in this city, has been a missionary on the Western Coast for thirteen years. He is stationed on the Gaboon River, right on the line of the equator and in the heart Their first mission-house was of the slave region. on the site of an old Portuguese slave-factory, where the trade had been carried on for more than two centuries. On an island at the mouth of the river are heavy guns, brought there by the Portuguese two hundred and fifty years ago.

Thus ample time has been given for the great experiment of civilization. By this time the Slave Coast ought to be the seat of a high state of civilization. But the missionaries seem to think that this intercourse with other nations has only caused a deeper night to descend on that dark continent. Mr. Bushnell even goes so far of Africa; that it renders the wildest savages as to say that the slave trade is the great curse still more fierce and cruel, and that it baffles all attempts at civilization.

as a

Of course all other commerce is killed by this traffic. The country is rich in natural products, and might furnish a large export. But all is kept down by this one trade. So soon British squadron, hovering on the coast, puts the slavers in fear, and causes their trade to languish, other branches of industry revive. The chiefs, finding less demand for human flesh, bring down other commodities-ivory, palm oil, gold dust, dye woods and ebony. Thus the instant the slave-trade is checked, there springs up a legitimate commerce. But while that is in full blast, it kills everything else, for it is more exciting and more lucrative. The trade in slaves is more profitable than trade in ivory, for it is easier to steal a child than kill an elephant.

But the commercial loss is nothing to the moral desolation which it leaves behind it. The slave trade is the cause of almost all the wars between different tribes. It keeps them constantly fighting to procure fresh victims. It excites them to attack defenseless villages, and to seize men, women and children. Thus it stimulates to burnings, to murder and to mas

It has been a favorite idea with the partisans of the slave trade, that the Africans are nearly all slaves at home, so that the transporting them across the Atlantic and setting them at work on American sugar, coffee and cotton plantations is, after all, only a change of masters; and most likely a highly beneficial change, since it is not to be presumed that a civilized and Christian planter can be a harsher master than a savage African chief. The observations, however, of sacre. Dr. Livingstone, in his recent African travels, Mr. Bushnell has taken away our chief consoof which we gave a statement in a recent article, go entirely to contradict this representation of African society. The power of the African

lation in this trade, which was that these poor wretches were only taken from being slaves in their own country to be slaves in ours-which

And do these simple children of nature feel nothing when torn from their homes and country? "When I first landed on the coast," says Mr. Bushnell," the slave-trade was flourishing, and there were many factories near us. I often visited the barracoons, and such utter woe and despair I never saw on any human faces." Their lightness and gayety was all gone. Their songs were hushed, and they sat silent and gloomy. It was not a grief which burst forth in wild lament, nor a despair which nerved them to fierce resistance, but a wan and weary look, a despair which was speechless and hopeless, as of those doomed to die. There they sat upon the shore chained together, now turning a last fond look to the hills and palm groves in the distance, and now looking to the slave-ship which began to show its dark hull on the horizon. Thus they watched and wept, their stifled sobs answering to the desolate moanings of the sea.

seemed a great improvement. But he informs | grief, at the wedding or the funeral-their hearts us that but for this foreign trade they might not find vent in song. be slaves at all! In fact, he doubted whether Slavery existed on this Western Coast until two or three centuries ago, when the Portuguese tempted the chiefs to sell the bodies of men. It was Christian traders who first taught the poor natives these arts of cruelty. At any rate, if slavery existed at all before, the whole system has been extended and fortified, and increased in horrors by the demand for slaves for export. If left to itself, it would soon dwindle and die; for there is no internal cause to sustain it. Labor is not of value enough. A slave is good for nothing to keep, but only to sell. It is the cupidity of West Indian traders which spurs on the natives to burning and butchery, and which brings upon this desolate coast all their woes. A natural effect of such a trade in flesh and blood is to produce a frightful disregard of human life. It has reduced the value of a man to the trifle that he will bring from the trader. Many a man has been bought for a cask of rum. Lately the price has risen, so that now an able-bodied man will fetch about $10, and a boy or girl perhaps half that sum.

Of course it tends to destroy natural affection. The natives are simple-hearted, and strongly attached to their kindred. But when every bad passion is excited, imbruted by war and maddened by rum, the father will sometimes sell his own child. "I have even known," says Mr. Bushnell, "a husband to sell his wife!"

It is often said that those poor Africans do not suffer much, for that they are incapable of feeling. They are little above the beasts, and, like animals, all places are indifferent to them. "Having food and raiment, they are therewith content." But our informant tells us that, on the contrary, they are a very sensitive race. Natives of that torrid clime, they are true children of the sun. Living in the open air, they drink in bright influences from sunshine and from sky. Their feelings are quick. The slightest thing exalts them to a heaven of rapture or plunges them into an abyss of grief. When left to themselves, they are a careless, heedless, happy race; full of mirth, and dance, and song. In many a sylvan glade, under the wide-spreading palms, may be witnessed scenes which would delight the imagination of a pastoral poet.

They have a passionate love of music. The gondoliers of Venice, floating on their grand canal, were not more spontaneous and gushing in their melody than these Africans, floating on their inland waters. As the boat glides along the lagoons and rivers, the oarsman keep time with a rising and falling strain. If any incident occurs in the sail, they instantly improvise a rude poetry, and accompany it with a wild melody. Thus everywhere-in their boats or bamboo huts, in every scene of gladness or of

Such is the slave-trade, of which men in this Christian land speak in gentle phrase, and which some propose to revive. Many might be found who would not only defend it, but delight in it; who would find in this buying of men, not only the most lucrative commerce, but the most exciting sport. When Capt. Smith confided to us his experience in a slave ship, his eye shot fire as he depicted the scenes on the African Coast. "Ah!" said the hero, "that's the place for fun!"

OUR HEAVENLY FATHER.

On a bright Sabbath morning, in the beautiful spring of 1840, I attended Friends' meeting at Fallowfield, and heard a discourse from Jesse Kersey, which impressed me as more than usually touching and tender. The following lines were composed immediately after, and may be considered a rather close paraphrase of all its principal features:

Our Heavenly Father, kindly wise,
Has spread before our sight
The loveliness of earth and skies,
To claim our praise aright.
That while our eyes with rapture see
Each good and pleasant thing,
Our tender gratitude may be

An unfeigned offering.

The blossom'd shrubs that charm the grove-
The streamlets flowing there;

And song of wild-birds as they rove
In the soft vernal air;

Were they not given to endear our hearts
To him who reigns above?
Whose ever-bounteous hand imparts
Such unask'd gifts of love.

Is not the earth with plenty fill'd?
Do not the fields o'erflow,
And almost without culture yield
Whate'er the clime can grow?
And shall our stubborn hearts refuse
The grateful song to raise ?
And while each pleasant gift we use,
Neglect the Giver's praise?

ER