stitution of free labour for bond labour of every description can alone indemnify the planter for the loss of his living capital, and redeem him from the effect of the standing economical blunder in which he has so long and so fatally persisted. Slavery must be abolished. Its total abolition will carry compensation with it. Any thing short of entire and immediate emancipation will fail of its object; will be ruinous to the planter, unjust to the slave, unsafe to the colonies, and, in a word, not merely impolitic, but impracticable.'

Mr. Cropper takes a similar view of the necessity of a total abolition of slavery in order to the realizing of any of the advantages to be derived from the proposed loan; but slavery being abolished, he proves by the logic of arithmetical calculations, that the advance may be made without hazard, and with great benefit to all parties, which is designed to relieve the planter from his present embarrassments, and to enable him to disentangle himself at once from the expenses of slavery and of his commercial bondage. Mr. Cropper has shewn, that what would be saved to this country by the abolition of slavery, with the burdens it entails, would enable Government to deal liberally with. the West India Colonists.

6

Mr. Stanley's plan of emancipation is an ingenious one; and twenty years ago it might have been possible to make the experiment he proposes; although, in the working, it would assuredly have failed. In the present state of things, it would be alike perilous and impracticable. It is founded, as the Author of the Letter from Legion remarks, on two propositions, each of which is self contradictory in its enunciation, and iniquitous in its operation. 1. The slave is entitled to his freedom, and therefore he shall redeem himself. 2. The slave is unfitted, by long ' and brutal coercion, for the discharge of spontaneous labour, and therefore, for twelve years to come, he shall be compelled to "three parts of his labour by coercive means.' With legal acuteness, this Writer, who is generally understood to be the son of the late distinguished philanthropist James Stephen, Esq. dissects the ministerial plan, and exposes its illusive, crude, unjust, and visionary character. Even the best, because the most specific part of the plan, the liberation of the children, is shewn to be open to fatal objections, the very principle of the condition with which it is encumbered being unjust and cruel.

6

Slavery is offered as the alternative of maintaining them, when the very means of maintenance are taken away. Ex hypothesi the parent's wages must be accumulated to redeem his own freedom. If he takes one sixpence from the sacred hoard, his own emancipation is deferred. All the time which can reasonably be exacted for labour through the day, is appropriated to his master, or to his own redemption. Yet you most ingeniously propose that he shall find means to clothe and feed his child, under the penalty of exposing that child to a longer

bondage than himself! Is it not cruel, is it not unnatural, to create this distressing competition between paternal affection and selfish interest? You do not even propose that the child shall receive wages; if this is intended, and on the same scale of proportion between his value and his time, why is his servitude to be of longer duration than his parents? To be consistent it should be less, because if his tender years admit of education in moral habits with greater certainty, he need not serve so long a noviciate to qualify him for the rights of citizenship; the only reason that you assign for the long apprenticeship of the adult. But there are other yet more serious objections to this part of the scheme. In the first place you know, or ought to know, that in the case of plantation slaves, the father of the child is too often unknown even to its mother; nor is the relation more likely to be acknowledged when it entails with it a pecuniary burthen, and a serious personal sacrifice; the option, therefore, which you give, serves very well to cheat the superficial enquirer into an acquiescence in the reasonableness of an infant apprenticeship, but in fact it will but rarely furnish a solid hope of redeeming the poor child from his eighteen years of servitude. It would have been more honest to have enacted at once, that all children shall be apprenticed to the age of 20 or 24, for such must be the case at least nine times out of ten. I hate this artful cloaking of a general rule in the guise of an exception. The general rule will be the 18 years of servitude-the parental maintenance will be the exception; and this should have been the honest avowal made to the anti-slavery party. They have lately heard enough of infant slavery to comprehend its meaning. I suspect that on second thoughts, they will scarcely hail with much satisfaction this threatened emigration of it to our colonies.

But again: you cannot but be aware that one of the most offensive and intolerable of all the incidents of slavery, is the subjection of young females to the power of their owners. Is your long apprenticeship likely to remove this evil? Will it diminish opportunity, or restrict the power of compulsion? I will not say that it will have the contrary effect, but it appears to me most likely to leave matters exactly where they were.'

The scheme of apprenticed labour must be abandoned. Where it has been tried, as at the Cape Colony, it has been found alike oppressive and unprofitable. The West India proprietors are beginning to perceive, that if the cry for the abolition of slavery is to prevail, it will be for their own interest to consent to immediate and total abolition, rather to any half measures. To them, the compromise proposed would be ruinous, since it would well nigh double the cost of cultivation, without securing to them any adequate equivalent.

It is believed, however, that Ministers will not persist in this part of the plan, and that modification will be proposed that will essentially change its whole character. The scheme of selfredemption must also be given up. The negro, at least, owes no compensation. As to the loan, it may go down with emancipation, but certainly not without it

'It has been observed, "You cannot object to a loan on West Indian security; for you contend that its value will be improved by emancipation." I admit that we do so; but it must be emancipaton on our own terms. It must be total and immediate; no longer deferred than till an efficient police can be established. It must not be a partial diluted measure, breaking up one relation of the parties, to substitute another of equal hardship and more difficult operation. This is unsettling one system, which, bad as it is, can work, and replacing it with another, with such a jumble of bad and good, that it becomes inoperative as a stimulus to labour, though it retains the crnel coercive principle. We must not be fixed with an indemnity against a risk essentially different from that which we proposed. It is what the underwriters call a deviation from the policy: of course it discharges our liability.'

We could have wished that the zeal of "Legion" had been somewhat more tempered by courtesy. Such language and such reasoning as we meet with at pp. 21, 22, are unworthy of the cause, and more adapted to give pain and just offence than to convince. The warmth of the Writer's feelings does him honour, but his judgement should hold a tighter rein.

ART. VIII. LITERARY INTELLIGENCE.

Mr. Atkinson, of Glasgow, has, we understand, employed the leisure of a lingering illness, during the last winter, in preparing a complete series of the works of The Scottish Poets, with Biographical Notices, after the manner of Dr. Southey and Dr. Aikin's volumes of the Early and more Recent British Poets. It will shortly appear.

A Treatise on Astronomy, by Sir John Herschel, will form the Forty-third Volume of Dr. Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopædia, and will be published on the 1st of June.

Dictionary, Practical, Theoretical, and Historical, of Commerce and Commercial Navigation. By J. R. M'Culloch, Esq. 1 large Vol. 8vo. with Maps. A Second and Improved Edition preparing.

On June the 1st will be published, Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, and Longman's Catalogue of Second-Hand Books for 1833: comprising a fine Collection of Books of Prints, including many of the Galleries; Divinity and Ecclesiastical History, Foreign and English ; Valuable Works in various Foreign Languages, and a useful Collection of Works on Topography, History, Biography, Poetry, Voyages, and Travels, &c. &c. &c.

Elements of Musical Composition; comprehending the Rules of Thorough Bass, and the Theory of Tuning. By William Crotch, Mus. Doc. A New Edition, preparing, in small 4to.

ART. IX. WORKS RECENTLY PUBLISHED.