ignorant of the very names and localities of many of its nations. A vast number of its inhabitants are hereditary slaves or prisoners of war, who, if they cannot be sold, are butchered. In a word, From parliamentary returns it would appear, and inaccessibility, that we are at this moment that in the sixteen years ending with 1843 the number of slaves emancipated by the mixed commissions was 57,639, which is about 3,600 per annum, probably a number not equal to the loss of British lives in our fleet and army on the pestifer-it is not to be supposed that our peddling operaous coast of Africa. Parliamentary returns further show that our squadron employed on the aforesaid pestiferous coast amounts to twenty-five sail, costing yearly 300,000l., or a million and a half, every lustre. France has the same number of ships, costing, no doubt, as much. So that the two allies, exclusive of the expense of life and credit, waste every five years 3,000,000l., the slave-trade all the while greatly prospering, and the mortality in the barracoons and middle passage greatly increasing. There must soon be an end of this mighty folly. In truth, the national infatuation is already fast passing away, and common sense beginning to resume its empire. Even Exeter Hall is silent, and has nothing new to propose for our mystification, and misleading. We would suggest, then, at once, that the exportation of negro emigrants from Africa should be made as free and unshackled as that of Irishmen from Ireland. The cost of their transport would be defrayed by the service of an apprenticeship, which is, in fact, the course now pursued with captured slaves when emancipated. The only restraints or emigration that would be necessary would be a security that the members of a family should not be separated, and that a due proportion should be observed with the sexes. If the blockading squadron were removed, the sum of 300,0007. would, without putting the government to any additional expense, be at its disposal to pay in bounties for the importation of laborers, should such a plan be deemed advisable. At the rate of 201. a head, 15,000 emigrants might be yearly brought to the West Indies through such a fund, or at 107., twice that number. Under such a system of freedom, the mortality in the barracoons and middle passage would diminish, in so far as concerned the slave-trade; and in the case of those parties transported in our ships, it need not exceed, and probably, from the constitution of the negro and the nature of the climate, it would not equal, that in our ordinary emigrant vessels; the regulations, of course, being the same. tions on a few spots of the coast are very likely much to affect, for good or evil, the civilization of a continent that contains hundreds of nations and hundreds of languages, and a surface equal to one fourth part of the habitable globe. We can see pretty clearly when African emigration, slave and free, must terminate. It will be when the countries which receive it are fully stocked with inhabitants, and laborers can be reared more cheaply than they can be imported. Even West Indian slavery itself will die a natural death at the same time, for, as has been found elsewhere, it will be cheaper to allow free men to rear themselves than to breed slaves. In the Antilles, at least, the period at which this must happen will not be very remote, and may even be calculated. The negro slave population of the United States, since the equality of the sexes has been established by the abolition of the slavetrade, multiplies as fast as the free white population-that is, doubles itself in about twenty-five years. Jamaica, then, for an example, with a climate more congenial than any part of the United States, to the negro constitution, will multiply, at least, as fast. Its present population is estimated at 400,000, or about ninety inhabitants to the square mile. Without any immigration, and as there is now an equality of the sexes, it will contain in twentyfive years' time 800,000 inhabitants. But supposing the bounty on imported African laborers we have supposed to exist, the due share of Jamaica will be 8,000 a year, which, without reckoning natural increase on the immigrants, will raise the population to one million; that is, 235 inhabitants to the square mile; a population which, although smaller in density than that of the most thinly peopled provinces of the valley of the Ganges, will be amply sufficient to insure an abundant supply of labor, and produce true rent. There is ample room for it too. Two thirds of the surface of the island are, at present, wild lands, useful to neither man nor beast, while the remaining fraction is scourged by one eternal crop of one exhausting plant; for in this land of the cane there are neither fences, nor rotations, nor the shadow of that irrigation which, in all warm climates, is indispensable to the development of the natural powers of the soil. The case of Cuba is not so favorable, owing to the inequality of the sexes incident to the slavetrade. But here, too, under the system we are The emigrants would, in the majority of cases, be either those born slaves or made so by the fortune of war, for such is now, and ever has been, the case. In that event, their transportation would be equivalent to their emancipation. They would simply lose Africa and slavery, and gain the congenial climate of the West Indies and freedom. Whether this would or would not encourage recommending, there must, in due course, be an slavery in Africa is more than we can say. We can say, however, that it seems repugnant to common sense to imagine that its effects can be very considerable either one way or another. Africa, throughout, is so barbarous, and such is its extent end of the slave-trade and even of slavery itself. The area of this great and fertile island is about 43,000 square miles, and its present population is computed, at about one million-no more than twenty-three inhabitants to the square mile; con centrated, however, in the most fertile locali- | plains that the queen's name is Alexander, but ties. In 1827 a census of its population gave 730,000, so that in twenty years it has increased by 270,000. This would make nearly an increase of forty-six per cent. in twenty-five years, and consequently raise the inhabitants of Cuba, in that time, to close upon a million and a half. has no idea where she lives; another classes a peacock as a vegetable; another does not know the name of the month nor the year we are living in. The schools are often as dirty as pig-sties, and many of the national schools seem to be as bad as those not connected with the church. But the schooling, (education we will not miscall it,) But the population will increase in a much wretched as it is, is far from uniform. In the evhigher ratio than this; for without supposing a idence of the Rev. J. Pugh, rector of Llandilasingle slave in addition to the number now destined fawr, we find this specimen in one William Davis, for its market from Africa, it will gain all those a boy of sixteen, and who does not seem deficient lost by the higher mortality produced by the pres-in capacity, from some of his replies, but as ignoent system, in the barracoons and middle passages, while the survivors who reach its shores will do so in better health and condition. Taking all these causes together, we shall probably not greatly err in foretelling that in twenty-five years' time the population of Cuba would be 2,000,000, and in fifty, some 4,000,000-either of them, probably, quite sufficient so to stock the labor market, or at least to put an end to all importation of slaves from Africa-most probably even to slavery itself. We shall give one strong case in illustration of the principle we have been laying down. It is that of the island of Java, by about the whole size of Jamaica smaller than Cuba-as fertile, but not more so. The West Indians, in their "groans," have often referred to it. By a census of its population, taken in 1845, the number of its inhabitants was found to be, in round numbers, 10,000,000, or 250 to the square mile. rant as a pig: "I have never been inside a school or chapel. I do not know who to pray to. I do not know what becomes of people when they die-I have heard of God; I know nothing about him. I think I have a soul-I don't know what a soul is, heard of the devil; I know nothing about him; I nor whether it is different from the body. I never have heard of him when people swear. have never heard of heaven; but I have heard of hell-heaven is the best of the two, but I don't know why." I Mr. Pugh declares that this boy is not more ignorant than the rest. His father is a farmer paying 501. a year rent. The boy Davis expressed his desire for education, and parents generally are anxious to have the benefit of it, such as it is, for their children; but they cannot reconcile themselves to paying anything for it, and will not spare three halfpence a week for the purpose, in Mr. Pugh's neighborhood (Carmarthen.) In the vicinity of Llandilo there are 100 children, between the ages of seven and sixteen, who attend no school or place of worship. A census taken in 1815 made the population less than one half of this: so that, in thirty years' time, it had more than doubled. Earlier enumerations had shown that the lesser number had been itself The Rev. Mr. Williams, of Hirwaren, ascribes doubled. But the smallest of them was quite suffi- the Frost insurrection to the profound ignorance cient to destroy slavery, through sheer inauition, of the people, who can be made to believe any and a native Javanese slave has not been known absurdity. A witness of the outbreak told him, for the 300 years and upwards that Europeans"The men who marched to join Frost had no have known the island. This has not been the definite object, beyond a fanatical notion that they result of the good institutions of Java, for they are were to march immediately to London, fight a little better than those of the neighboring thinly- great battle, and conquer a great kingdom." peopled countries which abound in slaves; but has The ignorance of the farmers is profound and been the mere effect of density of population, which thoroughly self-satisfied-they scorn the idea of abolishes slavery with as much certainty as grav-improvement. A tenant of Mr. Chambers, when itation brings an apple to the ground. From the Examiner. WALES-THE BRITISH BOTIA. asked why he did not claim the allowance of 24 per cent. for draining, answered, "He did not want any drains, 't was all all damned stuff, and not worth the bother, something like guano." He would not carry the guano back in his empty cart from Llanelly, whither he went once a week. In the same enlightened neighborhood Mr. Davies remembers the time when there was not a builder who could measure a wall. THEY who so hotly contended last year that neither the quantity nor the quality of the education for the poor was defective, would do well to study the reports of the Commissioners of Inquiry in Wales. Few can have been prepared for the disclosures of the depths of ignorance and the slough of sensuality in the principality. Generally speaking, little is taught in the schools, and the little that is taught is worthless. The children of an advanced age can seldom give a proper answer relating to the most notorious facts. One puts Dublin in Scotland; another rates Devonshire "Sir, I am sending those fue Lines Concernas the second city of the kingdom; another ex- ing The masters of schools are in many cases persons utterly illiterate, belonging to the laboring classes. We find in the report for North Wales this choice specimen both of the voucher for the qualification of a teacher, and an astounding practical proof of the professor's accomplishments: School Master at that he is a Good Teacher of a children and bears a good chari-mals in the same respects; and they are superior ter cepin [keeping] a good time with children, and to animals in this particular, that the state of wedvery carefull in Teaching them I had my children lock is recognized among them, and desired— with him a Long time. everything but waited for. Witness our hands David thomas Sirgeen The candidate so recommended wrote in round text as follows: "I willingly to come fore £6 per Quarter if you things proper. "I humbly beg to you to send me a line in answer with the Bearer." These evidences of learning were admitted as perfectly satisfactory by the parties engaged in the promotion of education. The man had been a weaver, but having turned preacher, it was thought by his sect that the business of teaching would leave him more leisure for his ministerial avoca tions. About his qualification there was no doubt; it was probably as good for the one as for the other of his pursuits. A great cause of the backwardness of the benighted principality is undoubtedly the language, to which the people are attached, and from which they should be weaned by every inducement— though it was but the other day that we saw announced a premium by an illustrious personage for skill in that barbarity-perpetuating tongue. The ignorance of the people is locked in their language, and the one will not give way without the other. An improved system of education is the only means to this end, and the first step to it is effected in the very complete exposure in the Reports before us, which do great credit to the judgment and well-directed activity of the commissioners. We have seldom seen a better-conducted investigation; the field has been most thoroughly explored, and the specimens of evidence selected with excellent discretion. FOREIGN MISCELLANY. Endowments are shamefully abused. The Report of North Wales states that endowed schools are amongst the very worst, visitation and inspecA CORRESPONDENT, whose accuracy is guarantied tion having been wanting, and the ill-chosen masby the Dublin Evening Mail, narrates a strange ter left irresponsible from the time of his appoint- scene in a chapel at a place called Ballaghaderreen, ment. Many schools are in abeyance, while there in the county of Mayo. Mr. Joseph Holmes is a is the most shameful breach of trust in the mis-resident proprietor in the same neighborhood, on appropriation of charitable funds available for their the other side of the line separating the county from support. that of Sligo; he is a magistrate in both counties; and has fulfilled dangerous duties as an improving landlord, and an active administrator of relief during Carnarvon has a preeminence in Welsh ignorance and immorality. Wages are high, and drunkenness flourishes in proportion. Men who earn twenty-six shillings a week will spend twenty-one in the public-house, and bring the odd five to their families. The Rev. William Williams, independent minister, emphatically says, They are beastly in their habits in this town." 66 In Merthyr, on the other hand, the fault is laid with the women, who go about tea-drinking when they should be receiving their husbands, coming from their work, and supplying their little comforts. A Merthyr man said, "If ever I marry, I will marry a cook, for she will have something for me to eat when I come home ❞—a choice, and good reason for it; which indicates how much is wanting in the education of the female poor, and how much instruction in simple cookery would conduce to the comfort, the economy, and the morals, let us add, of the working classes; for the pleasure which the poor man finds in his home has much to do with his habits, good or bad. the distress. This is the narrative 66 Having received many friendly intimations, a short time since, that the parish priest, Mr. Tighe, had made repeated attacks on him at the chapel, and that his life would be attempted by assassins who had arrived in the neighborhood, he was prevailed on, by the entreaties of his friends, to leave the country for a short period, till the passing of the late government measure, when he returned. These facts coming to the knowledge of his brother, Mr. A. Holmes, who resides in England, the latter paid a hurried visit to this country; and on Thursday last (old Christmas day) presented himself at the chapel at Ballaghaderreen; and having asked and obtained permission from the Reverend Mr. Tighe to address the congregation, a very numerous one, was accommodated with a place at the altar. He declined addressing the people till Mr. Tighe stood at his side; a second priest stood at his left. Ballaghaderreen is within a few miles of Strokestown and Elphin, the scenes of the murders of Major Mahon and the Reverend Mr. Lloyd. The following scene then took place. But to return to Carnarvon-we find that sea-sire to address you, and I have given him permis"Mr. Tighe- Mr. Holmes has expressed a defaring men, without the slightest education, get sion to do so.' employed as masters, and grope their way about at sea without skill enough to take an observation or to keep a dead reckoning. The only teacher of navigation at Carnarvon is an old woman. Chastity is held in no sort of honor amongst the poor in Wales. Their habits are those of animals, and will not bear description. The sin prevails without the slightest touch of shame. But it is not venal, any more than the habits of ani "Mr. Holmes (advancing to the front of the altar) - My friends, Mr. Tighe, your priest, has given me permission to address you from this altar, and I avail myself of it. I have travelled five hundred miles to say five words to you; pray, therefore, attend to me. You do not all know me, but you know my brother, Mr. Joseph Holmes. ["We do."] Is there amongst you a man who can say that my brother has ever done an unkind or an unjust act by him? Is there, I say? If there is, let him hold up his hand. Is there amongst you a man who can deny that for the last two years my brother has been your slave? If there is, let him speak. [A pause.] During the last two years, my brother has expended £20,000 in provisions, to keep down the markets here, that you and your children might not starve. He has, daily, for the last sixteen months, fed 150 of your children at his school-house. He has turned his house and offices into a provisionstore for your accommodation. Is there a man among you that can deny this? If there is, let him speak. And what is the return he has met with? Do you require to be told? Why, when he left home a month ago, it is notorious that the assassins who were to murder him had arrived in the parish, and were harbored amongst you! There are those amongst you that know it. I can account for the presence of these miscreants. They were attracted hither by the inflammatory harangues of your priest, here. (Pointing to Mr. Tighe.) I tell him so to his face.' [Tremendous uproar in the chapel. Cries of 'Turn him out!-he is a liar!' a scene of great confusion, during which the curate in vain attempted to address and appease the people, followed. At length Mr. Tighe succeeded, after many ineffectual efforts, in obtaining a hearing.] "Mr. Tighe—It is false that I made any attacks on Mr. Holmes. There have been houses levelled in this parish, and poor wretches turned out; but I never attacked Mr. Holmes.' "Mr. Holmes-'I know that you did; and I tell you at this altar, to your face, and in the presence of your congregation, that it is your attacks on my brother from this spot that have brought these murderers to this parish.' [Here the uproar recommenced; and some of the more violent of the congregation appeared disposed to pass over the rails to the altar; the priests endeavoring to restrain them.] "Mr. Holmes (advancing in front)-'I am not afraid of you. I came here to tell you these truths alone, and am not to be deterred by five hundred of you.' "Mr. Tighe 'My friends, this is the house of God let us have no more of this. Mr. Holmes has charged me with attacks on his brother; which I deny. If he has anything more to say, let him address you outside the chapel.' "Mr. Holmes having declined any further address to the people, left the chapel, surrounded by a mob; who refrained from any act of personal violence, but saluted him with groans and execrations on his driving away." THE Evening Mail publishes a genuine specimen of dehortation against outrage, actually delivered not many years back from the altar, by a Roman Catholic clergyman "I am ashamed of you. By the vestment, I am. You have no more consideration than a dog that's struck with a stone. He runs after the stone, the sinseless baste, to bite it; and, if he does, what does he do but only break his teeth for his pains? The hand that threw the stone is still free to throw another. (Murmurs of indignation.) "Now, isn't that the very way with you? If a poor fellow that can't live without a bit of land, no more than yourselves, comes in over another's head, he is tracked like a hare, night and morning, from the market and from the chapel, ever till you find your opportunity; and maybe, after all, 't is when he'd be sitting at the fireside, with his wife and children, you come down upon him like a sootdrop. (Dead silence.) That's the "And that's what you call justice. sort of justice you did upon Tim Fogarty-(Exclamations of 'Sorrow mend him?')—for which poor Johnny Gosther suffered; Lord have mercy on his poor sowl! [Here a universal cluck of horror and commiseration, with crossings and genuflexions to no end, interrupted the orator's discourse.] Yes, you call that justice; and where's the man that put Tim Fogarty in possession all this time? (Sensation.) I think I see him going the road in his gig, with nobody to guard him but a spalpeen of a stableboy; and not one of you dare so much as keep a hat on your heads as long as he is in sight. main-sperrited crew! Is it any wonder your priest should be ashamed of you?" Ye MESSRS. P. and H. Ferguson and Rhind, of Glasgow, have issued their annual statement of the Scotch pig-iron trade for the past year. The production of 1847 is 40,000 tons under that of 1846; and although there has been a considerable falling off in the iron sent coastwise, so as to make the shipments during 1847 less by 6,491 tons than in siderable increase; in 1845, the quantity was 54,1846, the export to foreign countries shows a con671 tons; in 1846, 119,100 tons; in 1847, 143,460 tons. ESPARTERO arrived at Madrid early on the morning of the 7th Jan.; and thus avoided the demonstration prepared to greet his return. The people, however, on hearing of his arrival, repaired to his residence and rent the air with deafening cries. "Three times," says the correspondent of the Times," the multitude have already burst into the house, determined to see their idol. They rushed to his presence, lifted him from the ground, fell at his feet; and hundreds of these wild-looking fellows wept and sobbed like children. Espartero cried like a woman." THE French papers publish a series of twentythree diplomatic documents on the affairs of Switzerland; being the correspondence of M. Guizot and Lord Palmerston with their representatives in Switzerland, London, and Paris. The bulk of the papers are out of date, the suppression of the Sonderbund having superseded the negotiations to which they relate. The most important are the two last of the series, which we subjoin. The Duke De Broglie to M. Guizot. LONDON, Dec. 2, 1847. "MONSIEUR LE MINISTRE-On entering the office of Lord Palmerston this morning, to discuss the affairs of La Plata with his lordship, he read me a despatch from Berne, which contained nothing in addition to the news supplied by yesterday evening's papers. He then said to me of his own accord "Your mediation, I fear, will be anticipated by events. Here, however, are the instructions which I have given to Sir S. Canning. He is to proceed directly to Berne. If the Sonderbund be still on foot, he will send the note agreed upon in concert with the envoys of the other four courts. If the Sonderbund be only partially in existence, he will consider the surviving part as equivalent to the whole, and will treat it as such. If the Sonderbund no longer exist, the mediation falls to the ground. He will thenceforth only address himself to the diet, but according to the terms of the note agreed upon. He will not confine himself to recommending a moderate course to that assembly, but will warn it that the existence of the Swiss confederation is based on the independence and sover eignty of the cantons; that the diet ought carefully to forbear from making the slightest encroachment thereupon; and that if it should become necessary to introduce any changes into the federal compact, those changes could only be valid with the unanimous consent of the cantons. Does that suit you?' added Lord Palmerston. "Perfectly,' I replied; but on condition that Sir S. Canning shall not profess at Berne the principle which you yesterday seemed to indicate to parliament, viz., that the declaration of November 20, 1815, protects the diet, under every hypothesis, against the influence of foreign powers, and guarantees the inviolability of its territory, whatsoever it may do, and to whatever extremities it may proceed. In fact, to recommend moderation and respect for rights to conquerors in the very intoxication of victory, when they have their enemies at their feet -to conquerors themselves governed by clubs in which all the violence of revolutionary passions is unchained, as it was in France in 1793-and to tell them at the same time that they have nought to fear from any one, whatever criminal use they may make of their power-this will be to expose one's self to a hazard of not being listened to at all. It would be, besides, (I added,) to deceive them; which must never be done, for neither my government nor any of the other continental governments of Europe can admit such a theory. I am rejoiced at this opportunity of coming to a thorough and distinct understanding with you.' "Very good,' replied his lordship. The declaration of the 20th of November, 1815,' said I, is nothing more than the republication of a former declaration of the same nature made at Vienna the 20th of March in the same year.' "Those two declarations guaranteed to Switzerland, under certain conditions-by her accepted ―a state of perpetual neutrality; and, as a consequence of that state of neutrality, the inviolability of her territories: in other words, they secured to Switzerland, under the following conditions "1. That in case of war between the powers adjacent to Switzerland, the latter shall remain neuter necessarily and of perfect right. I say, in the event of war, for the state of neutrality supposes such a state; there are no neutrals where there are no belligerents. 2. That none of the belligerent parties shall be able to compel Switzerland to take part in its favor, as the French republic compelled the Swiss republic in 1797. This is the meaning of the words, "perpetual neutrality." "3. That the belligerent parties shall not be able to choose Switzerland as a battle-field, as France, Austria, and Russia did in 1799. "I was silent for a moment, expecting some objection or distinction, and preparing to dispute either. Lord Palmerston disputed nothing; he fully admitted that such alone was the intention of the powers; adding, however, that sometimes in treaties the expressions employed went further than the ideas. "It is a misfortune,' I rejoined, that it is so; but it is not the case here; the words "inviolability of territory" being perfectly explained and limited by the declaration of the 20th of November itself, provided the paragraphs are not separated, but interpreted one by another. 666 Moreover,' I added, to what consequences would the opposite system lead? Article 8 of the Federal Pact grants the diet the right to make war, on the sole condition that the diet must vote for war by a majority of three fourths of the votes. The confederation would have a right of war against its neighbors, whilst they would have none against it; it might attack our territory without our being able to retaliate; it might inflict blows upon us which we should be precluded from repaying. Its inviolable territory would be a place of exile or sanctuary, whence it might make irruptions on all sides, without any other risk than that of being reduced to take refuge there in a case of defeat. Is that possible?' 666 'Assuredly not,' replied Lord Palmerston; 'if Switzerland becomes aggressive, she must bear the consequences of her aggression.' "And if she gives her neighbors a legitimate motive for war, she must bear all the consequences of war. But that is not all; the cantons of which the confederacy is composed are sovereign cantons, like the states of the Germanic body. The great cantons have no more right to conquer and subject the small ones, than one of the great states of Germany would have to do as much with respect to one of the small ones; consequently, if that were to happen, all the powers of Europe would have a right to arrange matters by mediation or by force.' To this his lordship agreed. 666 Finally, the oppressed cantons, if any there be, like all oppressed sovereign states, have a right to address their neighbors for help or assistance; and those neighbors have a right to examine, each on his own account, how far justice or policy, prudence or humanity, authorize or forbid it to reply to the appeal.' but the 666 Agreed,' said Lord Palmerston; remedy must not anticipate the evil.' "I equally agree to this, in my turn,' replied I. 'I am, as you know, as great an enemy as anybody to the principle of intervention-as decided as anybody not to view it as justifiable, except in extreme cases and extraordinary circumstances. I desire, and still hope, that none of these cases, none of these circumstances, will occur in future in the relation of the Swiss confederation and the adjacent powers; but I still insist that the right of the adjacent pow "4. That none of the said parties shall be able to cross the Swiss territory in order to attack its adversary, as the allies did in 1814, when they crossed the Rhine above Bale in order to invade Alsace. "This is the meaning of the words "inviolabil-ers in that respect remains entire in the event of the ity of territory." "Such are the signification, the bearing, and the extent of the guarantee granted to Switzerland in 1815. The powers assembled at Vienna thought, and rightly, that it was the common interest of Europe to interpose between the military monarchies of the continent a state perpetually inviolable by the armies of the belligerents. The guarantee extends so far, but no further. It stops where stopped the intention of the signers of the act of Vienna, and the declarations of the 20th of March and the 20th of November, 1815.' case occurring; that it is nowise limited by the declaration of November, 1815, which only had in view a state of things wholly foreign from the present:' and I added, that the best means of rendering the intervention immediate and inevitable would be to give the present rulers of Switzerland reason to think that they may follow their own caprices with impunity in matters concerning their neighbors and their confederates.' "Here the interview closed. "Receive, &c. DE BROGLIE." |