disseminate such as a public doctrine--far from it), but if Divine Wisdom required the whole human family to become enlightened, and bring them back to Him, he would not need such agency;---but I have my doubts whethe the hromage of these "heathens," as they are called, is not equally sincere, and equally acceptable at the throne of mercy- "Lo the poor Indian, whose untutor'd mind The Indians, that is the wandering tribes, are accused of pilfering! but any calumny is heaped upon them. To sum up their character in a few words, they are faithful, brave, and courageous, affectionate friends, and open enemies. The children of bondage, the dusky sons of Africa, are compared with these rangers of the wilderness---the very extreme of human degradation. I have little to offer you, my sable brethren, but sad reflection, and my whole stock of sympathy ;---if, like an angel, trumpet-tongued, I could, I would sound an alarm in the souls of your tyrants, and the steeled hearts of your taskmasters. No more, your averted eye, glistening with tears of bloody torture, wrung from your heart's core by the lash and scourge of barbarous rulers---should shun, should hate Christian white man! Hear me, ye ill-fated creatures of American bought and sold traffic,--weep not; rather, in the convulsive agony of your deep-rooted sorrows, laugh in your chains, that the stripes and indignant afflictions you endure, curses the land with ugliness; bear up but a little while, and your great father beyond the moon will take you to your happy, immortal race! ---The Americans will tell you, the African niggers have no talent or capacity ;*---the French amiable philosopher, Montesquieu, ably rebuts the charge.---Fie, fie, such are lame apologies for barbarity. "Have we not hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions? Fed with the same food, hurt with the same weapons, subject to the same diseases, healed by the same means, warmed and cooled by the same winter and summer? if you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die?"--SHAKESPEARE. I am no enemy to the luxuries of those zones where the labour of Africans are required, therefore my morality will be less liable to animadversion; all this could be obtained by kind treatment, periods of servitude, and freedom. It was, and is, generally understood in Europe, that the American Government had determined gradually to abolish slavery, agreeable to the wishes of all good *The Haytian State Papers breathe more exalted sentiments than are to be found in the official documents emanating from any Cabinet in Modern Europe. H men; now let us mark the fallacy of such promise to mankind. The business or question the most interesting the Session of Congress, (1820) was relative to the State of Missouri being admitted into the Union free and unshackled, or loaded with the stigma and indelible stain of slavery? Argument in favour of national faith, advocated by a feeling and noble minority, kicked the beam; while a great majority, in triumphant exultation, laughed at the Reformers, as they termed them ;--and, strange to tell, a great part of such majority were members from the Free States, enjoying the full blessings of liberty.--Quære, Does such decision bespeak despotism or republicanism, as the first aricle of their boasted Charter of Independence runs thus :---" God created all men free." I am aware my remarks on Slavery will expose me to the censure of its advocates, as such forms part of the political fabric of America; if so unlucky, my answer is briefly this :--I have a right, and a holy one, to develope a thrice-told-tale---a blot on the name of man, nor would I willingly retract a single iotu; and I am confident, the good part of the American people---the steady and moral Pensylvanians, the well-disposed of the Eastern and Middle States, will honor me with their full concession of opinion. But to America belongs a gem richer far than any in the diadem of any monarch upon earth, and while such is a splendid exhibition of humanity, demands the admiration of all mankind. Vice is a rank weed of every soil ---a kind of innate scourge since those days of bliss when angels dwelt, and God himself with man.---The punishment of death, in the American Penal Code, is seldom resorted to as a sanguinary visitation ;---murder, piracy, arson, mail-robbery, and some part of that Act called "Lord Ellenborough's," are considered heinous crimes, and the perpetrators sometimes suffer an ignominious death. If memory be correct, I think that lamented excellent character, poor Sir Samuel Romilly, ever prone to lighten the burthen of human woe, attempted a repeal of many of our stern statutes, and stated upwards of one hundred and eighty crimes on which the sentence of death un human depravity takes place. It is not a nominal twenty shilling scrap of paper; of no intrinsic value--at best but a promisory obligation to meet public confidence--that consigns to eternity our American fellowcreatures, and in many cases as really implies forgery, extremely doubtful ;---strange this in a land first in the list of nations, and boasted innumerable institutions! The contemplative Englishman would ask the question, "Why has our mitred and ermine-robed Legislators suffered the last, the youngest people, to pluck from the brow and front of majesty itself a nobler prize than Agincourt, Cressy, Blenheim, Trafalgar, or Waterloo, could bestow--that is, to transform vice into virtue?" The cold moralist in reply, will say, such laws are essential, are indispensible. His answer would be equally correct to say, our people are worse. * But his feelings I envy not, and on the practice of Columbia's milder laws, despise them. Vice in many cases in America, is really converted into public good, and in all cases reformed, by the following excellent system of prison discipline ;---The various periods of imprisonment (as none are exiled) are rendered useful to the offender, and a kind of atonement to an injured public. Every male prisoner, if ignorant of all, is bound to learn some trade or occupation; the females, knitting, sewing, spinning; their state prisons thus exhibiting the most common and useful trades, resemble more a thriving community, than an assemblage of delinquents; cleanliness is enforced with Mussulman rigour and custom; order and decorum is rigidly attended to, and a total prohibition of indolence, profaneness and irregularity; and the mid and fiendly admonitions of sympathizing clergymen, and serious religious and benevolent visitors, render a willing obedience to such regimen manifest by these gentle means of tenderness and compassion, as coercion is never resorted to;---the GREAT EDIFICE is reared and consecrated to the whole celestial HIERAR The Americans often make use of a sarcasm, which, I am afraid, contains too much severe truth:---" Great Britain gave us a shabby population to begin with, and she yet continues her rascally donation.", |