attacked in their houses. Men were seized by mobs of gentlemen; were flogged, by Lynch-law; were driven from the country: some were burned to death. So is Slavery defended in the Southern States of America. Yet Garrison has never quailed. He has been an object of insult and hatred for a series of years; he has borne it unshrinkingly but a kind look from a stranger has momentarily unmanned him. His speech is gentle as a woman's. His conversation is full of sagacity: it is as gladsome as his countenance, and as gentle as his voice. Through the whole of his deportment breathes the evidence of a heart at rest.

:

Men of wealth and nobility!-who profess Christianity, yet curse tne equality of Love, for the preaching of which Christ died:-bow down the front of your hypocrisy at the feet of the printer's boy! The name of Garrison riseth in judgment against you.

The Men of Wealth.

Enriched from ancestral merchandize;

And for them many a weary hand did swelt
In torched mines and noisy factories,

And many once proud-quivered loins did melt

In blood, from stinging whip; with hollow eyes,
Many all day in dazzling river stood,

To take the rich-ored driftings of the flood.

For them the Ceylon diver held his breath,
And went all naked to the hungry shark;
For them his ears gushed blood; for them in death
The seal on the cold ice, with piteous bark,
Lay full of darts; for them alone did seethe

A thousand men in troubles wide and dark :
Half-ignorant, they turned an easy wheel,
That set sharp racks at work, to pinch and peel.

Why were they proud? Because their marble founts
Gushed with more pride than do a wretch's tears?—
Why were they proud? Because fair orange-mounts
Were of more soft ascent than lazar stairs?—
Why were they proud? Because red-lined accounts
Were richer than the songs of Grecian years?—
Why were they proud? again we ask aloud,
Why in the name of Glory were they proud?

Keats.

SLAVE-OWNERS AND SLAVES.

THERE is, there must be, in slave-holding communities a large class which cannot be too severely condemned. There are many, we fear very many, who hold their fellow-creatures in bondage, from selfish, base motives. They hold the slave for gain, whether justly or unjustly they neither ask nor care. They cling to him as property, and have no faith in the principles which will diminish a man's wealth. They hold him, not for his own good or the safety of the state, but with precisely the same views with which they hold a labouring horse, that is, for the profit which they wring from him. They will not hear a word of his wrongs; for, wronged or not, they will not let him go. He is their property, and they mean not to be poor for righteousness' sake. Such

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a class there undoubtedly is among slave-holders; how large, their own consciences must determine. We are sure of it; for under such circumstances human nature will and must come to this mournful result. Now, to men of this spirit, the explanations we have made (against inferring the wickedness of slave-owners from the wickedness of slavery) do in no degree apply. Such men ought to tremble before the rebukes of outraged humanity and indignant virtue. Slavery upheld for gain, is a great crime. He, who has nothing to urge against emancipation, but that it will make him poorer, is bound to Immediate Emancipation. He has no excuse for wresting from his brethren their rights. The plea of benefit to the slave and the state avails him nothing. He extorts by the lash, that labour to which he has no claim, through a base selfishness. Every morsel of food thus forced from the injured, ought to be bitterer than gall. His gold is cankered. The sweat of the slave taints the luxuries for which it streams. Better were it for the selfish wrong-doer of whom I speak, to live as the slave, to clothe himself in the slave's raiment, to eat the slave's coarse food, to till his fields with his own hands, than to pamper himself by day, and pillow his head on down at night, at the cost of a wantonly injured fellow-creature. No fellow-creature can be so injured without taking terrible vengeance. He is terribly avenged even now. The blight which falls on the soul of the wrong-doer, the desolation of his moral nature, is a more terrible calamity than he inflicts. In deadening his moral feeling, he dies to the proper happiness of a man. fellow-creatures, he sears it to all true joy. In shutting his ears against the In hardening his heart against his voice of justice, he shuts out all the harmonies of the universe, and turns the voice of God within him into rebuke. He may prosper indeed, and hold faster the slave by whom he prospers; but he rivets heavier and more ignominious chains on his own soul, than he lays on others. No punishment is so terrible as prosperous guilt. No fiend, exhausting on us all his power of torture, is so terrible as an oppressed fellow-creature. The cry of the oppressed, unheard on earth, is heard in heaven. God is just, and if justice reign, then the unjust must terribly suffer. Then no being can profit by evil doing. Then all the laws of the universe are ordinances against guilt. Then every enjoyment, gained by wrong doing, will be turned into a curse. No laws of nature are so irrepealable as that law which binds guilt and misery. God is just. Then all the defences, which the oppressor rears against the consequences of wrong-doing, are vain, as vain as would be his striving to arrest by his single arm the ocean or whirlwind. He may disarm the slave. Can he disarm that slave's Creator? He can crush the spirit of insurrection in a fellow-creature. Can he crush the awful spirit of justice and retribution in the Almighty? He can still the murmur of discontent in his victim. Can he silence that voice which speaks in thunder, and is to break the sleep of the grave? Can he always still the reproving, avenging voice in his own breast? I know it will be said, "You would make us poor." Be poor, then, and thank God for your honest poverty. Better be poor than unjust. Better beg than steal. Better live in an alms-house, better die, than trample on a fellow-creature and reduce him to a brute, for selfish gratification. What! Have we yet to learn, that it "profits us nothing to gain the whole world, and lose our souls?"

But still we are told the slave is gay. He is not as wretched as our theories teach. After his toil, he sings, he dances, he gives no sign of an exhausted frame or gloomy spirit. The slave happy! Why, then, contend for Right? Why follow with beating hearts the struggles of the patriot for freedom? Why canonize the martyr to freedom? The slave happy! Then happiness is to be found in giving up the distinctive attributes of a man; in darkening intellect and conscience; in quenching generous sentiments; in servility of spirit; in living under a whip; in having neither property nor rights; in holding wife and child at another's pleasure; in toiling without hope; in living without an end! The slave, indeed, has his pleasures. His animal

nature survives the injury to his rational and moral powers; and every animal has its enjoyments. The kindness of Providence allows no being to be wholly divorced from good. The lamb frolics; the dog leaps for joy; the bird fills the air with cheerful harmony; and the slave spends his holiday in laughter and the dance. Thanks to Him who never leaves himself without a witness; who cheers even the desert with spots of verdure; and opens a fountain of joy in the most withered heart! It is not possible, however, to contemplate the occasional gaiety of the slave without some mixture of painful thought. He is gay, because he has not learned to think; because he is too fallen to feel his wrongs; because he wants just self-respect. We are grieved by the gaiety of the insane. There is a sadness in the gaiety of him, whose lightness of heart would be turned to bitterness and indignation, were one ray of light to awaken in him the spirit of a man.

That there are those among the free, who are more wretched than slaves, is undoubtedly true; just as there is incomparably greater misery among men than among brutes. The brute never knew the agony of a human spirit torn by remorse or wounded in its love. But would we cease to be human, because our capacity for suffering increases with the elevation of our nature? All blessings may be perverted, and the greatest perverted most. Were we to visit a slave-country, undoubtedly the most miserable human beings would be found among the free; for among them the passions have wider sweep, and the power they possess may be used to their own ruin. Liberty is not a necessity of happiness. It is only a means of good. It is a trust which may be abused. Are all such trusts to be cast away? Are they not the greatest gifts of Heaven ?—Channing.

REMARKS ON CHANNING'S SLAVERY.

A WORD or two to thousands of our countrymen who will laud this book to the skies, which is not higher than it deserves; and folding their arms on their breasts, bless God that they are not as these Americans. We ask thei how it is, if slavery be so foul an injustice, that not more than one human being out of thirty in Great Britain has any political existence? At most, our political being amounts only to an inconsiderable fraction of the appointment of a representative, who, when appointed, possesses, numerically, onesix-hundred-and-fiftieth of one-third of the legislative power. This power

of appointment is so exercised as to be continually subjected to influence and restraint. Its return is only provided for once in seven years, unless there be some purpose to be answered by some portion of the ruling authority. Such is our freedom. And for one that has it, there are nine-and-twenty who are destitute; and whose condition, so far as principle is concerned, comes under the description of slavery. It may be a very light and gentle slavery; it may be a very beneficent and happy slavery; it may be a very necessary slavery; it may deserve all the beautiful things that have ever been said in laudation of negro bondage; but this has nothing to do with the question of principle. It is slavery. The non-represented are ruled by the represented. And that omnipotence of Parliament which commands their labour, their wealth, and their lives, is to them as irresponsible a power (in principle, if not in fact,) as that of the slave-owner to his negroes, who may petition, or who may rebel, but who have no recognized portion of the management to which they submit. "To deny the right of a human being to himself, to his own limbs and faculties, to his energy of body and mind, is an absurdity too gross to be confuted by anything but a simple statement. Yet this absurdity is involved in the idea of his belonging to another." True; and is it not also involved in the social arrangements by which the labourer is born into the world with his limbs and muscles mortgaged, so that only perhaps about the hundredth

part of what his toil produces is ever consumed by himself, or by tnose on whom he would bestow it voluntarily? Born to toil for tithes, and taxes, and the interest of capital, and the support of the endowed unearning, what is the real amount of their right in themselves? We put it to Mr. Buxton's conscience. We ask the Anti-slavery society. We demand it of the professed religionists of all denominations; of the patriots of all grades; of the hereditary lords of land and money, we pause for a reply ;" and may wait long enough.

Dr. Channing says, tnat "Nature's seal is affixed to no instrument, by which property in a single human being is conveyed." Did the Doctor never see a marriage contract? What is the condition of woman, but that she is property, while she cannot possess property? When that bond has been, as it often must be, unwarily sealed, what but slavery is the condition of dependence and degradation from which nothing can deliver, except the foul price of one species of crime to which there is thus affixed a deceptive premium? Yet our divines, and, under their direction, our legislators, will claim for the absolute indissolubility of this indenture, the seal not merely of Nature but of Nature's God. "What! own a spiritual being, a being made to know and adore God, and who is to outlive the sun and stars! What! chain to our lowest uses a being made for truth and virtue! Convert into a brute instrument that intelligent nature on which the Idea of Duty has dawned, and which is a nobler type of God than all outward creation! Every thing else may be owned in the universe; but a moral, rational being cannot be property. Suns and stars may be owned, but not the lowest spirit." * No, certainly not; unless it be a woman's. But then, as our religious casuists would say, she is not a "single" being, but merged in the duplicity of her husband's civil (or uncivil) identity. She is sworn to love, honour, and obey till death. And if the first two become impossible, what can be more reasonable than making up the deficiency by a double allowance of the last? Who does not remember Mrs. Siddons' humble petition to her idle husband, that he would bequeath her a fraction of the earnings of her own magnificent talent? In this case, as in that of the negro, no doubt there is re-action and retribution. That little mends the matter. Nor should we have adverted to any of these topics now, but that we wish to warn the good people of England what perilous things principles are, and to shew what strange thoughts sometimes come into the head amid the loud chorussings of Justice and Freedom, Equality and Christianity.

Monthly Repository, 1836.

Obstinacy.-An obstinate man does not hold opinions, but they hold him; for when he is once possessed with an error, it is like a devil, only cast out with great difficulty. Whatsoever he lays holds on, like a drowning man, he never loses, though it do but help to sink him the sooner. His ignorance is abrupt and inaccessible, impregnable both by art and nature, and will hold out to the last, though it has but rubbish to defend. It is as dark as pitch, and sticks as fast to anything it lays hold on. His scull is so thick, that it is proof against any reason, and never cracks but on the wrong side, just opposite to that against which the impression is made, which surgeons say does happen very frequently. The slighter and more inconsistent his opinions are, the faster he holds them, otherwise they would fall asunder of themselves; for opinions that are false ought to be held with more strictness and assurance than those that are true, otherwise they will be apt to betray their owners before they are aware. He delights most of all to differ in things indifferent, no matter how frivolous they are, they are weighty enough in proportion to his weak judgment; and he will rather suffer self-martyrdom

* Channing.

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then part with the least scruple of his freehold; for it is impossible to dye his dark ignorance into any lighter colour. He is resolved to understand no man's reason but his own, because he finds no man can understand his but himself. His wits are like a sack, which the French proverb says is tied faster before it is full than when it is; and his opinions are like plants that grow upon rocks, that stick fast though they have no rooting. His understanding is hardened like Pharaoh's heart, and is proof against all sorts of judgments whatsoever.-Butler.

The Age of GOLD.-Oh! age of gold! why wert thou so miscalled? thou wert the age of virtue. Yet, oh the pity of thy natural misnomer! for the metal which has bought and sold mankind's morality and happiness, till the nations groan in a wide and deep distress, is now, with corresponding selfillusory blindness, set up as a type of the bliss that is gone! Why should the congealed blood, stagnant and yellow, in the veins of mother Earth, be set up as of more value than the children in whom her vitality freshly circulates, walking bright with active life upon her adorned surface, breathing and feeling upward, even as the Thought ascendeth starward, and is received? Whence is this change? whence is this descent and gradual earthiness of heart, narrowed now in strength and scope, and cramped in all its pulses? Can we not wait for the grave to do its work? If the grave be earth and oblivion, and we become as the grave that holds us, why anticipate the doom? But oh! if it be but as the step towards a higher gradation of immortal destiny, insult we not, thus wantonly dark of soul, and ungrateful to sublime Beneficence,-insult we not the prospect of futurity through all its ascending and bright mysterious vistas, by thus wasting hopes and perverting energies, while passing through our present state? Happiness, like goodness, dwelleth only with pure simplicity. Nothing else lasts. Our state is now entangled in the toils of infinite artificialities, opposed to nature, and We called refinement, of infinite sophistries, opposed to truth, yet called reason: thus are we cheated out of life. Our heart's heritage is taken from us. did not enough value it: we suffered it to be compromised to bubbles. We know its value now, for the bubbles have burst. But we must earn back our heritage. We degenerated, and therefore suffered. Time maketh sport of man, in scorn and punishment. For man, being linked invisibly with immortality, hath a power within him beyond the Father of mortal years, albeit not exercised with integral purity of the soul's elemental strength. Whereof it happens, not by chance, but inevitable justice, that old Calamity grapples, and harrows, and hounds him towards the tomb, graving thereon man's general epitaph: "He misused the gifts of his Creator-lived in wretchedness, without understanding-and died in its climax!"

R. H. Horne.

The Felon. He who possesseth slaves is in the perpetual habit of robbery and murder-robbery of the liberty, the existence, the body of a man-and murder, by shortening the duration of his life by excess of labour or privations.-Maltravers.

SALAMIS.

AN island of Greece, on the southern coast of Livadia, the ancient Attica. Xerxes, king of Persia, having invaded Greece with an immense army, the Athenians, rather than become slaves, abandoned their city, and, sending away their women and children, placed their whole trust in their fleet, which engaged the Persians in the straits of Salamis, and obtained a complete victory, B.C. 480.