character," how fearful they were of getting into debt, and how closely they questioned him relative to the assistance to be given them to enable them to support their families at Sierra Leone without borrowing money. On conversing with them afterwards at Halifax, he expressed himself "not only pleased, but astonished at the good sense of many of them ;" and on the 28th of November, when they had come into barracks, and he was better acquainted with them, he mentions them, when putting down the occurrences of the day, in the following manner : "I can say," says he, "that the majority of these men are better than any people in the labouring line of life in England. I would match them for strong sense, quick apprehension, gratitude, affection for their wives and children, and friendship and good will towards their neighbours."

The free blacks of Shelburn and Birch Town present themselves next to our notice; of whom however we are obliged, for want of more particular records, to speak collectively or as one body. It appears that all of them had received certificates of their character from those who had resided near or among them ; that is, from Major Skinner, Colonel Bluck, and others; and it is no small honour to them to add that, when some of their poorer brethren were arrested for debt to prevent their going, the rest of the community joined their purses together and set them free. Lieutenant Clarkson was so impressed with this as a generous trait in their character, that he thanked them publicly for it at their first muster.

We come lastly to the free blacks of Annapolis and Digby. We may say of these briefly, that every family had received the full certificates of character from these places, to which we shall add only the following circumstance in their favour. Mr. Clark, as we have had occasion to mention before, had been sent as the Government agent to visit, collect, and send off those there who were willing to emigrate. Mr. Clark was the son of Philanthropos, who had appeared in the public papers as an enemy to the expedition, and his son was in some degree also biassed against it.

*It is said that some of the people in question had not the full character required. Colonel Bluck explained himself afterwards in a letter with respect to these. He said, that the number going was so great, that it was difficult to speak of his own personal knowledge of every oue in all the points required by Lieutenant Clarkson; but be trusted from what he knew of the general decent conduct of those against whom the latter had demurred, that they would merit the terms which had been applied to the rest, except in the case of two persons, whese sobriety he seemed to question.

Yet when he delivered into the Government Office the names of those who had embarked from thence for Halifax in their way to Sierra Leone, with their respective occupations and callings, and with an inventory of their furniture, utensils, tools, implements, and other effects, he added of his own accord, after he had signed his name to the foregoing statement, "These are an industrious, sober people, and the inhabitants parted with them with regret."

Having now seen what they were as to character in the districts from whence they were taken, it remains only that we should take a view of them in their more aggregate situation, or when they lived together in a body of more than a thousand in the barracks and storehouses in Halifax. Lieutenant Clarkson, after one of his visits to them in this collective capacity, notices them in his Journal in this manner: "The free blacks whom I shall take with me, are a sober, hard-working, and grateful people, but they are rather enthusiasts in religion. -With respect to their industry, many have declared to me their surprise at their being able to support themselves upon such barren and stony land as they have done, and which never could have been brought into the state in which it is but by unwearied industry.-I can positively say that, if the settlement should not succeed, it will not be for want of proper people to colonize it."

At a future period when he visited them, "he found them, as appears by his Journal, at public prayer." On the 20th of December, when he spent the evening at Mr. Dight's, the company joined in remarking the decent behaviour of all the people." On December the 25th, "he ordered them fresh beef as a reward for their good behaviour." On December 29, he observes, "that they had hitherto conducted themselves to the satisfaction of the people of the town." In addition to this we shall only observe, that during the whole time of their stay in Halifax, there was no instance of robbery, theft, or riot on their part, or even of disturbance or drunkenness, and that the President and Council thanked Lieutenant Clarkson for their exemplary conduct when he took his leave of them,

[To be continued.]

117

The Lives of Reformers. By WILLIAM GILPIN, M. A. Prebendary of Salisbury, and Vicar of Bolder, in New Forest. A new Edition. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1809. Cadell and Davies.

T

HE scenes which are brought under review in the work, the title of which we have thus transcribed, are among the most memorable which are presented to us in the annals of human kind; and the lessons which they are calculated to afford are by no means exhausted. It is one of the most instructive considerations to which, even at the present moment, we can easily perhaps be called, to examine in what degree our conduct resembles that of the bigots of former days; how far it is guided by the same principles; and what portion it produces of similar effects.

We are very apt to give ourselves credit for having made much greater progress in the line of rationality than we really have. The consequence is very deplorable. The individuals, or the people, who are thus puffed up with a false conceit, remit those endeavours which are necessary to attain the point of perfection which they unhappily imagine they already have gained.

It is incredible, when a zeal for opinion in matters of religion is excited in a wrong direction, how much mischief it is capable of producing. And so long as, from the ignorance of human creatures, and the uncultivated state of the human mind, it continues liable to be excited in a wrong direction, so long the history of that mischief will be one of the most instructive objects of contemplation to mankind. The tendency of that history is to guard mankind against those evils to which that perversion might still expose them. And it is a weakness with which certain minds are very liable to be affected, that, because an evil is mitigated, it is therefore extinct; that because part of a burden is taken off, the part which remains is deprived of its power of gravitation and pressure.

The knowledge of the past is good only for the improvement of the future. To renew the recollection of the mischiefs of former bigotry; of the sinister interests of men of former days, confederated in the name of religion against the improvement of the future, is only useful as far as such evils are now to be averted, as such sinister interests now exist, as such confederacions are now to be counteracted.

Many of the evils with which men are familiar, they are too

apt to undervalue and disregard. Many of the good things which they have not yet experienced, they are apt to treat with similar indifference. For the attainment of those good things, more or less of present ease and present pleasure is often to be resigned. And a small portion of present ease and pleasure is apt, to a feeble mind, to outweigh the largest portions of future good; the smallest portion of ease and pleasure to the man himself, to outweigh the largest portions of benefit to mankind. The renewal of the recollection of former scenes of evil is often useful to rouse such persons to a perception and feeling of the circumstances in which present evils resemble former; to make them recognise the existence of the same causes; and the connexion between causes, whether existing in the same or in a different extent, and their natural effects. If the bigotry of the present day is not the same in degree as that of the days of Richard the Second, arsenic is still arsenic, be the quantity an ounce or a pound. Nor can the bigotry of the present day be without effects correspondent to the

cause.

The last Number of the Quarterly Review contains an article which entitles itself "History of Dissenters." In it all dissent from the church is treated as an evil, which, though it ought not perhaps to be extinguished by the gibbet or the pile, ought to be restrained by every safe and commodious discouragement. A careful selection of the absurdities which attached to ignorant and enthusiastic individuals among the dissenters, in an age when feeling was strong and knowledge small, is employed to throw discredit upon all who draw not in the trammels of the ecclesiastical corporation. A sort of gloss and commentary is employed, by which the persecution which the church of England carried on during some ages, with a series of unrelenting cruelties, only second to those of the church of Rome, are more than palliated, are almost justified. Laud is bewailed as little less than a confessor of righteousness, and even a martyr; the object at which he aimed, undisguised despotism both in church and state, is applauded rather than condemned; and even the means which he employed are chiefly lamented as imprudent, with a very small admission of any mixture of culpability. Had the spirit of the English people been such as to be subdued rather than excited by the persecutions of Laud, the critic leaves it very doubtful whether he would not, upon the whole, have regarded Laud as almost if not altogether a spotless character; a man entitled to the applause and veneration of Englishmen.

The causes of dissent the critic is desirous of representing as

mere trifles.

"It is humiliating," he says, " to recollect what has been suffered for no weightier ground of dispute in the beginning than the surplice, and the sign of the cross in baptism. Schism, which originated in no better cause, could have no good effect." According to this critic, it was a miserable thing to dissent from the church for no greater cause than the surplice and the sign of the cross; but it was by no means an improper thing in the church to persecute for these trifles. In the same manner might a votary of the church of Rome have addressed a churchof-England man, telling him how wretched it was to schismatize for no greater cause than pictures in churches, or a solicitation of the prayers of good men not merely when on earth, but also when in heaven.

"Liberality," in that publication, is a standing jest. It is here styled "a miserable state of Pyrrhonism." It is but just, however, to allow, that it is qualified by calling it " that which in these days assumes the name of liberality." What he wishes to be understood, if his words are not without an object, is, that whenever we hear, "in these days," any man speaking as an advocate for liberality, we should arraign him as an infidel. the writer is very ignorant of one or other of the two things of which he talks so freely. Pyrrhonism is doubtfulness; a distrust of all opinions. But the infidels of the present day are not doubters. Their persuasion is to all appearance as firm as that of those who are paid for believing.

But

There is "a hardness and asperity in the sectarian spirit,' says the critic. What! harder and of more asperity than the spirit of Laud, for example? or the spirit of a Warburton? or the spirit of a Horsley? or the spirit of a Hurd? or the spirit, in short, of the Athanasian creed? or the spirit of high-churchmen in general?

The most vulgar and hackneyed epithets of abuse are by this author picked up and eagerly applied to the different sects of dissenters. He talks of the Quaker sly, the Presbyterian

sour."

Among "the baneful effects of non-conformity it produces a moral expatriation." By this novel phrase the author something more than insinuates that dissenters are naturally bad citizens. This species of calumny, invented to render odious all attempts to throw off the yoke of the priests, we shall, in the scenes of persecution which the work before us displays, find to have been an old, a frequent, and regular contrivance. It is here founded upon no better foundation than that of the enlarged benevolence expressed by some dissenters, rejoicing when the blessings of civil