to the crown. When we arraign the interesting character of the

any man at the bar of our judgment, for conduct deemed reprehensible, justice requires that we should take into our consideration, before we condemn him, the times in which he lived, the circumstances under which he was placed, and the various actuating motives by which he was governed. To apply this to the case before us, we should remember, that the idea of regal succession, in strict lineal descent, had but very little hold on the national mind during any period of the Tudor dynasty. Henry bequeathed the crown to his daughters in reversion; but, as they had both been declared illegitimate by act of parliament, their right evidently rested on the legislative power conveyed to the king for its disposal.

As Edward professed his intention to procure the same sanction for subverting that arrangement, and as the Lady Jane stood next in the succession after the princesses, there would not appear, to persons living in those days, so violent a departure from acknowledged right as strikes us, with our widely different and more constitutional views of the question. The oath sworn by Cranmer and the other executors to fulfil the late king's will, ought, we think, to have proved an insuperable bar to so palpable a departure from it, and it actually caused the Archbishop long to hesitate before he acquiesced; but whatever might be the real cause of his yielding at last, we do not believe that it was in order to assist a petty intrigue, on the part of Northumberland, to elevate his family at the expense of justice and equity. He was far more likely to be shaken by the consequences which he well knew would ensue on the accession of the bigot Mary, -the subversion of the fair fabric of a scripturally constituted church, and the probable reversion to the errors of Rome.

We might have offered, had our limits permitted, some remarks

on

amiable Edward, but his life is too well known to render it necessary. His biographers have detailed va rious striking illustrations of his personal piety, and, considering his youthful age, of the solidity of his mind. Even when a child, he entertained a peculiar veneration for the book of God.

"So powerful indeed was the reve rence imbibed by the royal youth for God's recorded word, that when a play-fellow once laid a Bible on the floor, in order to give him the means of reaching something above his head, he not only refused to avail himself of such a help, but also capable of using the Book of Life for an expressed his displeasure, at being thought end so trifling." p. 2.

As he ripened in years, he imbibed a sincere regard for the pure principles of the Reformation, together with a knowledge of the points at issue between the two churches, not usual to his age or station. But the most striking traits of the youthful monarch's character were humility, and an earnest desire to fulfil the duties of his exalted rank. His remarks to Bishop Ridley, on his sermon respecting the duties incumbent on those whom Provi dence elevates above their fellowbeings, exemplify this very strongly.

Cover

"Edward was much affected by this discourse, and after dinner he desired the preacher should wait on him in the great gallery of the palace. When Ridley obeyThe king however mildly said, ‹ Be ed the call, he was, as usual, bare-headed. ed, my lord, and take a seat by me. I have to thank you most heartily for the excellent sermon which you preached this morning. In what you said I feel myself more concerned than any other person; for my means are the greatest, and my station is the highest in the kingdom: I therefore beseech you give your counsel as to how I may best perform the duty which you have shewn to be incumbent upon me. The bishop was so much overpowered by this unexpected display of goodness, that after sitting for a short interval he burst into he replied, that indeed the city of London tears. At length, mastering his emotion, afforded ample room for the exercise of benevolence, but that he could wish, before pointing out any particular channel for the royal bounty, to, consult the civic authorities. Edward approved this suggestion, and immediately furnished the prelate with a letter demanding the requi

site information. A committee of the citizens was in consequence formed; and in its report the indigent were distributed into three classes, the young, the diseased, and the idle. For the effectual relief of the unfortunate persons under the first two designations, King Henry's grants to the Blue-coat and St. Bartholomew's hospitals were confirmed, and additional sums were supplied to these establishments. For the relief and reformation of the idle, the royal palace of Bridewell was appropriated and endowed." pp. 752, 753.

How much might have been anticipated from the riper years of such a sovereign, guided by the wise counsels of Cranmer! how much of human woe and suffering, in the dark and dreary reign of his persecuting sister, would have been spared! But "the ways of God are not our ways, neither are his thoughts our thoughts."

We have been carried on so far by the engrossing nature of our subject, as almost to have lost sight

of the work under our review. We consider it highly creditable to Mr. Soames's reading and research; and, although we fear we should differ from him on some important points of doctrine*, if his statements were sufficiently explicit to allow of our perfectly collecting his sentiments, this does not prevent our appreciating the value of his work as an historical composition. We hope that he will proceed in his labours. A

In illustration of this remark, we might notice the author's statement respecting the article on "predestination to life," that "God has foreseen from all eternity the character of every moral agent in the great human family; and that he has mercifully determined upon guiding through earthly goodness, to heavenly joys, those who are fitted for the operations of his grace." Surely, whatever may be the Scripture doctrine, or the doctrine of our church, respecting" predestination to life," this supposition of foreseen merit or fitness in man accords with neither.

Such a sentiment, we fear, involves very inadequate notions respecting the character of original sin, the natural inability of man to turn to God, and the doctrine of Divine agency as explained by our own church. There is indeed to our minds a considerable defectiveness of statement

wherever there occurs a reference to these and kindred points of doctrine.

very important portion of our ecclesiastical annals yet remains before him, which will demand all his diligence, and which, if placed before the public in a pleasing form, will, we doubt not, prove acceptable and beneficial. But, in order to attain this desirable end, we would recommend him to compress his materials into a smaller compass, and to avoid those digressions which have increased the size, (and, we may add, the expense) of the present the subject demanded. If he asvolume beyond what we conceive sign to the remaining important periods a space proportionable to that which he has occupied with the short reign of Edward, he will defeat his purpose, and his ensuing volume will become so large as to deter those from reading it for whom it is well calculated to interest and it is professedly intended, and whom

benefit.

Memoirs of a West-India Planter ; published from an original Manuscript; with a Preface and additional Details. By the Rev. JOHN RILAND, M. A. Curate of Yoxall, Staffordshire. London. 1827. 5s.

THE Anti-slavery cause has called forth, as well it deserved, persons of all ranks, and minds and talents of every order, in its defence. Those who consult merely the coldest abstractions of the understanding will find an ample fund of argument and of fact, political, statistical, moral, and economical, to shew the fearfully calamitous effects of slavery; while those who think that on such a question, the warmest feelings of humanity, and the sacred dictates of religion may allowably exercise no feeble sway, will be utterly overwhelmed with the mass of heartrending details which have been elicited on this afflicting question. Poets, philosophers, statesmen, political economists, and divines, have

the commerce in human beings, ought to have been continued against the oppression of the same beings, either as transferred from a slave-ship to a slave-colony, or as descended from the exiles of Africa, and inheritors of their affliction. I think,' said the late Right Honourable William Windham, that too much distinction has been made between two things so closely connected with each other, as Slavery and the Slave Trade. They are in essence one and the same, and in their nature equally objectionable." pp. vii, viii.

We fear that Mr. Riland has too much cause to make this appeal. The friends of religion, generally speaking, have not done all they ought, or all they could, to promote either the temporal or the spiritual interests of the many hundreds of thousands of their ignorant and oppressed fellow-creatures, confined in our slave colonies. Many well disposed and religious laymen hang back, because their pastors do not urge upon them the importance of the subject; while their pastors refrain from so doing lest, it is said, "they should injure their ministry." But we have already dwelt so often and so recently upon this topic, that we will not dilate again upon it at present. We will only add, that we believe that nothing is more injurious to the usefulness of a minister of Christ than a hollow compromise with any disposition or practice which he knows or suspects to be wrong, but which he also knows to have a powerful advocate in the interests or prejudices of an influential portion of his flock. A West-India merchant or planter, who is truly a religious man, would not really think the worse of his pastor, or be less edified by his ministrations, because he found him faithful in stating what he conceived to be his sins or his duties, however different his own estimate might be upon the subject.

But the planter has a legal property in his slave; and would you interfere with legal property? On this most Christian legality let us hear Mr. Riland; only premising, that, as the whole nation has been guilty in sanctioning a truly pirati

cal system, we do not mean to assert that the expense of reparation ought not, in its just proportion, to be borne by all the culprits, as well as by the party most directly concerned. What that just proportion may be is not our present question; though we firmly believe, that whatever share of guilt was contracted by the government, or parliament, or the public, of past days, they were little more than unwitting instruments to work measures, devised and proposed by the West-India interest, and borne along triumphantly, by the powerful weight of West India power, and influence, and property. return to Mr. Riland on the legitiBut to macy of the caption and detention.

"Let the inhabitants of this enlightenfrom their recent liberation of European ed empire take a lesson of consistency Lord Exmouth succeeded, by the bombondsmen among the Algerines. When bardment of their fortress, in bringing a despot to terms, what would Europe have tinction of piracy, and left the captives said, had he insisted merely upon the exin chains? Among those victims, there might have been some even of our own countrymen; taken, we will suppose, in Algerine commander, who had ventured a Lisbon packet, by some enterprising to steer through the Straits of Gibraltar, and to cruize at the very mouth of the Tagus. We may faintly imagine, what throughout the empire at the news, that thunders of indignation would have rolled been manacled, branded, bastinadoed, and even a single British family should have worked in a gang of White slaves under a deniable, that an Algerine crew have as Moorish driver. It is nevertheless unnational and as moral a right to carry away, from the chain-pier at Brighton, a party of fashionables into African bondage; as we Christian Protestants, posTrade; or now retain, in continuing the sessed ourselves in the days of the Slave arrangements of a slave-cultured plantation." pp. viii, ix.

Mr. Riland continues to press home the question upon the friends of religion, in the following expostulation.

pretensions; and numbers among us are
"We are a nation of high religious
spiritually vain of their country, as having
shone so brilliantly, in their view, as the
light of the world, and the glory of all

the success of our great society in disper-
lands. One source of this vanity has been
sing millions of copies of the Scriptures.