a White or free man, therefore, perpetrates the most atrocious acts of barbarity, in the presence of slaves only, the injured party is left without means of legal redress. In the Colonies of Great Britain, the same facilities have not been afforded to the slave, to purchase his freedom, as in the colonial possessions of Spain and Portugal. On the contrary, in many of our colonies, even the voluntary manumission of slaves by their masters has been obstructed, and in some loaded with large fines. Many thousand infants are annually born, within the British dominions, to no inheritance but that of the hopeless servitude which has been described; and the general oppressiveness of which may be inferred from this fact alone, that while, in the United States of America, the slaves increase rapidly, there is, even now, in the British Colonies, no increase, but, on the contrary, from year to year a diminution of their numbers.

Such are some of the more prominent features of Negro Slavery, as it exists in the Colonies of Great Britain. Revolting as they are, they form only a part of those circumstances of wretchedness and degradation which might be pointed out, from their own official returns, as characterizing that unhappy state of being.

It is by no means intended to attribute the existence and continuance of this most approbrious system to our colonists exclusively. On the contrary, the guilt and shame connected with it belong also to the People and Parliament of this country. But on that very account are we the more rigidly bound to lose no time in adopting such measures as shall bring it to the earliest termination which is compatible with the well-being of the parties who sustain the grievous yoke of colonial bondage. In May 1823, the Government and Parliament of this country, having taken these evils into their consideration, resolved that the degraded Negro should be raised, with all convenient speed, to a participation of the same civil rights which are enjoyed by the rest of his Majesty's subjects. In this resolution all parties, even the West-Indians, concurred. Ministers proposed to carry it into effect by a recommendation from the Crown to the Colonial Legislatures. Against this course, the leaders in the cause of abolition entered their protest. The Colonial Legislatures, they said, were themselves the cause of all the evil that was to be redressed to hope for effectual reform at their hands was vain and illusory: that reform

could be brought about only by the dis rect and authoritative interference of Parliament, a point which experience had abundantly proved. The Ministers of the Crown, however, thought it right once more to try the experiment, only intimating, that, if the Colonies contumaciously resisted, Parliament would be called upon to interfere. Accordingly they lost no time in urging the Colonial Legislatures to pass certain laws for giving effect to the Resolutions of Parfiament. Those Legislatures have, how ever, resisted the call. Upwards of two years and a half have passed, and no effectual steps have yet been taken by them with a view either to the mitigation or extinction of slavery. On the contrary, the documents laid before Parliament in the last session, prove that they are fully resolved not to comply with the requisitions of Government. What now remains, therefore, on the part of the public, but to implore Parliament at length to take upon themselves the task of terminating the evils of colonial bondage, and to proceed with all convenient speed to the accomplishment of their own resolutions?

As we cannot doubt that the resistance, on the part of the colonists, to the proposed reforms, will be powerful and persevering, it becomes necessary to call into action all proper means, both of diffusing a knowledge of the evils of colonial bondage throughout the land, and of exciting increased efforts for speedily putting a period to the state of slavery itself throughout the British dominions.

peace

tion. If it be, then is a great portion of the instructions of our great Lord and Master of a secular kind for on what subjects did he chiefly discourse, in his divine Sermon on the Mount, but on those of justice and mercy, of compassion and kindness? And what were the objects of his severest maledictions, but injustice, oppression, and cruelty; above all, hypocrisy, the combination of a bigh profession of religion with the violation of its righteous precepts; long prayers and sanctimonious observances, with the "devouring of widows' houses," extortion, and oppression? What was the chief aim of his instructive parables,—of the rich voluptuary and Lazarus; of the good Samaritau; of the relentless fellow - servant, and of his awful. illustration of the Day of Judgment, but to inculcate lessons of compassion and sympathy, and to incite men to works of mercy and labours of love ?

But it is losing time to attempt to obviate objections which have no real existence. The Christian pulpit is every where employed in pressing topics of an exactly similar nature, though of less urgent necessity than that in ques-, tion. Is not a great proportion of the Charity Sermons which issue from the pulpit, preached for the establishment and support of infirmaries and hospitals; for the relief of temporal want, and the mitigation of bodily suffering? But not only would the exposition of this subject from the Christian pulpit be in strict accordance with established precedent, but the consideration of it there would be peculiarly appropriate. If righteousness, justice, and mercy, be essential parts of the Christian charac ter; if all the Law and the Prophets be comprehended in the two commandments of loving God with all the heart, soul, and strength, and our neighbour as ourselves; then are we bound to manifest those qualities by the sympa thy we feel for our Negro brethren, and by the exertions we make for their relief; then is it the indispensable duty of the Christian Minister to urge his hearers to combine their efforts for that purpose. He does not hesitate to arge upon them their obligation to abound in every good work. But is it possible to conceive a work more consonaot to the Christian character, than that of administering relief to the most wretched and helpless of the human race, whom our own institutions have doomed to misery, barbarism, and bondage; and whose intense sufferings we ourselves are perpetuating and aggravating, both by the consumption of

their produce, and by the additional support we afford to the slave-system by bounties and protecting duties? Unquestionably the guilt of its enormous and accumulated evils lies on every individual in the empire, who can raise his voice against it, and yet is silent. And more especially does this responsibility press upon every Minister of the Gospel, who, believing such things to exist, yet shrinks from denouncing and reprobating them, and from urging on his flock their solemu obligations with respect to them,

If it be true, that, in the Last Day, those who have not sympathized with, and aided, their suffering brethren, will be classed with the enemies of Christ, who "shall go into everlasting punishment;" can we suppose that those shall be deemed wholly guiltless, who, having had it in their power to contribute to put an end to such a frightful complication of misery and crime, have refused to unite in that work of justice and mercy? When "righteousness shall" at length "be laid to the line, and judgment to the plummet;" and when actions, which too many are apt to regard as indifferent or innocent, will be ranged, their motives and consequences being taken into account, in the columni of crime; the part we may have acted respecting the poor Negro will assu redly not be left out of the estimate.

Had the Ministers of the Gospel been always alive to the obligations which lay upon them as the Preachers of truth and righteousness, Negro Slavery, that compound of injustice, impiety, and cruelty, could never have gained that footing which it now possesses in this land of high Christian profession and of pre-eminent benevolence and refinement. And if they were now to exert themselves with becoming zeal and energy, that system, comprising every calamity and outrage which man has power to inflict upon his fellow-meu, could not long subsist in a country where Christianity is recognized and established as a part of its fundamental laws; where temples for Christian worship are profusely scattered in every part of it; where its Ministers have free access to all ranks of the community; and where Religion lifts her mitred head in Courts and Parliaments, is suffered to raise her voice in the Palace as well as the Church, and to admonish the Legislature and the Monarch as well as the People.

Why this deep crime and foul disgrace of our country should, with a few noble exceptions, have hitherto escaped the reprobation, and been imagined to

lie out of the sphere, of the Christian Pulpit, it were useless to inquire. We rejoice in the hope that the illusion is rapidly dissipating, and that the time is at hand when the cause of the hapless Negro will be advocated in the right place, with the boldness and fidelity becoming Christian Pastors. Some distinguished Ministers of the Gospel have already set the example, and we anxiously desire that all, whether of the Establishment or belonging to the various religious bodies, may follow the noble precedent,-not merely by ad. verting briefly and cursorily to the subject of slavery; not merely by describing the horrors of the system, and exciting the sympathy of their hearers for its unhappy victims; but by pointing out and pressing the adoption of the most effectual means of putting an end to it; and by showing that every individual, however obscure his station, or humble his talents, may render important assistance, may do much, by his own example and influence, towards its final destruction. He may at least unite in petitioning Parliament to emancipate the slaves from their cruel bondage. He may testify to all around him his detestation of that bondage, by abstaining as much as possible from the use of those articles which are the produce of the tortures and agonies of his fellow creatures. And he may at least address his earnest and unceasing prayer to the God of mercy, that He would listen to the sorrowful sighing of the oppressed, and that He would hear and answer the cry of those who are suffering from the cruelty and rapacity of men calling themselves Christians.

Under existing circumstances we can imagine no subject which can more worthily engage the constituted guardians of the public virtue, its morals and religion, than the denunciation of that anti-Christian tyranny which tends to obliterate all sense of natural justice, every feeling of humanity, every principle of religion; which renders the hearts of its active agents and abettors inaccessible to Christian reproof, and subjects them, consequently, to a more hopeless bondage than even that of their poor victims, inasmuch as it extends beyond the period of their present existence.

We can imagine nothing more truly in character for Ministers of that Gospel which lays the axe to the root of every corrupt tree, than to make open war against this bold and malignant "enemy of all righteousness;" since it is apparent that in noc mm nity, where

it reigns as in the British Colonies, can the Gospel have "free course," so as to produce those extensive moral transformations which it is destined to accomplish. It is a matter of heartfelt rejoicing, indeed, that the preaching of the Gospel, even in the land of slavery, should not be unaccompanied with its renovating power; but we consider such instances of its success as no argument against the general hostility which the system of slavery bears to Christianity. Such, indeed, is the baneful influence of that system, and the contaminating effect which a familiarity with it produces, that even zealous Ministers of the Gospel are led to imagine themselves under the melancholy necessity of administering that Gospel partially. They inculcate, indeed, upon the oppressed slave, its gentleness, meekness, and long-suffering; but they withhold from his oppressors the exposition of the woes which it, denounces against injustice and oppression. And even those other sins, which prevail the most among the masters of slaves,-the violation of the Sabbath, and impurity of conduct, they dare not condemn, with the explicitness which becomes the Christian Minister, but at the hazard of persecution, if not of martyrdom. The truth, instead of being preached without reserve, and impartially to all, must, in this part of the dominions of Christian Britain, be garbled and mutilated. To preach the pure doctrines of the Gospel to slave-holders; to enforce upon them the sanctity of the Sabbath; to tell them that fornication is one of those sins for which the wrath of God will come upon them; to remind them of the absolute right of their fellow-men, the Negro slaves, to receive at their hands compassion, justice, humanity, brotherly kindness, love, would be to rush into the very jaws of destruction. We may imagine, from the example of the Missionary Smith, what would be the fate of the Minister or Missionary who, in the land of slavery, should have the boldness to tell the slave holders, "It is not lawful for thee thus to degrade and oppress thy fellow-creature, thy brother: It is not lawful for thee to treat immortal intelligences as brute animals; to scourge and chain thy over-worked and defenceless slave: It is not lawful for thee to force him to labour on the Sabbath day for the subsistence thou art bound to give him: thou art thereby heaping to thyself wrath against the day of wrath." And, yet, is not this the language he is bound to

use?

But "to touch on such topics," it

may possibly be said, "would be the neight of imprudence, and must wholly defeat the object of Missions, and endanger the lives of the Missionaries: the fate of Smith and of Shrewsbury are sufficient proofs of the necessity of caution." We admit the existence of the danger: we admit that persecution more fierce and cruel could hardly be expected in China or Japan, than has been experienced in the Slave Colonies of Christian Britain. But without censuring those who have submitted to the alleged necessity of thus abridging their commission to preach the Gospel, to declare the whole counsel of God, to every creature; we would ask, whether all this does not prove the incompatibility, not only with law and justice, but with Christianity itself, of the slavery which prevails in our Slave Colonies. But though it may be difficult, and even perilous, to exhibit, in those colonies, any other than an imperfect and mutilated picture of Christianity; yet here, at least, in this happy country, the Minister of the Gospel may enforce its obligations without concealment or reserve. In the United Kingdom, at least, an unmutilated Gospel may still be preached, without hazard, to the highest as well as to the lowest of the commanity, none daring to make the boldest asserter of its uncompromising doctrines afraid. Here, Negro Slavery, the most daring of all outrages on the laws both of God and man, may be safely and successfully attacked from the Christian pulpit; and by the instrumentality of that mighty engine, even have its death-blow speedily administered.

Thirty-eight years have now elapsed since the wrongs of the Negro Slave have occupied the anxious attention of the people of England. How little has yet been done for his vindication, we need not specify. But we may ask, now much longer we are to wait in the expectation that the Colonists will themselves achieve the work of reformation? Or shall we leave them

still to place their reliance, for the perpetuation of their immoral and destructive system, on our carelessness, or timidity, or insincerity,-a feeling which, it must be owned, our conduct in time past has been too well calculated to engender? Is it not at length high time to resort to decisive and etfectual measures? Is it not high time that Christians (those to whom the name truly belongs) should combine all their efforts, should concentrate all the force of their moral and religious principles, in the strenuous use of every means by which they themselves and their country may be soonest purged from this deep pollution? Is it not, most especially, high time for " the Priests, the Ministers of the Lord," to interpose, that this moral plague may be stayed, before this highly favoured land be smitten with a curse? Let the worshippers of Mammon propose a league with this "enemy of all righteousness;" but let Christian Ministers give it no quarter. To them we would say, in the words of the Prophet of old, "Cry aloud; spare not; lift up thy voice like a trumpet; and shew my people their transgression, and the house of Jacob their sin." After the example of the same Prophet, let them. reprove and exhort those who, while they frequent the courts of the Lord, and appear to "delight in approaching to God," yet continue to smite with the fist of wickedness;" and, on the very day appropriated to his service," to find their pleasure, and exact all their labours;" reminding them, that the service which God requires at their hands, in the first place, is," to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke." Nor does he less require, at the hands of all his Ministers, and all his people, that they should combine their strenuous and unceasing efforts to bring about this righteous consummation. London, January 1, 1826.

Stephen's Delineation.
Wilberforce's Appeal.
Clarkson's Thoughts.
Negro Slavery as it exists in the United
States, and in the British Colonies,
especially in Jamaica.
Debate of 15th May, 1823, with an Ap-
pendix.
Impolicy of Slavery.

First, Second, and Third Reports of the Anti-Slavery So iety.

Tracts, No. 1. to XV. on Negro Slavery, of which No. XIII. solves the question, Is Negro Slavery sanctioned by Scripture?

Anti Slavery Reporter, No. I. to VII. Stephen's England cuslaved by her own. Slave Colonies.