an immense advantage into the scale of free labor.

The value of the productions of the island, since the act of emancipation, will be found in the work of Mr. Philippo, stated at considerable length, with tables, and extracts from parliamentary documents. For the sake of brevity, we omit all but the results. The average annual value of sugar-the great staple of the island-for six years preceding the commencement of the apprenticeship system, was £5,320,021; for the four years of apprenticeship, £6,218,801; and in the first year of freedom, was £5,530,000; in the second year, £5,424,000. This value has been obtained, too, notwithstanding the severe droughts with which the island has been visited. Mr. Philippo proceeds:

"A surprising improvement is apparent in the manners and intercourse of the people at large, since emancipation. They are respectful to their superiors, and social in their dispositions, and are seldom known to offer an insult except under great provocation."

"However justly the charge of indolence and improvidence was formerly brought against the peasantry of Jamaica, it is now no longer of general application. On returning from their daily labor, the men almost uniformly employ themselves in cultivating their own grounds, and the women in domestic purposes, until driven to repose by darkness. As to the great bulk of the people, no peasantry in the world can display more cheerful and persevering industry. These facts are confirmed by missionaries, by Messrs. Gurney and Candler, and other travelers; and by the public journals of the colonists themselves. The editor of the Jamaica Morning Chronicle, a high authority, of February 17, 1843, remarks: The colony remains in that quiescent state so favorable to improvement. It is gratifying to observe the impetus given to agricultural societies, and the formation of literary ones. We do not recollect ever to have seen such vigorous efforts put forth for the improvement of the people and of agriculture, as within the last few months." "

Sir Charles Metcalfe, in a despatch to the colonial secretary, March 22, 1842, says:

"The present condition of the peasantry of Jamaica is very striking. Their Vol. II.

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behavior is peaceable; they attend divine service in good clothes, many of them riding on horses. They send their children to school and pay for their schooling, and not only attend the churches of their respective communities, but subscribe for their different churches. They are generally well ordered and free from crime, and have much improved in their habits."

J. J. Gurney, Esq. after a tour through the island, remarks:

"The imports of the island are rapidly increasing, trade improving; the towns thriving; new villages rising up in every direction; property much enhanced in value; well managed estates productive and profitable; expenses of management diminished; short methods of labor adopted. Above all, education is rapidly spreading, the morals of the community improving, crime is in many districts disappearing, and Christianity asserting her sway with vastly augmented force over the mass of the population."

Mr. Philippo adds:

"The number of places of worship is greatly multiplied. The whole number can not, on the lowest calculation, be estimated at less than three hundred.

The attendance at all places of worship is astonishingly great. On Sabbaths, most of the churches are filled with pious and attentive worshipers. In 1842, the whole number of emancipated negroes in connexion with the various churches, was full one hundred thousand, one third of the whole black population of the island."

Our necessarily limited space excludes further extracts and historical illustrations. But the previous statements, enlarged as they might be to almost any extent, fully authorize the following conclusions: that a state of slavery is a state of peril-always attended with oppression and exasperation-and in all ages productive of insurrection and murders-that emancipation is safe, having never been followed by civil We war, or serious difficulties. may challenge the production of a solitary loss of life, in consequence of emancipation; and can, on our part, alledge industry, intellectual and religious improvement, good order, wealth, and general elevation, as its results.

We have then data on which to affirm with entire confidence, that emancipation in our southern states would be safe-alike useful to the bondman and the white. Let the force of the argument be tested by its application to another case. Let us suppose that as far back as we could trace any historical records, we found these facts; that when ever and wherever a republican government had been established, in whatever clime, age, or circumstances, that there, always and invariably, industry, good order, social improvement and wealth, had been the result; and that invariably and certainly, the establishment of a monarchical government had been

followed by war, insurrection, and crime and peril. Would not the argument be strong and even demonstrative, in favor of a republic? Would not he be considered as hardly less than insane, who should in the face of these facts, select or perpetuate a kingly government? Yet thus strong is the argument in favor of emancipation. Surely then, he who affirms the dangers and mischiefs of emancipation, in view of such an array of historical facts, must take counsel of his interest or his prejudice, and not of his reason.

We should like to add a variety of additional considerations, but our space compels us to postpone our remarks to a future time.

We have already exhibited the doctrine of Roman Catholics in respect to the church, the Scriptures, and the sacraments in general, with a particular account of baptism, confirmation, and the eucharist, as defined in their standards. Before considering the four remaining sacraments, and the important doctrines relating to the character of man and the way of salvation, we shall present one or two facts of recent origin, which exhibit more clearly the position of the Romish church toward the word of God. That word being, in our view, the only authoritative and infallible source of theological opinions, the position assumed toward it by any class of men, affords a fair presumption concerning the truth or falsity of their religious system.

We stated in our last number, that the indiscriminate reading of the Bible in the vulgar tongue is prohibited by the rules of the "Congregation of the Index," and that Bible societies had been anathematized by the supreme pontiff. It

may gratify our readers to have a specimen of these prohibitions and anathemas. Ten rules respecting prohibited books were enacted by the fathers to whom the work of preparing the "Index" was com mitted by the Council of Trent, and sanctioned by Pope Pius IV, in a bull issued March 24th, 1564. The fourth commandment in this Romish decalogue is as follows:*

"Inasmuch as it is manifest from experience, that if the Holy Bible, translated into the vulgar tongue, be indiscriminately allowed to every one, the temerity of men will cause more evil than good to arise from it, it is on this point referred to the judgment of the bishops, or inquisi tors, who may by the advice of the priest or confessor, permit the Bible translated into the vulgar tongue by Catholic authors, to those persons whose faith and piety they apprehend, will be augmented, and not injured by it; and this permis. sion they must have in writing.

But if any one shall have the presumption to read or possess it without such written perinission, he shall not receive absolution until he have first delivered up such Bible to the ordinary. Booksellers, however, who shall sell, or otherwise dispose of Bibles in the vulgar tongue, to any person not having such permission, shall forfeit the value of the books, to be applied by the bishop to some pious use, and be subjected by the bishop to such other penalties as he shall judge proper, according to the quality of the offense. But regulars shall neither read nor purchase such Bibles without a special license from their superiors."

According to the third rule different versions of the Old Testament may be allowed, but only to learned and pious men, at the discretion of the bishop; provided they use them merely as elucidations of the Vulgate version, in order to understand the Holy Scriptures, and not as the sacred text itself. But versions of the New Testament made by authors condemned in the Index (such as Luther, Calvin, &c.) are allowed to no one, since little advantage, but much danger, generally arises from reading them.' And to cut off, as it were, the last hope of a correct interpretation of the Scriptures, by the fifth rule, lexicons, concordances, indexes, &c. edited or compiled by the same proscribed class, may be used only when duly revised and corrected by the bishops and inquisitors.

In accordance with these rules several popes in succession have anathematized Protestant Bible societies. Pius VII, writing to the archbishop of Gnezn, in 1816, calls the Bible Society a "most crafty device, by which the very foundations of religion are undermined," a "pestilence," and a "defilement of the faith, most imminently dan gerous to souls." Leo XII, in 1824,

speaking of the same institution, says that it "strolls with effrontery throughout the world, contemning the traditions of the holy fathers, and contrary to the well-known decree of the Council of Trent, labors with all its might, and by every means, to translate, or rather to pervert, the Holy Bible into the vulgar languages of every nation, from which proceeding it is greatly to be feared, that what is ascertained to have happened to some passages, may also occur with regard to others; to wit, that by a perverse interpretation the gospel of Christ be turned into a human gospel, or what is still worse, into the gospel of the devil."

The present pontiff, Gregory XVI, determined not to fall behind his predecessors in his endeavors to suppress the word of God, within a few months past has issued an encyclical letter addressed to "all patriarchs, primates, archbishops, and bishops," throughout the world; in which, after enumerating the decrees of former popes against the general circulation of the Scriptures, he says, "We confirm and renew the decrees cited above, delivered in former times by apostolic authority against the publication, distribution, reading and possession of books of the Holy Scriptures translated into the vulgar tongue. .... It is therefore enjoined upon you to remove from the hands of the faithful alike those Bibles in the vulgar tongue, which may have been printed contrary to the above mentioned decrees of the sovereign pontiffs, and every book proscribed and condemned, (by the Index,) and to see that they learn, through your admonition and authority, what pasturages are salutary and what pernicious and mortal."

nation of religious truth in Italy,) which "strains every nerve to scatter corrupt and vulgar Bibles secretly among the faithful," together with "tracts designed to banish from the minds of their readers all respect for the church and the Holy See." This society, the fear of which this senile pontiff can ill disguise, he publicly reprobates "by name!"

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Such then is the present attitude of the church of Rome toward the Bible. The same spirit which led the Council of Toulouse in the thirteenth century, in a decree against the Albigensian and Waldensian "heretics," to forbid to the laity the sacred books "translated into the vulgar tongue;" the same spirit which led Pope Gregory XI, in the fourteenth century, to issue his bulls against Wicliffe ;* which in the following century dragged so many of the Lollards, both men and women, to prison and the stake, for daring to read and keep God's word in their own tongue"-and which by decree of the Council of Constance, even violated the grave of the reformer, and burnt his bones and scattered his ashes to the waves; the same spirit which caused seven persons to be burned at Coventry, in 1519, for "having in their possession, copies of the Scriptures or portions of the same," and for "having taught their children and families the Lord's prayer and the ten commandments in English,"of which they were convicted by the testimony of their terrified children,t—and which kindled the fires

of Smithfield, twenty-five years before, for Joan Boughton, a Wicliffite, then eighty years of age!-the same spirit which in the sixteenth century caused Tyndale's New Testament to be publicly burned at Paul's Cross, and which brought both Tyndale and his associate Frith to martyrdom; the same spirit which caused twenty five hundred copies of the " great Bible" then printing under Coverdale's supervision at Paris, to be consigned to the flames; the same spirit which led the British Parliament, in 1542, even after it was politically divorced from Rome, to prohibit Tyndale's or Coverdale's version of the Scriptures; the same spirit which in the reign of Mary, of bloody memory, brought Rogers, and Hooper, and Cranmer, and Ridley, and Latimer, and Bradford to the stake, and which in later times perpetrated all the hor rors of the Inquisition; this old Romish spirit of hostility to the Bible, the open Bible, the Bible "without note or comment," the Bible for the people; the spirit against which Luther fought, and Von Weselt

this discovery, Mourton said: 'Ah, sirrah, come; as good now as another time!' and then led her back immediately to the

bishop, who at once condemned her to

be burned with the six men who had been previously sentenced. They all suffered together, April 4, 1519, in a place called Little Park." Hexapla, p. 39.) For several of the facts (Bagster's referred to in this paragraph consult Fox's Book of Martyrs. Others like them may be found in "Rome's Policy toward the Bible," a spirited pamphlet by an "American Citizen."

"The king and parliament, soon after the publication of the Scriptures, retracted the concession they had formerly made; and prohibited all but gentlemen and merchants from perusing them." Hume, I, 573.

t Johan Von Wesel was a native of Wesel on the Rhine. "He was professor of theology in Erfurt, and afterwards a distinguished preacher at Worms. He regarded the Scriptures as the only guide of the Christian. He refused to accept even the interpretation of them at the hands of the church, The Bible must be its own interpreter. We have,' said

almost a century before him-this same spirit still lives in the Romish church. It shows itself here and there in the arrest of some unlucky bookseller or colporteur in Italy or France; in the condemnation of a helpless widow in Madeira for denying that transubstantiation is taught in the New Testament; in the burning of Bibles at Plattsburg; and (somewhat farcically, we own) in the thunder hurled from the Vatican against "the Christian League, and every other society which is or may be associated with it.”

But this spirit, whose horrid workings we have traced through six hundred years, knows how at times to be as gentle and accommodating as Charity herself. The church of Rome has discovered, that in spite of her anathemas, the common people will have the Bible. To meet this demand, she sometimes suffers an edition of the Holy Scriptures, in the common language, to go forth with her own imprimatur. But in that case she endeavors by mutilating the text, or glossing it over with bewildering notes, to secure the sanction of the word of God for her peculiar dogmas. The Vulgate is her standard, from which all other translations must be made.* A

he, to demand of the pope, and the priests as successors of Christ and the apostles, that they give us the word of God. If they will feed us with that, we will listen to them as we would to Christ himself; but if they will not, we will disregard them. He flourished in the middle of the fifteenth century." (Bib. Sacra, I, p. 434.)

*"Harduin maintained that the apostles and evangelists wrote in Latin,-that the Vulgate was the original, and the Greek New Testament a version, and that consequently the latter ought to be corrected by the former, and not the former by the latter. Cardinal Ximenes compared the Vulgate as printed in his edition (the Complutensian) between the Hebrew and the Septuagint, to our Lord crucified between two thieves, making the Hebrew represent the hardened thief, and the Greek the penitent."-(Campbell's Four Gospels, Diss. XI, Part 1.)

Harduin also pretended that Virgil's

specimen of the Rhemish version of the New Testament, was given on p. 428. The publication of this version, in the sixteenth century, was an anomaly in the policy of the Romish church toward the Bible. "After persecuting men, women and children, for two centuries, on account of their determined zeal in reading and circulating the word of God in English,-after separating husbands and wives and brethren, and committing to prison, to the scaffold and the flames, as obstinate heretics, hundreds and thousands who persisted in searching the Scriptures contrary to her edicts, canons, decrees, restrictions, anathemas and excommunications, she suddenly changes her policy, meets her enemies with their own proscribed weapons, and publishes a version of the New Testament in English, by which she aims to supersede all existing translations, and to prove that all her doctrines are inculcated by the word of God." The Rhemish Doctors justified this gross inconsistency by the state of the times. They say that this translation of the Scriptures was made, not because they "generally and absolutely deem it more convenient in itself, and more agreeable to God's word and honor, or the edification of the faithful, to have them turned into vulgar tongues, than to be kept and studied only in the ecclesiastical and learned languages," but merely "upon special consideration of the present time, state and condition of our country, to which divers things are either necessary, or profitable, or medicinable now, that otherwise in the peace of the church were neither much requisite, nor per

Eneid was "a fable invented by a monk to exhibit the triumph of the church over the synagogue;" an absurdity happily ridiculed by Boileau when he said, "I should like much to have conversed with

friar Virgil, and friar Livy, and friar Horace; for we see no such friars now."

(Ib.)