little light and cheerfulness at night. Many of these would thankfully avail themselves of good Libraries and good Reading Rooms, and would strike up harmless friendships there, and acquire harmless if not profitable tastes.

Some persons, we fear, have a sort of dread of literature getting downwards, as if we should make a nation of intellectual prigs, and be oppressed with scientific blacksmiths, poetic hair-cutters, philosophic cheesemongers and tailors. Now we confess at once, highly iniquitous as our assertion may appear, that we certainly should prefer a nation of intellectual prigs, to a nation of sots and drunkards, of gamblers and profligates.

We cannot indeed foretell the effect of diffused intelligence by the time the young ones of the present day have risen into mid-day life. A nation, advanced as we shall be, is a mystery which we do not pretend to unravel. But however mysterious the results of the intellectual advancement throughout the land, whatever the effect of driving bad English across the seas, of seeing factory-men with their Shaksperes in their hands, and even rustics with their Magazines, we see cause for expecting not evil but good results. Surely man with his powers developed is not likely to play a worse or more evil part than man with his powers suppressed; ignorance is not of itself superior to intelligence, or more safe; otherwise why do not the higher orders who have the choice, choose the bliss of ignorance? The cultivation of the powers and faculties that God has given is not of necessity a cause of fear; nor do we see any reason to suppose that intellectual advancement must be made at the sacrifice of moral advancement. Why should there not be advancement in both? Does our English literature on the whole appeal only or chiefly to the intellectual faculties? Have we no confidence in it as a whole? Is it after all rotten at the core? Is it without faith? If so, then in God's name burn it all; let the higher orders make instant bonfires in Belgrave Square of the books which they do not dread to read. Away with Shakspere, Bacon, Addison, Milton, Boyle, Spenser, Newton, and all that perilous and sceptic race, if they only make us wise, and do nothing to make us good. If a cold intellectuality is the great characteristic of English literature, if there is no heart in it, then let it go. But is this the case?

SLAVERY IN AMERICA.

BY AN EYE-WITNESS.

DEAR MR. EDITOR.

AMERICAN SLAVERY has almost suddenly become a subject of engrossing interest to a large portion of our English community. We have known of it all our lives, and yet it is beginning to take its place among the new topics of the day. The horrors attendant upon it have been grouped together, and presented to the view of the indignant reader by the graphic pens of writers of fiction, whose pens have been dipped in fire that they might write with burning letters the wrongs of slaves. Romances of an opposite tendency have also appeared on the opposite side, in which the light-hearted gaiety of the slave, and his freedom from corroding anxiety, are represented as evidences of an essentially happy condition. Besides novels, we have had reviews and newspaper articles in abundance; and lastly, we have been entertained with a correspondence between the opposite shores of the Atlantic, the next step to which, we are told, is to be the formation of a society in Great Britain for the benefit of the American negro.

It has been the lot of your present correspondent, Mr. Editor, to reside during several years in one of the Slave States of the West, where, in the capacity of a Clergyman, he was led to consider the question of servitude in its most important and serious aspects. As the incumbent of an agricultural parish in England, he has also been enabled to compare the circumstances of the hired labourer with those of the human "chattel," and to observe certain points both of resemblance and of dissimilarity. On many accounts he has been made to feel equally at home on either side of the Atlantic, and has therefore become perhaps, the better qualified to view American Slavery apart from the obscuring medium of local and national prejudices.

Among the numerous migrations of the various families of man, perhaps none has been so extraordinary in its origin, progress, and consequences, as the forced movement of the African race to the shores of America. I am not

going to dive deep into the shiftings of the human family. It is enough to know that when the people of Europe came into possession of the "New World," they severally felt the need of a labouring class capable of rendering their acquisitions commercially profitable by the cultivation of sugar, cotton, rice, and tobacco. The aboriginal inhabitants of these wide regions were physically and numerically inadequate to the requisite exertions, and a white peasantry, even if equal to the demand, would have been unsuited to the climate. Considerations of pecuniary gain prevailed over the dictates of natural justice, and it was resolved that the colonial possessions of Spain, Portugal and England, should be cultivated by the people of Africa. In carrying this bold design into execution, religion was forced into alliance with avarice, and the convenient principle was enunciated that "religion gives to its professors a right to reduce the unbaptized to slavery, with a view to the propagation of the Faith"."

The expedient of African servitude, thus devised through mixed motives of profit and of propagandism, rapidly gained favour among protestants and papists alike, and soon became a legalized branch of Christian commerce. Kings, princes, nobles, and merchants, rushed into the new speculation with equal avidity and enthusiasm, and the coast of Africa became to our forefathers what California and Mount Ophir are to our contemporaries. From the reign of Elizabeth to that of William III. companies were constantly forming in England for the furtherance of the lucrative traffic; and finally, by the treaty of Utrecht, England bound herself to act the part of a slave-merchant to the other nations of Christendom. This treaty was ratified under the good Queen Anne, by the signature of the bishop of Bristol, (then Lord Privy Seal,) and bound us to import into the western world 144,000 negroes in the course of thirty years, over and above the "assortments" of the ordinary merchants. It is stated on good authority that before the termination of the eighteenth century, we had thus transported about three millions of men, women, and children, besides a quarter of a million who perished on the voyage and were thrown into the sea. America and the West Indies received 2,130,000 of these wretched captives, and the trade had reached its highest pitch b Colonial Church Chronicle, vol. v. p. 323.

Montesquieu, "Esprit des lois," book xv. chap. 4.

of prosperity, when the thirteen colonies were torn from our reluctant grasp and the United States commenced their career of independence.

The United States then, inheriting from us their blood, their laws, and their religion, inherited also our English system of slavery, and our English mode of viewing that system. Slavery continued, in fact, exactly as we left it, with such modifications only as circumstances rendered necessary or expedient. Like other systems, so this also, when once established, had acquired a life of its own; and customs, laws, morals, and religious doctrines, had accommodated themselves to it, according to their respective degrees of pliancy. For half a century subsequent to the Revolution, English and American Slavery continued to exist, side by side, in the islands and on the neighbouring continent. But finally, our profits from this source having diminished, religion and humanity obtained at first an unwilling, and at length a ready hearing. Our slave colonies were weak, and the free population of England was strong; the will of the feeble consequently succumbed to the determination of the powerful, and at the cost of twenty millions added to the burdens of Great Britain, the negroes of our West Indies were emancipated. From America, however, Manchester still sought her cotton, and Liverpool, Bristol, Glasgow, and London, still expected their supplies of tobacco and rice. The profits of American Slavery, therefore, continued to augment with the prosperity of British trade and manufactures. The Slave States, instead of occupying the position of weak and distant colonies, possessed the advantage of constituting integral portions of the American Union, and were abundantly represented in the National Congress. Each individual State also retained its own domestic legislature, and the question of servitude as a general rule, was beyond the jurisdiction of the federal authorities. Hence we need not wonder that Slavery, though extinct in Barbadoes and Jamaica, maintains a vigorous existence in the broad expanse of Virginia, Mississippi, or Kentucky.

It was between the years 1830 and 1840, Mr. Editor, that I formed my acquaintance with the subject on which I now address you. The population of the State in which I dwelt amounted to about 600,000 white persons, and 180,000 negroes. I found the climate healthy, though extremely warm

in summer, the greater part of that State lying south of the 39th parallel of latitude. The winters were severe, though of course much shorter than in Canada or Vermont. The white inhabitants were generally in easy circumstances, and good society might be found as readily as in England, with a full share of refinement and intelligence. The rich vegetable soil, resting on a substratum of lime-stone, produced abundantly the various fruits of the earth. Indian corn was raised to a considerable extent, but the staple productions were tobacco and hemp. The former of these was sent down the river to New Orleans, and from thence exported to foreign parts. The latter, after arriving at maturity, underwent the laborious processes of "beating" and "hackling" until fit for the ropewalk and the manufacture of twine. The twine was woven in looms and converted into a coarse "bagging" which was exported to the cotton-growing States, and used in the construction of those massive bales in which the fleecy material arrives at the mills of Manchester.

The cultivation of the soil and the rude manufactures which I have described, devolved almost exclusively upon the slaves, and in the rope-walks and bagging-factories, slavery might sometimes be seen in its more repulsive aspects. But it may be remarked that American and Colonial slavery, from a combination of circumstances, have always worn a severer character than the system known by the same appellation in many of the older nations of the world. In the countries mentioned in Scripture, compulsory servitude was usually the result of successful war, and the captive was not only of the same colour with his master, but was often his superior in birth and education. Hence in the ancient East, as in modern Mahometan nations, slavery was not associated with entire degradation, and the slave was often treated as a son or a brother. Not unfrequently he was admitted by marriage into his master's family, and sometimes was advanced to the highest offices in the gift of the State. But the negro was brought into America and the West Indies mainly with a view to commercial profit, and with that view alone has he continued to be employed to the present day. Hence his owner regards him by tradition, as well as by actual position, according to his material worth; and is therefore constantly under the temptation of forgetting that the slave, equally with himself, is a man. Let not those who are placed under this