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the Declaration of Independence, enumerated among the things which justified the Colonies in severing the tie which bound them to Great Britain and in casting off their allegiance to the British Crown, the fact that the Crown had refused its assent to laws prohibiting the importation of negroes from Africa to be held as slaves. There was too at the adoption of the Federal Constitution already rising throughout the civilized world a strong opinion against the justice of negro slavery. The right to buy and sell negroes, already slaves, as an ordinary article of merchandise, was very generally held, I grant, but the right to buy and sell free negroes, or to reduce free negroes to slavery, was denied by the Catholic Church, and was, I would fain believe, held by very few. There were then free negroes as well as now; if every body regarded it lawful to reduce negroes as such to slavery, or looked upon them as having no rights which white men were bound to respect, what was the difference between a free negro and a negro slave? How can a man who has no rights which all others are bound to respect be said to be free?

Mr. Chief Justice Taney seems to us to proceed on the assumption that negroes are politically and legally a degraded race in the Union; but such is not the fact. They may be so in some of the States, but they are not so in the Union, nor indeed in all the States. We regret that in giving the opinion of the Court the learned Judge did not recollect what he is taught by his religion, namely, the unity of the race, that all men by the natural law are equal, and that negroes are men, and therefore as to their rights must be regarded as standing on the same footing with white men, where there is no positive or municipal law that degrades them. Here is what we dare maintain is the error of the Court. We admit that negroes, but not negroes any more than white men, may be reduced by positive law to slavery, but planting ourselves on the Constitution, and natural right as expounded by the Church and the Common Law, we maintain, and will maintain in face of all Civil Courts, that where no such law reduces. the negro to slavery, he is a free man, and in the absence of all municipal regulations to the contrary has equal rights with the white man. Neither race nor complexion disables a man under our Federal system. That negroes may be

citizens and possess equal rights with white men is proved by the fact that we have made them so in the territories acquired from France, Spain and Mexico, by the very treaties by which we acquired those territories. The opinion of the Court belongs to an epoch prior to the introduction of Christianity, and is more in accordance with the teaching of Aristotle than with that of the Gospel. We have no more disposition to interfere with slavery where it legally exists than have our Southern friends, but we do protest against an opinion which places negroes as such not only out of the pale of our Republic, but out of the pale of humanity. If opinion once went that length, it was the business of the Court to brand it with its disapprobation, and not to recognize it as law. The Court should lean to the side of the weak, and set its face against oppression. The negro race is, no doubt, inferior to the white race, but is that a reason why they should be enslaved, or why the Court should join the stronger against the weaker ?

The opinion of the Court which allows the slaveholder to sojourn temporarily with his slaves in a free State, or to hold them in transitu through a free State, we think is just; but the opinion incidentally expressed, that a slaveholder may settle with his people and hold them as slaves in any territory of the United States, we cannot accept, for reasons assigned in the earlier part of this article. We have anticipated, and we think we have refuted, the reasoning of the Court on this point. If we have not done it, Judge McLean has, and effectually.

us.

These are some of the exceptions we have felt bound to take to the opinion of the Court, as it has been reported to Of course, we are aware there is no appeal from the Supreme Court, and its opinion must stand as law till it is set aside. Though we take exceptions to it, and believe it in several respects erroneous, we trust we shall not forget our duty as a loyal citizen. For ourselves personally, we believe liberty is more interested in the preservation of the Union than even in preventing the extension of slave territory, since, if the slave trade be not revived, the extension of slave territory involves no real extension of slavery. But we regret the decision, for we foresee that it will be impossible to prevent the Anti-slavery agitation from being pushed on with new vigor, and with more danger

than ever. The decision will be regarded as an extreme Southern opinion, and the dissent from the majority by the ablest judges from the Free States will deprive it of all moral force out of the Slave States. We almost fear for the safety of the Union. Yet we believe Almighty God has great designs with regard to the American people, and we will trust in his good providence to carry us safely through the present crisis, the most dangerous that has as yet occurred in our history.

ART. VI.-LITERARY NOTICES AND CRITICISMS.

1. The Psalms, Books of Wisdom, and Canticle of Canticles. Translated from the Latin Vulgate, and diligently compared with the Hebrew and Greek, being a revised and corrected Edition of the Douay Version, with Notes Critical and Explanatory, by Francis Patrick Kenrick, Archbishop of Baltimore. Baltimore: Lucas, Brothers. 1857. 8vo. pp. 584.

THE American Catholic public can hardly be sufficiently grateful to the Archbishop of Baltimore for his numerous and invaluable contributions to our Biblical and Theological Literature. Besides smaller works, all bearing marks of industry and solid learning, we have from him a complete course, in Latin, of Dogmatic and Moral Theology, in seven volumes octavo, a Vindication of the Primacy of the Apostolic See, which has passed through five editions, and which may be said to exhaust the learning on the subject, a Vindication of the Church against the Protestant Episcopal Bishop of Vermont, a work of equal learning and spirit, a Revised and Corrected Translation of the whole New Testament, with Notes, Critical and Explanatory. And now we have a goodly volume containing a revised and corrected edition of the Douay Version of the Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the Canticle of Canticles, Wisdom, and Ecclesiasticus, illustrated with Critical and Explanatory Notes of great value and rare erudition.

The Douay Bible so called, made from the Latin Vulgate, is in general use among English-speaking Catholics, and is upon the whole, no doubt, a passable version. It, however, cannot be cited as authority in controversies, and the approbation it has received from our American Prelates does not interfere with the liberty of scholars and students in laboring for a more correct or a more elegant version. "The first Council of Baltimore," says the learned Prelate, in his Introduction to the work before us, "framed a decree for retaining the Douay Version, as having been approved by the Holy See, which assertion the Sacred Congregation of Cardinals desired to be expunged, no record of such approval having been found. The decree itself as resting on the constant usage of the Churches in which the English language prevails, was sanctioned with the addition made by the Prelates that a most accurate edition should be published. From the many changes made in the various editions, it has been found impracticable to point

to a standard that might be in all things followed; so that although since the Council, which was held in 1829, not less, perhaps, than ten large editions have been issued with permission and approval, it has not been possible to secure their entire accuracy." Although, then, the Douay version is in a general way approved, it would seem that we have no fully authorized edition of it.

Moreover, all our modern editions depart more or less from the original edition of the Douay Version, the language of which has become in many respects antiquated, and in need of revision to be intelligible to the mass of readers at the present day. The original Douay version is no doubt, upon the whole, a very excellent version, and worthy to form the basis of any new version that may be attempted in our language; but the worthy men who have modernized it at various times have been in general more praiseworthy for their intentions than for their literary taste and skill. The true genius of our Anglo-Saxon tongue is not always seized, and the rendering of the original Latin is often feeble, though faithful, and sometimes the version is as unintelligible to the mere English reader as the original itself. In style and language our version is too often inferior to that of King James' translators, and if the Protestant version had been made from a correct text, and its authors had been faithful in their rendering, it would be superior to ours. There is no reason why this should be so, and we ought to have an English version that should even in the accessaries of taste and elegance equal that generally used by Protestants. The preference, we give to the Protestant version of the Bible, is purely in a literary point of view; in all other respects we allow no comparison between the two versions.

In a new version of the Holy Scriptures into English, the Douay version undoubtedly should be taken as the basis, and followed wherever there is no urgent reason for departing from it, so that old associations may be as little disturbed as possible. This seems to be the principle on which Dr. Kenrick has proceeded in his translations. Perhaps, were we to find any fault with him, it would be that he has followed the old version too closely, and that too when both considerations of taste and intelligibleness authorized a departure. Why retain the word pestilence in the first verse of the first Psalm ? "Blessed is the man who walketh not in the course of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the chair of pestilence." The word pestilence comes in abruptly, and suspends the sense. It is not till we have reflected a long time, and obtained a very unusual sense of the word, that we are able to carry on to its close the thought of the inspired author. The word cannot mean pestilence in its literal physical sense, and are we so bound by the Vulgate that we cannot use the word which the Hebrew authorizes, and which the sense evidently demands? Is it not lawful in translating to translate idioms, and when the sense requires to translate instead of transferring the original word? In some instances we own we should wish a greater liberty than the author has allowed himself; but we think upon the whole his revised and corrected version is far superior to the ordinary editions of the Douay Bible-superior in taste and elegance, and in intelligibleness. His labors deserve as we trust they will receive the gratitude of every Biblical student, and have a powerful tendency to encourage Biblical studies in this country.

2. Science vs. Modern Spiritualism. A Treatise on Turning Tables, the Supernatural in general, and Spirits. Translated from the French of Count AGENOR DE GASPARIN, by E.W. ROBERT, with an Introduction by Rev. ROBERT BAIRD, D. D. New York: Kiggins & Kellogg. 1857. 2 vols. 12mo.

THE fact that these volumes are ushered in by an Introduction from Dr. Baird is presumptive proof that they are of no great value. They are volumes of great promise and little performance. The author is a French Protestant, a fanatic, and has written this work mainly for the purpose of getting a chance to vent his spleen against Catholicity. He probably is very far from understanding himself, or appreciating the spirit or tendency of his own work. His book is written in the interest of the lowest form of rationalism, and its principles and methods of reasoning tell as strongly against the divine supernatural as against the demoniacal, and if admitted would render all arguments from miracles in favor of divine revelation inappropriate and inconclusive. He in reality denies the supernatural, and he may explain the miracles of our Lord on scientific principles as well as the facts of Modern Spiritualism which he concedes.

Count Gasparin is a man of much passion, little science, and feeble intellect. He concedes up to a certain point the phenomena alleged by our modern Spiritualists, or Spiritists, as we prefer to say, and attempts to explain them on scientific principles, by mesmerism and the odalic force asserted by Baron Rechenberg. He does this by first contracting mesmerism to a natural force, and then expanding it so as to embrace any extraordinary phenomenon he has to explain. He takes also the liberty of cutting his garment to his cloth. One time he stretches his mesmeric force so as to take in the phenomena; another time he pares down the phenomena so as to bring them within the cadre of his mesmerism. The poor man has not attained to the first inkling of genuine science, and gives in his own person a striking proof of being under Satanic influence.

In brief we may say, we have read his work with no satisfaction or instruction. He has told us nothing that we did not already know, and offered us no explanation with which we were not already acquainted, or which we have not in our Spirit Rapper, published in 1854, proved to be insufficient. We do not accept all the theories of the Marquis de Mireville, but we believe that Satan has a hand in modern Spiritism, and that there are phenomena well attested that cannot be explained without the supposition of Satanic intervention. We are glad to learn that modern Spiritism, under the name of mesmerism, has been declared unlawful by the Holy See.

3. Lizzie Maitland. Edited by O. A. BROWNSON. New York: Dunigan & Brother. 1857. 16mo. pp. 340.

Tis is a work by a highly accomplished lady, a convert from Episcopalianism, and is, we think, a work of a high degree of merit. We have given our opinion both of it and the class of works to which it belongs in the Introduction, and need here only commend it to the suffrages of the reading public.

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