some foolish people are weak enough to think is unfavourable to religion, and inimical to humanity?

But though there is no certainty that slavery is any where forbidden to Christians, what opinion, I would ask, would that prelate entertain of an individual who advocated the crime of Burking, as a practice beneficial to dissection, that came not under the ban of the general injunction, "to do no murder?" And though that prelate has no certainty that the stealing of human beings is any where prescribed in the Decalogue, I would ask, with reverence, to what kind of property the eighth commandment does not apply? But you will say, I am expending my zeal to little purpose in refuting arguments, for the purpose of repudiating a system that exists no longer; but I am sorry to tell you that it does exist―nay, more, that it flourishes. Slavery is, indeed, scotched in our colonies, but is not killed. Its name is changed: its character remains to be changed hereafter. In the islands of the French and the Spanish, in the Brazils, and in America, the system is as prosperous as ever: in the latter, where the abolition of their slave-trade was simultaneously carried with our act, the southern states are still surreptitiously supplied with slaves, (I mean young robust slaves, not the refuse of the plantations, which their colonisation society send to Africa,)

by Spanish smugglers from Cuba. Dr. Walsh, in 1831, asserts, that "this horrid traffic in human flesh is nearly as extensively carried on as ever, and under circumstances, perhaps, of a more revolting character." In 1834 he might have used the same language. But even at the present time I have been not a little surprised to find persons, even of a religious character, advocating slavery less as a system beneficial to the community than pleasing to the Divine authority; from which they wrest a sanction to a system which was tolerated from a necessity no longer in existence, but not enjoined, and any thing but recommended. "Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee: he shall dwell with thee among you in that place which he shall choose in one of thy gates where it liketh him best: thou shalt not oppress him."*

* Well might this passage be quoted, in commenting on that circular, lately addressed by a colonial minister to the Governors of the West Indies. "The intrusion," says that document, "into a British colony, of foreign fugitive slaves, should be made punishable as a misdemeanour, by imprisonment, with hard labour." And farther, he is to be considered as an alien, and forcibly sent off the island. Was the case of Lecesne and Lescoffery so soon forgotten, that the extraordinary powers exercised over men of colour, as aliens, by Mr. Hector Mitchell, was to be re-inforced, for the purpose of arming men, already vested with a little brief authority, which they certainly make the most of, with still more power over the coloured community?

"If thy brother, an Hebrew man, or an Hebrew woman, be sold unto thee, and serve thee six years, then in the seventh year thou shalt let him go free from thee." "But the stranger, (that is, the slave,) that dwelleth with you, shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself, for ye were strangers in the land of Egypt." The author of the "Annals of Jamaica," unlucky for his argument, cites the sale of Joseph to the merchant who dealt "in spicery, balm, and myrrh," as a proof of the legality of slavery. Now, it is to be remembered, that Joseph was only doomed to bondage, when the question was asked by one of his brethren, "What profit is it that we slay our brother?" and the legality of the sale certainly does not appear to have been very satisfactory to Joseph, for we read of his speaking to the chief butler in prison of his slavery, as a robbery of his rights-" For, indeed, I was stolen away out of the land of the Hebrews." Now this is the first slave sale on record, and it is spoken of as a robbery. The first slave "set over the land of Egypt was a Jew; a Mameluke was the last." The ancient slave-dealers are so variously described, that it is difficult to know how to class them. The Midianite who bought Joseph was a dealer "in spicery, balm, and myrrh." Josephus says, Solomon brought from Ophir "much ivory, blacks, and monkies." But the imports of Solo

mon are differently described in the book of Chronicles: "Every three years came the ships of Tarshish, bringing gold and silver, ivory, apes, and peacocks."

But if the Jews practised slavery, where is the precept in the Christian Scripture that recommends that system? and if they, to whom slavery was permitted, abused that license, retributive justice may have written its moral in the doom of that people which was seven times reduced to slavery, and, finally, sold in the public market at the fall of Jerusalem.

Now, though it may be a great consolation to my poor friend, the Timbuctoo negro, who has been pining in bondage for the last thirty years, to be told that slavery was coeval with Noah, I doubt if the poor fellow would like to travel with any annalist of slavery to a period posterior to the Deluge, in quest of an antediluvian authority for the interesting fact, that the "system flowed naturally from the sources of humanity and reason, that none should kill one another in cold blood." The poor Timbuctoo man would, probably, say "Reverend Sir, when we fight in Africa, reason has nothing to do with our warfare, and humanity has just as little to say to the seizure of our enemies; for if we spare our prisoners, it is because we mean to sell them to your people; and if we go to war with our neighbours, it is because

you Christians on our coast are always ready to buy them up: but I beg to assure you, there would be no wars amongst us if there were no white men to buy the captives, for the sake of which advantage our marauding excursions are undertaken. It is to supply your dealers we lie in ambush for the helpless women of one another's tribes. It is for you, Christian buckras, we deprive mothers of their children, and the daughters of our people of their natural protectors. It is for gentlemen like you, that the ties of nature are torn to pieces in the heart of Africa. It is for your service that we lay violent hands on the poor females of our country; and it is for your system, that 'flows naturally from the sources of humanity and reason,' that we desolate the land which gave us birth!'

We suppose if the white gentleman deigned to notice the observation of "the African savage "

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Simpleton !" he would say, "what right have you to complain of a system which, as I have already told you, has the sanction of the earliest authority? If you work for us, do we not feed and clothe you -lavish the tenderest care on you-and if you misbehave, do we not correct you for your good?" "You do, Massa, indeed!" I hear the black man reply" Massa take too much trouble on him hands a great deal."-" Silence, ungrateful negro!" would the white gentleman continue, "if we