LETTER XXX.

"SACRED RIGHTS."

To J. BUCKINGHAM, Esq., M. P.

DEAR SIR,

Kingston, Sept. 15, 1834.

A negro was recently brought before me belonging to a Mr. Anderson, of this town, to be sworn in as a constable on his master's property. I discovered, by the mere accident of seeing the man sign his name in very well written Arabic, while I was swearing in his comrades, that he was a man of education, and, on subsequent inquiry, a person of exalted rank in his own country, who had been kidnapped in a province bordering on Timbuctoo. He had been sold into slavery in Jamaica, nearly thirty years ago, and had preserved the knowledge of the learning of his country, and obtained the character of one a little more enlightened than a majority of his savage brethren, and that was all. The interest I took in all Oriental matters (if no other motive influenced me) induced me to enter minutely into this man's history, I had him to my house: he gave me a written statement of the leading events of his life. I found the geographical part of his story correct: he became a frequent visiter of mine in his master's leisure time; and I soon discovered that his attainments, as an Arabic scholar, were the least of his merits. I found him a person of excellent conduct, of great discernment and discretion. I think if I wanted advice, on any important matter, in which it required extreme prudence, and a high sense of moral rectitude to qualify the possessor to give counsel, I would as soon have recourse to the advice of this poor negro as any person I know. Now, without going into any discus

sions of an anti-slavery description, by what name under heaven, that is compatible with moderation, that is musical to ears polite, must that system be called, which sanctioned the stealing away of a person like this, as much a nobleman in his own country as any titled chief is in ours, and in his way, without any disparagement to the English noble, as suitably educated, for his rank? Fancy, Sir, one of the scions of our nobility, a son of one of our war-chiefs-Lord Londonderry's, for example, educated at Oxford, and, in the course of his subsequent travels, unfortunately falling into the hands of African robbers, and being carried into bondage. Fancy the poor youth marched in the common slave coffle to the first market-place on the coast. He is exposed for sale: nobody inquires whether he is a patrician or a plebeian: nobody cares whether he is ignorant or enlightened: it is enough that he' has thews and sinews for a life of labour without reward. Will you follow him to the slave-ship that is to convey him to a distant land? A vessel, perhaps, similar to that visited by Dr. Walsh on his passage to Brazil, "where 562 human beings were huddled together, so closely stowed that there was no possibility of lying down or changing their position night or day." -Well, like Sterne, let us take the single captive: he survives the passage, and has seen the fifth part of his comrades perish in the voyage: he is landed on some distant island, where he is doomed to hopeless slavery. The brutal scramble for the slaves has ceased: he is dragged away by his new master, but not before he is branded with a heated iron, which may only sear his flesh, while the iron brand of slavery, the burning thought of endless bondage, "enters into his soul."

If he wince under the brand, some ulema of Africa, who has studied the annals of Christian slavery, may console him with the reflection, that it was lawful of old to mark the thing we have bought or sold," and his master shall bore his ear through with an awl, and he shall sell him for ever." But, perhaps, the ulema,

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may forget to inform him that his master cannot do so before the servant shall plainly say, "I love my master, my wife, and my children; I will not go out free." I have heard of slaves who would not go out free." I have listened to many stories of negroes, who so loved their masters, that they scoffed at liberty: but I have no faith in unnatural affection: I never saw the slave who would not "go out free," if he had the power of so doing; and who would not sacrifice his love, even for his master, for the enjoyment of the thing in life which men most love-their liberty.

Do not imagine that the negroes in any condition of servitude in these countries, are a happy and contented people: believe me, there is not a man stolen from his country, and carried into slavery, who does not feel more misery, and undergo more suffering, than I have the power or the inclination to describe. The Rev. Mr. Brydges, however, assures us, that " slavery has been established by prescription, and immemorial usage has confirmed it as one of the most important, if not the most obvious, bonds of civil society!!!" Will the amiable historian have the kindness to inform us, what is there in those bonds of civil society which are obviously advantageous to the community of any slavecountry, or beneficial to the victims of this immemorial usage? "There is no passage in the Christian Scriptures," we are told by Paley, "by which slavery is condemned or prohibited." But what passage, pray, in the Christian Scriptures, tolerates it? Is it the one that tells us "To do unto others, as we would that others should do unto us?? St. Paul, as Mr. Brydges observes, preached to slaves obedience to their mas

* The words of the text are, "Servants, obey in all things your masters, according to the flesh," &c. The word slave, I believe, is not to be found in the Scriptures; but I concede to Mr. Brydges, that the term bond-servant, to all intents and purposes, means a slave, in our acceptation of the word. A great deal of learning, I believe, has been misapplied by anti-slavery writers in refuting the opinion that the state of bond-service was

ters; but St. Paul did not preach oppression to the masters of them; neither did the King's minister, on any recent occasion, sanction its employment, though that minister might have been interrogated in the words of that Apostle-"Who art thou, that judgest another man's servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth." And, were it not irreverent to quote from such a source, on a subject like the present, from the same divine authority, I would ask those who vilify humanity, by lowering the character and capacity of the negro to the level of the brute, "Why dost thou set at naught thy brother?"

But the learned Bishop of Llandaff leaves all the advocates for slavery at an immeasurable distance in theological ratiocination on this subject, for he at once derives the institutions of slavery from the justice of God himself. "God," says the Bishop, "cannot au-, thorize injustice, but he did authorize slavery among the Jews; therefore, slavery is not opposed to justice; nor am I certain that slavery is any where forbidden to Christians." How can we be thankful enough for the industry of our hierarchy, in gleaning those nega

similar in its nature to that of slavery. I think they are in error. But what need is there of having recourse to any such refutation? Bond-service, or slavery, unquestionably was sanctioned by the Mosaic law. The Jews were permitted to keep bondservants of the heathen nations, and of the children of the stranger that sojourned amongst them; but the state of society that rendered slavery necessary in the infancy of that country, and to a people peculiarly circumstanced, with regard to the hostile nations which surrounded them, are no longer in operation. But though slavery have the authentic sanction of the Mosaic law, as I believe it has, is it incumbent on Christians to avail themselves of it? And, though the Jews had an authentic written commandment from God, for reasons inscrutable to us, to "save alive nothing that breatheth," in the cities of their enemies, and to extirpate the heathen nations opposed to them, surely the law, divine or human, under which we live, would not hold the nation guiltless of murder and robbery, which waged war on the principle of battle to the knife, and pillage to the last mite in the habitation of the widow and her orphans.

tive authorities from the Scriptures, for a system which some foolish people are weak enough to think is unfavourable to religion, and inimical to humanity?

But though there be 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. Šlavery 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 colonization society sends 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 not been 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 à 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