Puslapio vaizdai
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Liberty means the power of doing every thing lawful, that is good and advantageous to ourselves, without injury to the community. But how is the ignorant man to judge of what is good or evil for himself or others? Religious instruction is of the first importance; and where it is of a good kind, no other may be necessary for the regulation of moral conduct. But for the encouragement of industrious habits, the direction of civil duties, the knowledge and understanding of the advantages of freedom, and the lawful use of all good means to secure its rights-general instruction is likewise necessary. By general instruction, I mean such a plain and simple kind of education, as may enable the negro to read and write, and furnish his mind with employment for that leisure which he now may be inclined to spend either in excess or idleness. A man who can read and write has a great advantage over one who cannot. If he remain poor, he is more likely to be content; while, without instruction, if he become rich, he has not the power of holding up his head amongst his equals who are superior to him. I would have the negroes establish schools of mutual instruction; I would have them teach themselves, and not trust to others for their improvement. The time is come when there is no advantage in their ignorance, and no prospects of prosperity except in their conduct as rational beings capable of instruction, and, therefore, qualified for freedom. I write these thing to you, for you seem to know I am the friend of your people; and as I know you are men of intelligence, indebted to your own good conduct for your freedom, I call upon you to assist your poorer countrymen in the improvement of their minds, to devote some portion of your leisure time to their instruction, and to assist in the establishment of eveningschools for their improvement, which need not interfere with the ordinary duties of the apprentices.

I do not think so badly of the intelligence of the negroes, as to imagine there is a district in which negroes might not be found who can read and write. The books

that are necessary for such schools, I think, might be procured for you in England without expense, from some society favourable to the diffusion of knowledge amongst all classes, whether black or white. The teachers, it may be thought, would find their labours too fatiguing to continue without emolument. It would not, however, be so, if each were to take the weekly duty in his turn; and were the schools conducted on a plan, that would be explained to you, of mutual instruction, so as to make the trouble to the instructors as light as possible.

My grand object in recommending these schools, is to teach the negroes to depend on themselves for their own improvement, and not on the charity of others for those advantages which want the most powerful of all stimulants for their success-namely, self-dependence and self-exertion.

If these schools entail expense, which I have not specified, that expense I do not hesitate to tell you should be cheerfully encountered by all those of your complexion whom God has blessed with the means of assisting others in less fortunate circumstances, not only in this city, but in the island, for the honour of the negro character, which it is the desire of your friends to vindicate from the reproach of an incapacity for mental improvement.

I earnestly desire to impress on your attention the object which the British parliament had in view, in allotting a time of probation, or apprenticeship, as it is termed, for initiating a race of slaves into a knowledge of the duties, and a proper understanding of the privileges of British subjects. That term of probation will be of advantage to the negroes, if they remain without improvement; and of as little benefit to their masters, if the chains of slavery have only fallen from the limbs, while the still worse chains of ignorance remain on the minds of the enfranchised people.

You have entered somewhat fully into the tenets of your religious creed. It is not for me to say, whether

they are right or wrong; you think them right. God knows all things; if they are wrong, I only hope he will convince you timely of their error. I do not believe in many of them, I plainly tell you; and I could not understand them, I also assure you, if my acquaintance with your country, and some knowledge of the prevailing creeds of the people of Africa, had not given me a clew to the sources from which they have been taken.

The condemnation of the wicked, after the manner of Pharaoh's punishment, is an alteration of a Jewish legend of the Talmud, which has no place in the Torah, or any other book of the Hebrew Scriptures. The attendance of the two angels on every human being, from his coming into the world till his departure from it, is a tenet of the Koran, which I would subscribe to, for the sake of the pleasing nature of the idea, if I saw the necessity for any other guardianship than that of the Spirit of God for man's protection.

The mode of conducting the final judgment of the world is partly taken from the Koran, though the greater part of your description is merely a fussulman tradition. Yet what does it signify, I wou ask you, how the trial is conducted? But of how much importance is it, that we should be entitled, by our conduct in this world, to the mercy of the great Judge of all in the next!

Now the forgetfulness of the duties of religion, while we devote our attention to the most trivial of its doctrines-the minutiae of which a doubtful tradition may have handed down, or a better authority may have noticed briefly and obscurely-is a species of folly which is called superstition; and it has done more harm to the world than the unbelief of all the nations which have ever been denounced or exterminated, by your prophet or any other. Superstition is not the folly of one religion only: most creeds have a tincture of it; but they are invariably the weakest of the followers of any sect, and generally the most worthless individuals, who make a virtue of superstition, and a bugbear of religion.

You tell me you see plainly that "every nation has a book " to direct it towards the Almighty, and, that every nation condemns the other's book. Your nation, however, I am glad to hear, is an exception, and that the "Mandingoes condemn no books, though they agree not with their readers;" and you have very properly and charitably added, that no leaf of any book tells the reader of it to do ill. Every book that is good, I agree with you, tells the reader that the vanity of the world is of no avail-that it is, as you have well said, but "two or three days' high living," and there is an end of life, and we leave it as we came into it-poor and naked, despoiled of every thing.

It may be collected from your letter, that you profess the faith of Islam-a religion which was founded twelve centuries ago, on the ruins of paganism in Arabia; and, in as much as it promulgated the unity of God for its leading doctrine, I believe it effected good, and I have known a great many good men belonging to it. I have only these faults to find with it, that it was intended but for he people, and that people a very small portion of the man race; that it inculcated intolerance; that is to say, the persecution of those who could not bring themselves to believe in it; that it sanctioned injustice, one of the worst forms of which is slavery; that it debased men's notions of a future state, by making paradise a place of sensual pleasures, and hell a receptacle for all who resisted the power of your prophet, or disbelieved the doctrines he advanced. But the followers of a sect are not, I trust, accountable for the fanaticism of its founder, nor even the unreasonableness of the doctrines he has prescribed for their belief; you will, therefore, be charitable enough to consider me perfectly sincere, when I assure you, that, after observing the religions that are practised in very many countries, I might say in all parts of the world, I still prefer my own to any I have seen. In opposition to yours, I consider that mine was intended, by its founder, to apply to the whole human race; that the purity

of its character is superior to that of Islamism; that it inculcates forbearance to its enemies, and not extermination; that oppression of every kind is hateful to its law; that slavery has no authority for its injustice, and that the rewards it promises have no character of sensuality which is at variance with the spiritual idea of the Supreme Being.

For these reasons, which one better versed in religious matters might greatly multiply, I sincerely wish you entertained the same conviction of its excellence that I do. I do not expect that any arguments of mine can realize that wish. My only hope is, that persuasion may eventually accomplish for my religion what the sword, twelve centuries ago, did partially for

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The eighth clause of the amended Abolition Act enabled the apprentice to redeem himself from servitude, upon payment to his master of the appraised value of his services. This clause, had it been so worded as to have prevented the misconstruction of its intent, would have been the most valuable clause in the whole Act. As it stands, the power of procuring a reasonable award is so limited, that I have latterly been obliged to dissuade almost every applicant from applying for a valu

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