schools, to arm the church which educates the bulk of the people against the government, to displace and discard the best inspectors, and to light up a fierce religious flame from Cumberland to Cornwall. That is the first opinion carried by a majority: though even the commissioners shrink from turning it into a recommendation. Having shown that inspectors have been of great value and have done a great work, the commissioners next prepare to reduce the office to a nullity, and the work to a sham. For they transfer all the real powers now exercised by inspectors to local schoolmasters; and, while they give to them the effectual power of the purse, they leave the inspectors the vast desecration of adding or taking away just one solitary sixpence from the child. Having shown that educated clergymen chosen by government, are useful, they substitute for them inferior persons-(local schoolmasters), chosen by a Board of whose capacity we know nothing and cannot augur well. Having shown the superiority of the trained and certificated master to the untrained, they annul certificates and flood the trained masters by admitting all men, untrained and adventurers, to the same advantages as the trained. Having perceived that education is still too low, they propose a capitation plan which will lower it still further; and having complained that the moral and higher elements are wanting in school, they reduce schools to the lowest elements of bare education from which a labour of thirty years has just begun to raise our schools. Having found fault with the rapid increase and financial details of our existing system, they propose a capitation scheme which, were it unchecked, would lead to an expenditure far beyond what we now have, and which, subjected to the checks they lay on, will lower the standard of teaching in all our numerous schools down to this position, that the first class only of the scholars would receive the care of the con. ductors of the school. We can understand that there are difficulties in the details of our present system. But we see no reason why these difficulties, as far as they touch financial details, might not be entirely done away with. Let two or three intelligent official men, unconnected with the Education Office, inquire into them and report on them, and the whole bugbear, conjured up by Mr. Lingen and accepted on his showing by the commissioners, would disappear. That there are difficulties connected with the poor schools of rural parishes and town districts, we admit. To meet them, is a harder problem. But to meet them as the commissioners suggest, is simply to leave existing evils uncured-to tear up the mechanism now at work-to set the religious managers in opposition to government-to rouse a general antipathy to a local rate-to put up, in order that they may be pulled down, weak, incompetent, obnoxious Boards; and, after disturbing the elaborate system which the Commissioners have proved to be acceptable and useful, to embark us in a civil war of parties, sects, and localities, of which we may easily see the outset, but of which the youngest among us will not see the end. In fine, a less satisfactory or promising bundle of suggestions never fell from any body of commissioners. P.S.-Just as we go to press we receive the letter of Sir James Kay Shuttleworth, addressed to Earl Granville. We have no space for comments on this seasonable and important document. It comes from one well entitled to be heard, as he was the deviser and organizer of the present educational system; and he has been conversant with all the plans for its modification proposed for years, to some of which he was an assenting party. He knows, therefore, the practical difficulties by which changes are beset. We see that his opinion corroborates ours. He has entered, far more fully than we could do, into the working of the commissioners' plan, the financial obstacles which confront it, and the vast changes it must effect. It is in fact, on his showing, as crude in its conception as it would be fatal in its results, and, unless we are prepared to arrest the progress of English education, and to throw people back into the ignorance from which they are slowly rising, we shall give no countenance to the suggestions of the commissioners. WEST AFRICA; VIEWED IN CONNEXION WITH SLAVERY, 1. A Pilgrimage to my Motherland. By Robert Campbell, of 3. Reports of the Church Missionary Society. 1858-1860. 5. Papers of the African Aid Society, London. 1860, 1861. WHEN Vasco de Gama opened the route to India, by the Cape of Good Hope, in the year 1497, Africa was looked upon as little else than an obstacle in the way of commerce; her coast stretching away many thousand miles to the south, and thus causing the galleons of Spain, and the well-freighted merchant-men of Portugal, to take a circuitous course, when bearing the luxuries of the east to the business marts of Europe. But time rolled on-the inhabitants of southern Europe were carried by their enterprising spirit to the west. A "new world" had recently been discovered: and after the gold and the silver were skimmed from its surface by the early adventurers, it was found that the new fields of industry in America, in the West Indies, and in the islands of the Caribbean Sea, in order to be profitable must be supplied with foreign labour; the aborigines having been driven, by the cupidity and tyranny of the Europeans, to the backwoods of their vast continent. Attention was directed to Africa. The idea that Canaan was to be "a servant of servants" to the rest of mankind, was brought prominently forward, and, wresting the scriptures, for the sake of worldly gain, the Planters bought the negroes from fathers, chiefs, and conquerors; and transporting them across the Atlantic, compelled them to labour and toil as slaves. The slave trade grew till it assumed gigantic proportions. England, France, Spain, Portugal, America, and other countries engaged in it. But, as it advanced, its horrors became known; powerful sympathies were enlisted in behalf of the slave; Clarkson, Wilberforce, Stephen, and Buxton, were raised up as "friends of Africa." Stirring debates took place in the English houses of parliament; laws were framed; treaties were signed; and England, acting in the spirit of Lord Mansfield's celebrated decision of 1772, that the slave is free the moment his foot treads the soil in any part of the united kingdom, not only maintained an expensive squadron at sea for the forcible suppression of the infamous traffic, but manumitted, at the cost of £20,000,000 sterling, all the slaves in her West Indian colonies. Events are now taking place in connexion with the slave trade consequent upon the disruption in the states of the American Union, which show that another use may be found for Africa; now no longer an obstacle in the way of commerce, as she was considered to be in 1497; no more the mere hunting ground of the slave dealer, as she has been from nearly that time till this; but destined to be the field for the growth of the raw material of one of England's chief manufactures-a market, such as we never had before, for the sale of England's redundant wares-and a proof of the blessing which the great Head of the church is pouring out upon our mission to heathen lands; "The voice," as it were, "of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord." We purpose, in this paper, to glance at the Slave Trade as it now exists; to inquire into the progress of Christianity among the negroes in West Africa;-and to view West Africa as a cotton field; and the benefits likely to result to England, and to the African races themselves. First, the Slave Trade. The slave trade is reviving. It is true that England, France, and Holland wholly gave it up, and have expended large sums in trying to prevent others from engaging in it. Brazil, with the enlightened policy which is gradually raising her in the scale of nations, instead of importing, as formerly, from 50,000 to 70,000 slaves annually, has now abandoned the traffic. And from the Senegal to Accra, at one time the very region of baracoons and slave ships, settlements have been formed, forts built, and protectorates established by England, France, and Holland, which, under the blessing of God, have nearly extinguished the trade upon a seaboard of 2,000 miles. But Portugal is unable to control her colonists. Spain has acted with "profligate, shameless, and disgraceful bad faith," as Lord Palmerston said during the debate on 26th February, "in reference to the treaties concluded with England on this matter." And America has not only refused the right of search to British men of war, but is secretly engaged in the traffic again. The slave trade is revived-though confined, it is true, to the coast of Africa, between Cape St. Paul and the mouth of the Congo; and thousands of Africans are captured, and thousands are murdered, in slave-hunting expeditions, chiefly to gratify the growing avarice of sugar-planters in Cuba, and cottonplanters in the southern states of America. Let us look to facts. The slave population of the United States of America was,― in 1830 in 1859 . 2,009,031; . 3,204,089; . 4,200,000. No doubt some of this vast extension of slavery arises from the natural increase of population; but no natural increase of population would account for the doubling of the number of slaves in twenty-nine years, or the addition of nearly one-fourth in nine years; taking into account, too, that many able-bodied slaves are 66 used up," as the Americans say, and die after a dozen years of hard work, and that many of the old and infirm have been shipped off to Liberia. The increase, therefore, to a great extent, can only be accounted for by the fact, that fresh slaves are imported from Africa. But we have more definite evidence than the above. The “Philadelphia Press," quoted by the "Globe" in June last, states, that "The government has received information, that the fishermen off the coast of Florida and South Carolina are in the habit of running over to Cuba, on the pretence of disposing of their fish, and returning with two or three native Africans, bought there at a low figure, whom they dispose of at a great advance to parties who meet them on the coast, purchase the negroes, and take them into the in terior. This gross and notorious violation of law is said to have been going on for some time." At a meeting held in Pall Mall in February last, to hear statements on this subject from Dr. Cheever, of New York, he is reported to have said, that at least 15,000 negroes are introduced annually into the United States; and that at least fifty slavers are fitted out annually in New York. Among the various means adopted for evading the laws, Dr. Cheever mentioned the case of a cargo smuggled into the interior in coffins, each of which contained a living negro! It is not easy to arrive at a certain conclusion as to the number of slaves thus imported; but in an "Appeal of the African Aid Society," we find the following: "The horrible African slave trade is now being carried on with renewed vigour. By screw steam-vessels the traders elude the vigilance of the British squadron. Thirty thousand slaves have thus been landed in Cuba during the past nine months." Thirty thousand for nine months will give the number of forty thousand in a year; and taking Sir T. F. Buxton's estimate, which was confirmed by Lord Palmerston in the house of commons on the 26th February last, this would represent a loss to Africa of 120,000 negroes torn from their homes to supply one year's demand for Cuba and the southern states of America only. In We turn now to the other side of the Atlantic, and there again we find evidence fully bearing out these statements. the report of the Church Missionary Society for 1859-60, p. 36, we read that, "during the last two or three years, the slavetrade has considerably revived on different parts of the west coast (of Africa), and especially south of the line. On one occasion, her majesty's cruisers brought into Sierra Leone a captured vessel, having no less than four hundred and sixtynine slaves on board, who were landed in the wretched condition of former slave cargoes. Even in the immediate neighbourhood of Sierra Leone, this horrid traffic is carried on by means of canoes, which creep down the rivers by night. During the last autumn, within a few weeks three such canoes were captured, having on board, in all, one hundred and thirtyslaves, mostly children, and some of a very tender age." Despatches from Sierra Leone within the last few weeks state, that "a slaver was condemned on January 15," taken by H. M. S. "Espoir," on her way to Ascension. When taken, she had on board six hundred and seventy-seven slaves, of whom sixty-five died during the passage to Sierra Leone, and twenty-two soon after their arrival. Several more have since died." Again, we quote the "West African Herald" of July last, published at Cape Coast Castle :-" His majesty Badahung, king of Dahomey, is about to make the 'grand custom' in honour of |