ignorance to their degraded lot in life. Now if these persons had been kindly cherished in infancy, and had received a good education, perchance among their number might have been found the statesman, the philosopher, the patriot, the philanthropist, and the Christian, while all might have been useful members of community. But by neglect in youth, by ignorance, by constant companionship with all the vices of low life, and oftentimes by the pressure of circumstances, multitudes become criminals. Such men are truly unfortunate, and they should be governed by kindness, and an exertion made to exalt their minds, until they can rise above sin, and disdain its chains. And it is my thorough conviction, sustained negatively by every instance of cruelty, and affirmatively by every instance of kindness, that the inmates of all prisons should be fully and constantly governed in the most enlarged and pure spirit of the Divine law, "OVERCOME EVIL WITH GOOD."

CHAPTER VII.

KINDNESS AND IGNORANCE.

"God loves from whole to parts; but human soul
Must rise from individual to the whole.

Self-love but serves the virtuous mind to wake,
As the small pebble stirs the peaceful lake;
The centre moved, a circle straight succeeds,
Another still, and still another spreads;
Friend, parent, neighbour, first it will embrace;
His country next-and next all human race:
Wide and more wide, th' overflowings of the mind
Take every creature in, of every kind :
Earth smiles around, with boundless bounty blest,
And heaven beholds its image in his breast."

POPE'S ESSAY ON MAN.

WE may take a step still lower in life, and with safety affirm that the law of kindness will produce the most powerful and enduring obedience from the enslaved son of Africa towards the master who governs him. Though the Africans have been degraded for ages, and bound down in ignorance, so much so, that many persons have imbibed the erro neous notion that they are incapable of attaining much advance in knowledge, even after a constant training of successive generations, yet surround them with kindness, and touch their feelings with

love, and those feelings will as readily respond to its influence, as the string of the harp will respond to the touch of the finger. The affecting instance which occurred on board the ill-fated steamboat Pulaski, where a slave, regardless of himself, was observed making attempts to preserve the life of his young master, this, together with many others which might be adduced, prove that kindness and humanity will touch the heart of the slave, and bind him more firmly to his master, than all the terror with which he can be surrounded. Miss Martineau, in her work entitled "Society in America," observes:

"Where servants are treated upon a principle of justice and kindness, they live on agreeable terms with their employers often for many years. But even slaves may be made more useful as well as more agreeable companions, when treated in such a way as to call forth their better feelings. A kindhearted gentleman in the south, finding that the laws of the state precluded his teaching his legacy of slaves according to the usual methods of education, bethought himself at length of the moral training of task-work. It succeeded admirably. His slaves soon began to work as slaves are never, under any other arrangement, seen to work. Their day's task was finished by eleven o'clock. Next they began to help one another; the strong began to help the weak: first, husbands helped their wives, then parents helped their children, and at length the young began to help the old. Here was seen the awakening of natural affections which had lain in a dark sleep.'

"A highly satisfactory experiment upon the will,

judgment, and talents of a large body of slaves was made, a few years ago, by a relative of Chief Justice Marshall. This gentleman and his lady had attached their negroes to them by a long course of judicious kindness. At length an estate, at some distance, was left to the gentleman, and he saw, with much regret, that it was his duty to leave the plantation on which he was living. He could not bear the idea of turning over his people to the tender mercies or unproved judgment of a strange overseer. He called his negroes together, and told them the case, and asked whether they thought they could manage the estate themselves. If they were willing to undertake the task, they must choose an overseer from among themselves, provide comfortably for their own wants, and remit him the surplus of the profits. The negroes were full of grief at losing the family, but willing to try what they could do. They had an election for overseer, and chose the man their master would have pointed out; decidedly the strongest head on the estate. All being arranged, the master left them, with a parting charge to keep their festivals and take their appointed holidays as if he were present. After some time, he rode over to see how all went on, choosing a festival day, that he might meet them in their holiday gaiety. He was surprised, on approaching, to hear no merriment; and on entering the fields, he found his 'force' all hard at work. As they flocked around him, he inquired why they were not making holiday. They told him that the crop would suffer, in its present state, by the loss of a day; and that they had therefore put off their holiday, which, however, they meant to take by and

H

by. Not many days after, an express arrived to inform the proprietor that there was an insurrection on his estate. He would not believe it; declared it impossible, as there was nobody to rise against; but the messenger, who had been sent by the neighbouring gentlemen, was so confident of the facts, that the master galloped with the utmost speed to his plantation, arriving as night was coming on. As he rode in, a cry of joy arose from his negroes, who pressed around to shake hands with him. They were in their holiday clothes, and had been singing and dancing; they were only enjoying the deferred festival. The neighbours hearing the noise on a quiet working-day, had jumped to the conclusion that it was an insurrection.

"There is no catastrophe yet to this story. When the proprietor related it, he said that no trouble had arisen; and that for some seasons, ever since this estate had been wholly in the hands of his negroes, it had been more productive than it ever was while he managed it himself."

We are in the habit of supposing that Africa is the most degraded and ignorant country on the surface of the globe, and probably it is; but there is an existing case which stands in the history of that unfortunate land like a glimmering of heaven, and excellently exhibits the power of the law, "Overcome evil with good." While Richard Lander was conducting an expedition in Africa, in 1830, for the purpose of discovering the termination of the Niger, he speaks of a people scattered in every direction over that country, called Felatahs. A community of them reside in the town of Acba, and, unlike the rest of the Felatahs,