to give a concise summary of the arguments of some of these gentlemen.

*

The first topic that meets us, in their discussion of the question of slavery, is a sort of argumentum ad hominem, as far as England and the North are concerned. The impugners of slavery and slaveholders in America, are the very people by whom slaves and slaveholders were established there. The capital which, in New-England, is now invested in presses and print shops for the slander of the slaveholder; for enticing negroes to fly from their masters; for cramming runaway negro orators to rival Birney and Tappan; for paying small traffickers in philanthropy to sneak into Southern families, and chronicle lies in the intervals of fawning and feeding, was invested a few years ago in transporting negroes from Africa. Being compelled by law to abandon the old trade of making the black a slave, the business men have taken up the new one of making him free. If the law permitted a return to the former traffic, there is no doubt that both branches of the concern would be carried on with equal activity. Even now, the law to the contrary notwithstanding, according to the report of an American officer on the African station, Northern merchants furnish vessels and merchandize to the slavers on the coast of Africa, and in this manner facilitate the trade in slaves. But this, by no means, conflicts with the abolitionists' carrying on the trade of emancipation. It is quite possible, indeed, that the same parties may be active in both departments, and that Mr. Tappan may do a turn of business in making bond, as well as making free. It is of little moment to these revilers of their own countrymen, that all such libellers as they are, belong to the proverbially respectable order of evil birds who befoul their own nests. To the hunter after notoriety, or money, the cleanliness of the field is of small importance, or consideration. He is like the Roman emperor, who could find no unsavoury smell in the gold derived from the filthiest object of taxation.

To this argumentum ad hominem the people of England are even more exposed, than our own countrymen. If individuals and nations are responsible for the necessary con

• Even the clergy took part in the slave trade speculation. Dr. Stiles sent a barrel of rum to Africa to purchase a negro; and, in due time, as Dr. Wayland tells us, the Reverend trader received a well-conditioned negro boy.

sequences of their acts, then is England responsible for slavery in the United States. For more than a century, the English merchants carried on, in this country, an extensive commerce in negro slaves. They bought them in Africa, transported them to America, and sold them to the planters, for large sums of money. Now a new fashion prevails, and the good people of England form societies, establish presses, and circulate books, pamphlets, and tracts, to revile the planters for holding the very slaves, which English capital, English ships, and English merchants purchased, transported, and sold among them. Into this new current of national opinion all classes have fallen; from the Irish demagogue, to the English Duke; from Mrs. Martineau, to the Scotch ex-Chancellor; from Mr. Dickens-the incarnation of cockney sentiment-to the Queen's consort, who spares an hour, occasionally, from nursing the numerous buds of the illustrious white and red rose of York and Lancaster, to extend his care to the negro across the Atlantic. In this war upon a system of their own making, the English peo-. ple, as is common with them, have no selfish design whatever-no intermeddling disposition to supervise the concerns of America, Cuba, or Brazil. They do not make it a pretext for overhauling the vessels of other nations, and promoting their claim to supremacy on the ocean. They cover under it no sly scheme for rebuilding their colonial prosperity, and correcting the blunders of their West India policy, by checking, in other countries, the growth of those productions which she has virtually abandoned, by the abolition of slavery in her own. Nothing like it--they are actuated by the purest benevolence only--their captains of slavers have been all converted into Howards, and have exchanged their zeal for making slaves, into an equal zeal for making free men. From their anxiety to take care of the poor of other nations, it might be naturally inferred that they have none at home--no rags, no wretchedness unequalled in any other country; no filthy hovels with mud floors, the common abode of pigs, poultry, and peasant; no crowded cel lars, where families occupy each its corner; no millions of

We say America for the United States. It is the proper name of the United States. In Europe, by America, they mean the United States: by Americans, they mean the citizens of the United States. Other parts of the continent have different names: Mexico, Brazil, Chili. America is appropriated by us. To attempt to substitute for it Alleghania, etc., is both unnecessary and ridiculous.

paupers never fed, never clothed, never warmed in winter; no children put to hard labor below ground; no girls at work among naked men; no examples of human degradation and suffering more brutal than any American imagination, unassisted by British Parliamentary Reports, could possibly conceive. Nothing of all this can exist in England. The Parliamentary Reports must be false. If true, would not English hearts and hands be first and exclusively devoted to extirpate so horrible a condition of society ?--would they write, declaim, expend thousands on a supposed abuse three thousand miles off, with which they have no connection, civil, social, or political, and of which they know little or nothing, whilst the horrors of their own hearths continue to cry to heaven for redress? Would they pass by their fellow-subjects dying of hunger on their very door sills, to make long prayers in the market place for the sufferings of the negro, who never knows what hunger is.

But if British philanthropy is resolved to look over and beyond their own homeless, unfed, ragged millions, and expend its unsought sympathy on other nations, it it suggested to Mr. Clarkson, with all due respect, to pursue the only course by which his end can be accomplished. His countrymen brought the negro here, let them take him away. They are in possession of the millions for which they sold him, let them use the money to buy him. They may purchase as any body else may purchase. They may carry their property where they please, as other owners do. But they have never done this. They have never released from slavery a single slave, by the only possible mode by which they can release him. It is far more agreeable to the system by which they combine the pleasures of charity and gain, to hold great meetings at Exeter Hall; to boast of English philanthropy and liberty; and to issue circulars full of self-complacency and self-gratulation; thanking God that they are not as other men-slave-holders, and man-stealers --and to continue, with their hands in their breeches pockets, to jingle the very gold for which they sold the African savage, kidnapped by their ship-masters on the coast of Guinea. This negro trade has been invaluable to our English friends. It first filled their purses with an immense amount of money, and now it affords a capital, on which their traders in philanthropy, as Coleridge calls them, carry on a large and profitable business. Being no longer able to

coin money out of slavery, they now turn it to another account, and make it a reputation-for-humanity fund. They manage to earn a character for hating slavery out of the very plantations in America, which they themselves stocked with slaves. They contrive, from the same quarter, at the same time, to obtain credit for benevolence, and cotton for their Manchester trade. They are like their Bishop of London, who declaims, before the House of Lords, on the debaucheries of the age, and rents out the very stews in which they flourish; securing a subject for his moral lecture on licentiousness, by providing tenements for those who indulge in it. They resemble their own beau ideal of a fine gentleman--George the IV.--who drove his wife into imprudencies by his brutality and neglect, and persecuted her to death for having fallen into them;--or, one of the fashionable Whartons of the London Clubs, who seduces a woman, and then upbraids her with a want of virtue. The case is even worse, as violation is worse than seduction, for John Bull forced the colonies to do, what he now abuses them for having done.

This knack in our old friend, of reconciling the propensities first for getting money, and next for making rhetorical flourishes about his benevolence, is not confined to American slavery. It is quite as conspicuous, and amusing, in other matters--for example, in his East India affairs.

For many years, the gold and jewels of Hindostan had continued to flow into England without interruption. During half a century, not a ship arrived from Calcutta, which did not bring with it some nabob returning with his chests of gold and diamonds, the plundered treasure of Begums and Rajahs, hoarded from generation to generation, for centuries. When Clive was accused of rapacity, he burst into an exclamation, that so far from being guilty, he looked back with astonishment at his own moderation, when he remembered how he walked iu the treasury of Moorshedabad, between heaps of gold and precious stones, his will being the only limit to his power. Clive had few equals. There were not many of the Company's servants who left themselves, under similar circumstances, the same cause for astonishment. Pennyless writers who went to India with small salaries, in a few years returned, to buy manors, surpass the aristocracy in profusion and ostentation, and rival princes in their expenditure.

But whilst the whole nation were eagerly rushing to this harvest of "barbaric pearl and gold," they got up, to balance the account, the most magnificent indignation-meeting that the world has ever seen. Hastings, the Governor-General of India, was arraigned in Westminster Hall. Ladies, and Lords, and Commons-all that England possessed of beauty, and talent, and noble birth-were assembled, day after day, to hear the denunciations of an eloquence never surpassed, perhaps never equalled-to sten, with wonder, to the vehement logic of Fox, the sparkling declamation of Sheridan, the gorgeous imagination of Burke, luxuriating in kindred themes of Eastern character and scenery. The effect on the female audience was terrific,-one fainted, another was carried out in hysterics. But time passed on; the ladies became weary, or found something more attractive in the opera, or the play; the counsel flagged; every thing grew tired but the hatred of Francis, and the ardour of Burke; the trial closed, and the enemy of Cheyte Sing and Nuncomar retired from the bar of the Senate to purchase an estate, and enjoy a pension. We are not to suppose that, during all this time, there was one rupee less taken from the plundered Indian. The grand-national-sympathy-meeting vindicated the British character for humanity, and the Company's servants took care to gratify the national passion for wealth. One instance occurred, during the grand exhibition of benevolence and justice by the British Parliament, which sufficiently explains the nature of the show. Mr. Martin, an honest country member, very deeply affected by the eloquent account of the wrongs done to the Indian Princesses, got up and declared, in his simplicity, that if any member would move to restore the treasures of which the Princesses had been plundered, he would second the motion. He looked round for support; but not a voice was heard; not a man was found to make the motion, and the honest countryman discovered, that restoration of the stolen property was not the policy of the receivers of stolen goods, however eloquent they might be in denouncing the thief.

The East India Company have shown a very happy conformity to the national character, in their transactions of commerce and conquest, "always," says a distinguished English writer, "protesting against adding a foot to their territory, and denouncing the policy which extended it, while they quietly take possession, without a murmur, of the gains 28 VOL. VIII. NO. 16.