II. WILLIAM ALERS HANKEY, Esq., is the proprietor of a sugar estate in Trelawney, with 300 slaves upon it, yielding about 250 hogsheads, of 14 to 16 cwt. each. He never visited the West Indies. He knows Mr. Knibb, and has corresponded with him about his estate, for two or three years, on the subject of instructing his slaves, being decidedly favourable to their instruction. He felt it to be his duty to do so, a matter of absolute obligation upon himself, and essential to the best interests of the slaves. He should think so if he had merely a regard to his interests as a proprietor, but also from the situation he had held for 16 years as Treasurer of the London Missionary Society, which embraces and employs all denominations of orthodox Christians, including churchmen. The Baptists and Methodists have Societies of their own. His experience led him to believe that religious instruction even increased the value of the slave in the market, and that in no case had an insurrectionary spirit been encouraged, but checked and resisted, by missionaries. The Society does not force reading on proprietors who are averse to it, but they recommend and pursue it wherever they can. He admitted that the slaves when taught to read would read stimulating publications, and that, with the means of doing so, slavery could not long continue; and yet he was not prepared to anticipate any general measure of emancipation at this moment. He was prepared to follow the course Government meant to pursue. He should feel it rash himself to precipitate the measure. He wished the Government to settle the whole question, and it would be his duty and happiness to forward the views of the Government. His disposition to favour emancipation rested on general views of humanity, and not on any idea of pecuniary advantage from the measure, though he admitted that West India affairs could not well be in a worse state than at present. Even if his own interests were to be entirely merged in the measure, he trusted that his sense of moral and religious obligation would lead him to say the sacrifice must be made, still hoping it might not prove a sacrifice in the end. At the same time, Mr. Knibb must have misunderstood him, if he supposed him to connect the immediate emancipation of the slaves with Mr. Knibb's undertaking to instruct them. He had undoubtedly expressed himself anxious to see emancipation effected, being ready to express his abhorrence of the system in very strong terms, and he should at all times be ready to concur in any proper plan of effecting emancipation. He had also expressed and certainly felt horror at the treatment the missionaries had received in Jamaica. He had also spoken to Mr. Knibb of his desire to have his own slaves emancipated as soon as they were fully prepared, and he should be well contented, if it were prudent for Mr. Knibb, on other grounds, to return to Jamaica, that he should resume his labours among his slaves, feeling unshaken confidence in Mr. Knibb's integrity and determination to discharge aright his spiritual duties; and, in case of emancipation, he should consider the presence of such a person as highly desirable, if not necessary. He conceived, however, that measures of preparation ought to precede emancipation. Mr. Hankey inherited the estate he now has as a partner in his banking house, He is also a mortgagee of New Hope and Albany estates

and has been through life much connected with West Indian property. The measures Mr. Hankey himself had taken, in the way of preparation, were very slight and incipient. He had instructed the attorney, at his discretion, to stop some of the supplies usually granted to the Negroes, and to give them a compensation in money, that they might have an opportunity of being cognizant of their own wants, and thus take one little step towards the management of themselves under other circumstances; but the step had not yet been taken, the time being not yet come. He carries his notions so far that he conceives there is great moral guilt in slavery, and that, that guilt being national, the nation must be content to bear its share in the atonement it may involve. But he does not think the slaves yet prepared to make a proper use of freedom, and, therefore, to give them freedom immediately would be inexpedient. He has blamed the spirit of the colonists, and he has blamed the spirit shown by the advocates of freedom in this country. He has never associated himself with either party. He is a friend to the objects of the Anti-Slavery Society, but not to the means it employs. He is a decided enemy to slavery in the abstract. But he thinks it a national crime rather than an individual one, and the nation should compensate the planter. He admits, however, that the Negro cannot, in absolute justice, be detained in slavery till this question is settled between the Government and the planter, and that the Negro, at least, owes nothing to the planter (p. 307-313).

Mr. Hankey admitted the incompatibility of Christianity with slavery as it now exists. Christianity cannot be so preached to the slave as to suppress the feelings of nature in respect to his own condition. The Negro cannot read the Bible without discovering that his state is incompatible with what the Bible enjoins; and yet he believes that Christianity furnishes the best guard against the evils apprehended from freedom, in the patience which it inspires, and the obedience to authority it requires. A period he conceives must come beyond which the proprietor cannot hold that unjust possession which he now has of his fellow man as a slave. He blames, however, the blazoning the wrongs of the Negro, as calculated to produce excitement in him without corresponding advantage. He thinks that indolence is a natural propensity of man, and that it is aggravated in the case of the Negro by his peculiar circumstances. Were he himself forced to work without remuneration he should do as little as he could. The hostility of the colonists was not caused, as he thought, by a Missionary being of this or that sect: it was directed against the pure and simple preaching of Christianity itself, whether preached by an Episcopalian or a Baptist. In his own case he had preferred the Baptists, because generally they were placed conveniently near his estate. The fundamental principles of all orthodox sects are the same. He had been only three years in possession of this estate, and he immediately began a correspondence on the subject. While Mr. Hankey thought the nation was bound to remunerate the planter for any loss he might sustain by emancipation, he fully admitted that the planter had no claim whatever on the Negro. The case was different with the nation. The nation had sanctioned and encouraged slavery, and the criminal

ity of it was never thought of by his ancestor who advanced money on slave property. The feeling of its moral turpitude was a feeling of modern growth, although that moral turpitude was always the same (p. 314-317).

*

High as is our respect for the character of Mr. Hankey, and much as we admire the openness and manly frankness with which he has expressed his opinions on this subject, we must confess that we have read some parts of his examination with feelings of deep regret and extreme astonishment. We think it due to him and to the public, as well as to ourselves, to state explicitly the grounds which have produced in our minds these feelings of surprise and regret.

1. Mr. Hankey admits as fully as any one can do "the moral guilt," "the moral turpitude," of slavery. He believes it to be "incompatible with Christianity," and to be "opposed to the injunctions of scripture." Still he seems to think it not an individual" but " a national sin." We had always thought hitherto that "national sins" were neither more nor less than the aggregate of the sins of the individuals composing a nation, and especially of those who, having a conscience of any particular sin, did not at least wash their own hands of it, and heartily concur in employing their influence, by all lawful means, to point out its crininality to others, and to induce them to aid in putting an end to it. We feel utterly at a loss to understand the process of reasoning by which Mr. Hankey, on his own principles, has arrived at his conclusions on this subject. With Mr. Hankey, we admit that the crime is national, and that the suffering for it ought to be national also; but surely it is not enough that we should suffer nationally, and nationally confess our sin, and endeavour to repair it; but that every individual for himself should renounce his share of the "accursed thing,"-should relinquish at least the "Babylonish garment," and "the wedge of gold," before he can stand clear in the sight of God or of his own conscience.

2. Mr. Hankey, however, feels some difficulty in pursuing this course, lest he should heap further wrongs on the slaves themselves. They are not "fit," they are not "prepared," to receive the measure of justice to which he avows that they are fully entitled. He at least must wait the fiat of the Government before he "lets the people go." Be it so. Then has not Government intimated, in terms that cannot be mistaken, that there are certain measures which ought to be taken by all proprietors, and which they have themselves enforced, as far as they have had it in their power, on all proprietors who are subject to their legislation? Those measures it is in the power of every proprietor to adopt as the rule of his own conduct, whether his slaves are placed in a crown or in a chartered colony. Can Mr. Hankey show that he has gone this length? The wishes of the Government were very clearly and repeatedly announced and urged upon the attention of the colonists; and it is obvious that there was not one of them which any proprietor who chose to do so might not have adopted into his own plan of plantation economy. Did he wish to rescue his slave from all necessity of Sunday labour? He might have done as Mr. Wildman did on his Jamaica estates: he might have given his slave, instead of the twenty-six week-days allowed by law, fifty-two week-days in the year, or, what would have been still better, seventy-eight days. He might also, with Mr. Wildman, have abolished the exhausting night labour of crop. He might have entirely interdicted, with that gentleman, the flogging of females. He might, moreover, have put down the driving whip in the field, as the immediate stimulus to labour. He might have introduced regulations as to marriage. He might have established for his own slaves the principle of compulsory manumission, and aided its operation in a variety of ways. And he might, moreover, have had a regular record of punishments, properly vouched, and transmitted to him from time to time. He might have done all this without going one step beyond the declared wishes of Government, and without infringing any one of the severe and oppressive enactments which load the statute

III. JAMES DE PEYSTER OGDEN, Esq., a native of New York. This gentleman proves that emancipation was attended with no danger or inconvenience in the State of New York, the slaves being few,

book of the colonial legislatures. Now which one of all these practicable and approved methods of lightening the oppressive yoke of slavery, and "preparing" the slave for freedom, has Mr. Hankey adopted? Has he adopted one? We fear not; and we fear it because, having been urged to state what preparatory steps he had adopted, he specified only one, and that one which was altogether superfluous and uncalled for. He instructed his attorney, at the beginning of the year 1832, to negociate with his slaves a substitution of a money payment in lieu of the clothing and other articles of supply annually sent for their use from this country; and he did that in the hope that he might make them in some measure acquainted with the use and value of money. Nothing could have so well illustrated the utter ignorance of Mr. Hankey respecting the state and capacity of his slaves as this most futile and unnecessary project. He will probably have read the preceding part of this analysis before he peruses our present remarks; and he will then have learnt that the Negroes are as fully acquainted with the nature and use of money, and as capable of making a bargain for its acquisition and application, as any banker in Lombard or Fenchurch Street; and that this species of instruction is no more needed by his slaves than it would be to teach him the multiplication table.

3. But this is not half of what he might have done on his own principles. He wholly condemns the opposition of his fellow planters to the diffusion among their slaves of a knowledge of letters. He might, after Mr. Wildman's example, have had at least an elementary school on his estate. He might have found a man and his wife fully competent to the task, at no very heavy annual cost, compared at least with the importance of the object on his own showing, to have taught the young at least, if not also the old, to read the word of God. Above all he might have provided religious instruction, though to this hour nothing effective, we fear, has been done for that paramount object. He has stood at the head of a large religious society, which under his administration, and guided by his zeal, and vigilance, and talents, has been diffusing a knowledge of the saving truths of the gospel to the very ends of the earth. The islands of the South Seas, the myriads of China, the millions of Hindostan, the miserable hordes of Caffraria, and even the slaves of Guiana, have either heard, through this Society's labours of love, the glad tidings of salvation, or been enabled to read, in the Holy Scriptures, and in their own tongues, the wonderful works of God. Until recently, in the midst of all these mighty exertions of benevolence, his own slaves, his own household, seem to have been wholly overlooked. Was it impossible, with all the interest possessed by him and his family in the well being of so many of their fellow creatures, to do something at least to dissipate the heathen gloom which overshadowed them, and to shed some ray of light on their benighted souls? Could not even one solitary catechist be found, one man among the hundreds who have gone forth, under his auspices, throughout the length and breadth of the earth, as the heralds of mercy, who would have undertaken to convey some glimmering of light, some of that moral preparation which Mr. Hankey deems so indispensable, before he shall pay to his slaves the debt of justice which he owes them, by striking off their fetters and admitting them to the rights which God and nature have bestowed on them, but which he withholds on the very ground of their unpreparedness? Mr. Wildman succeeded, for he was in earnest, in procuring the means of religious instruction for his slaves. Was success of the same kind wholly unattainable in the case of Mr. Hankey?

4. But one word more and we have done. Mr. Hankey abjures all association with the Anti-Slavery Society. He does justice indeed to their object, and we thank him. But then their means of accomplishing that laudable object he

and the free overwhelming in point of number, namely 170 to one, and the process being also gradual. Mr. Ogden has correctly stated that fact. But he has further stated, though without any data, that the moral habits of the emancipated persons have not improved, and that a great proportion of the petty larcenies are committed by them. The success of the experiment however in New York would be no criterion for judging of the effects of emancipation in the Southern States, where the slave population amounts to two millions, being nearly a sixth of the whole population of the United States, estimating that at thirteen millions. The slave States are Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and the Florida

cannot applaud or concur in. As far as we can guess his meaning, it would seem as if he alluded to their delineation of slavery and their occasional exhibition of its practical effects. "I would not," he says, "give a strong statement to the Negro of his wrongs," even though "those wrongs were grievous and severe. I would practically mitigate them; I would not expose them." Now this language seems to proceed on false assumptions in respect of the Anti-Slavery Society. They have never published a single line, and Mr. Hankey must have known that fact, in order to state to the Negro his wrongs, but in order to bring them to the view of those who could "practically mitigate them." The object of the Society, Mr. Hankey must be well aware, was not to address the Negroes, but the public and the parliament of Great Britain. And how were the public and the parliament to be stirred to a due consideration of the subject, or led practically to mitigate the evils of slavery, but by delineating its real nature, and exhibiting its real enormities? It was their best and wisest, nay their only course, and, but for that, the public and parliament might still have slumbered on in listless apathy. They had also another purpose to serve, that of rousing the slumbering consciences of those good men who acknowledged the authority of the Word of God, and who were unfortunately, like Mr. Hankey, owners of slaves, that they might not lay the flattering unction to their souls that they were not guiltless in this thing -that God would not one day require their brothers' blood at their hands, and therefore that they might sleep on and take their rest, leaving it to the nation to atone for their guilt, and settle the account for them, not only as a matter of profit and loss in this world, but of awful responsibility in the next. The AntiSlavery Society might indeed have whispered into the ears of their friends the truths which they have thought it their duty to proclaim as from the house-top; but it may be doubted whether they would have moved a single individual, even Mr. Hankey himself, to take one step towards doing justice to their slaves by freeing them from their bonds. Mr. Hankey will not say that we have not truly described slavery and its effects, nor will he say that our descriptions have had no influence in producing those feelings on the subject, in his own mind, which have drawn from him so many candid admissions of the guilt and criminality, the injustice and moral turpitude, which belong to this most iniquitous system.

We should have been glad to have avoided the necessity of these comments, but we did not dare to decline them; and Mr. Hankey, having come forward at this critical period of our great question, and being in fact the representative of a very large class of West Indian proprietors, who call themselves, and we trust really are, sincere and orthodox Christians, but who, from that very circumstance, are able to accredit in the world both principles and practices which are far more nearly linked with evil than good, and have had the effect of producing, we are sorry to say, especially among many worthy and pious clergymen, and dignitaries of the Church of England, a lukewarmness on this question which has not tended to raise them in public estimation.