or inconvenience in the State of New York, the slaves being few, and the free overwhelming in point of number, namely 170 to one, and the process being also gradual. Mr. Ogden has correctly stated

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 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

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

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.

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 and Arkansa territory. Sugar is grown in Louisiana and the Floridas, rice in these two States and in Georgia and the Carolinas, and cotton in all except Delaware, Maryland, and Kentucky. The treatment of the slaves, he thinks, is generally good, and their food abundant. They increase rapidly. They are not allowed land of their own: the master feeds them. The emancipation of the slaves has not been agitated as a practical question in America. As for the Colonization Society, and its plan of transferring the blacks to Liberia, it can do nothing towards that object. The difficulty felt in America is what shall be done with the Negroes when they are freed. It is evident that rice and sugar can be cultivated only by blacks. Besides, slavery is guaranteed by the constitution; and to indemnify the owners would cost at least four hundred millions of dollars, so that no plan of emancipation has been proposed. All that has been done is to limit the system of slavery to the States in which it now exists. The question of slavery has been discussed occasionally in the Northern States; but the publications on the subject are not allowed to circulate in the Southern. Nothing has been done with a view to prepare the slaves for emancipation, by education or otherwise. The slave states dread the effects of education, and effectual precautions have been taken by them to prevent the diffusion of lettered knowledge. The Americans admit that personal freedom is more valuable than property; but they apply that principle only to whites. He does not know that any thing has been done to encourage or to discourage religious instruction among the slaves. He cannot see any benefit the slaves, continuing slaves, could derive from education. He had seen many emancipated slaves who were very good characters, but he thought petty offences were frequent among that class.*

The difficulty, after all, which the Americans deem so insuperable, that of disposing of the slaves when free, seems to us no difficulty at all. The slaves are now employed in agriculture; nay, sugar and rice, it is said, cannot be cultivated but by blacks. We can see no good reason why the same persons may

IV. ROBERT SCOTT, Esq.

ROBERT SCOTT, Esq. This gentleman is a Jamaica proprietor, and had resided in that island from 1802 to 1826, and again for a few months in 1828 and 1829. He had under his management at one time 4000 slaves,* and had visited different parts of the island;

not cultivate these articles in a state of freedom as in a state of slavery. White men work in America: so do black men when free, and wages are given them for their labour. We are utterly at a loss to discover what there is in this particular problem which can puzzle Mr. Ogden, or raise a single difficulty in the mind of American statesmen, provided only they are willing to act on the principles of eternal justice. But see to what length of wickedness the free, enlightened, and Christian whites of America are driven, to maintain their cruel and usurped dominion over their black brethren. No nation values education and instruction more highly than the United States. Every state has made a point of establishing and supporting seminaries of learning adequate to the wants of its citizens, and common schools are provided " for the education of the poor gratis ;" yet the benefits of education are withheld from the slaves, and even from the free Negroes also. South Carolina, as early as 1740, passed a law to punish with a fine of £100 any man who should teach a slave to write. Georgia followed the example. Virginia has enacted "that any meetings of slaves, or free Negroes, or mulattoes, at any school, or teaching them reading or writing, shall be deemed an unlawful assembly, and the magistrate may disperse it and inflict on the offender at his discretion twenty stripes." South Carolina in a later act has declared any meeting unlawful which consists of slaves and free Negroes, and mulattoes, though there be whites among them, assembling for the purpose of mental instruction; and the officers who are required to disperse the meeting may inflict twenty lashes on each slave, free Negro, &c., so as to deter them from the like unlawful assemblage in future. In Savannah any person teaching any person of colour, slave or free, to read or write incurs a fine of thirty dollars for each offence; and every person of colour keeping a school to teach reading or writing to a fine of thirty dollars, or to be imprisoned ten days and flogged with thirty-nine stripes. Nor are they to meet for religious worship, but between sunrise and sunset. The only exception to the general bearing of these acts is in Louisiana, where it is enacted that it shall be the duty of the owner to procure for his sick slaves all kinds of temporal and spiritual assistance which their situation may require-a sort of death-bed charity.

Stroud's Laws of Slavery. Philadelphia, 1827, p. 85—92. * We cannot find that he is now proprietor of more estates than one, namely, Kinloss, which in 1831 had upon it 249 slaves, and in 1823, eight years before, 296, showing a decrease in that time of 47, or nearly 2 per cent. per annum.

but his concerns lay chiefly in the parishes of Hanover, St. James, Trelawney, and St. Ann. He had consequently great opportunities of becoming acquainted with the Negro character. On most plantations they have as much land as they can cultivate for themselves.— The time allowed them by law, twenty-six days, is not only amply sufficient to supply all their wants, but to enable them to sell great quantities of provisions. The usage, he says, was to give them more time, namely, every Saturday out of crop. Few of the slaves work at all on Sunday. The market is on Sunday morning.† In Trelawney the distance from the market at Falmouth is generally ten miles; but the people from the town meet the people of the country half way.‡ He gives 100 barrels of herrings in the year to 250 Negroes § (p. 330, 331).

*

Mr. Scott denies that, on estates of a size to afford only two spells during crop-time (that is, all estates of the size of his own, having 200 to 250 Negroes), the Negroes work eighteen hours a day. || He admits, however, that it does amount to sixteen. He states, as one of

* If that were true, it would raise the number of days, estimating the time of crop at five months, to 30.

In point of fact the first law which limited the market to Sunday morning, and that at eleven o'clock, was that of 1831, which is only recently in operation.

This is a strange assertion. No market can be held at any place, by a law still in force (Act of 5th William and Mary, c. 6), but by appointment of justices in sessions. Let it be shown that any such intermediate markets are appointed, and what and where they are.

§ That is, less than six herrings a week for each.

|| He takes some pains to mystify a plain matter; for, by what possible arithmetic can it be made out that, where there are only two spells, and where the work of the mill and boiling-house is continuous night and day, and where the canecutting for supplying the mill goes on for twelve hours of the day, each spell, that is, each half of the gang, should not work half the night also, or six hours more, making eighteen in all?-See above, p. 33. Mr. Scott admits the work at the mill and boiling-house to be continuous, and yet he cuts off the two hours from six

to eight in the evening, of which he makes no

account in his estimate of the

slave's sleepless hours; but there must be slaves at work during these hours as well as during all the other hours of the week. In fact the loss of rest amounts to nineteen hours every day instead of eighteen, at which we have placed it.