loured inhabitants have always contributed in their full proportion to the parochial taxes, for the support of the poor whites; while their own poor receive no parochial relief, but are supported by private contributions among the more wealthy of their own colour. Do these facts indicate habits of irreclaimable idleness?'

pp. 225, 6. It may be said, that in these isolated cases of manumission the person enfranchised will pass at once from the field to some domestic or handicraft employment; and that if the practice be widely extended, it will subtract immediately from the required cultivation of the soil.

I must allow that agricultural labour is in great disrepute in the West Indies. It is not so in other countries, for we often find even the well educated and the affluent delighting in the cultivation of a garden or in the ruder employmentsof a farm. In the West Indies, field labour is always associated with the whip and the driver, and other tokens of personal degradation; we therefore cannot wonder that it is generally shunned.

The first step towards the removal of the existing dislike to this species of employment is, to engage the great mass of our population in a kind of voluntary field labour, of which the profits may to a certain extent perceptibly accrue to themselves. To work spontaneously, and for our own immediate benefit, is the distinctive character of freedom..... Would they be likely, after having earned so many and great advantages by field labour, to regard it with dissatisfaction, and to consider themselves degraded by following their former occupation? Would they not rather, if the permission were allowed them, continue to work for their masters as tenants on the estate, receiving either wages in money for their labour, or a portion of the produce of the land! I believe the present condition of the sugar-plantations in those Stales of South America which have granted entire freedom to their slaves, will furnish a satisfactory answer to these questions.'

pp. 229, 230.

We must not conceal, that Archdeacon Eliot, notwithstanding the enlightened view which he takes of the injustice and inhumanity of slavery, is an advocate for a bit by bit emancipation, such as the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts would dole out to the slaves on their estates; (Shame on the slave-holding Society which bears the scandalous misnomer!) and we regret to add, pleads also for the most unjustifiable species of compensation,-compensation from the injured party, the slave, to his unjust possessor. He proposes that the slave should have the power of buying off his servitude by degrees at a fair remunerating price; a plan which would serve only to perpetuate the slavery of the mass. In another part of the note, he represents the sanction so long afforded by Great Britain to the slave-trade, and the recognition by law of this species of property, as 'forbidding the withdrawal of the services of the slave from the master by a compulsory enactment, without some adequate compensation. Whatever force there may be in this consideration, it cannot affect the claim of the slave: he was no party to those

infamous statutes, legalizing piracy and murder; he can owe no compensation. But let it be considered, that if the recognition by law of the fact of slave-property could legitimate it, the slavetrade, which is now declared to be piracy, was equally recognized and sanctioned by law. On the legislative abolition of that nefarious traffic, a similar claim to compensation was set up, on similar grounds, but was never substantiated. The abolition of slavery would not necessarily withdraw the services of the slave from the master; and therefore, the claim for compensation rests upon a false pretence. The only loss the owner would sustain, would be a loss of power, not of property; and for a loss of power, he is entitled to no compensation. It is true, that the slave is now saleable, and that, if emancipated, his price would be annihilated. But this effect would equally result from a law forbidding the sale of slaves: would that afford any ground for a claim to compensation? Fairly considered, emancipation carries compensation with it to a certain extent; since, while it annihilates a certain portion of capital, it relieves, to an equivalent extent, from a burden. The only benefit of capital is derived from its reproductive power. Now when the slave ceases to be capital to his owner, he does not cease to be productive to his employer; on the contrary, his labour proves more productive than before. not this compensation?

The notion on which this fallacious claim to compensation is founded, is simply this; that a man cannot justly be deprived of what he has purchased, or inherited as a purchase, without being remunerated in money. But how frequently is the value of fixed capital, in which large sums have been sunk, deteriorated or destroyed by the changes to which all branches of productive industry are liable, without the possibility of compensation! In such cases, the hardship is often very great, and the loss ruinous. In the case of the West India planter, the loss would eventually be a gain; for, in the services of the free labourer, he would have more than an equivalent.

But we cannot consent to argue the question as one of property. The answer which Mr. Eliot gives to the objection supposed to be urged against the faithful admonitions of the preacher, that 'it becomes not the minister of the Gospel to interfere with the rights of private property', is a sufficient reply when those rights are pleaded as a bar to legislative interference. In all ordinary cases', remarks Mr. Eliot, this would be true; but it applies not to the subject under our present consideration, for the property here is MAN.'

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I would meet, however,' continues the Preacher, the arguments of even the most mercenary of proprietors; of those among us whose thoughts are ever buried in the sordid computation of profit and loss; and I could shew, that whenever the slaves under our treatment are

enfeebled in constitution, dissatisfied in temper, and deficient in the natural increase of population-whenever they are debarred from the legitimate comforts and privileges of social life, and the right is denied them of obtaining freedom through their own industry, or that of their relations and friends-whenever their minds are debased by ignorance, and they are brought to a level with the beasts that perish-untaught in their religious duties, and excluded from all knowledge of the salvation offered in the gospel through Jesus Christ-then will our interests proportionably decline. Distress, and poverty, and perhaps in the end entire and absolute ruin, will be dealt out to us as a just retribution in this life; and in the life to come, what answer can we make, when called on to give an account of our stewardship?' p. 147.

Our readers will judge whether these remarks, intended to apply only to the present treatment of the slaves in the West India Colonies, will not with equal appropriateness and force apply to the holding men in slavery, of which such treatment is found to be the invariable accompaniment, as it is the natural consequence.

The last lecture, Souls not Saleable,' is the most striking and impressive of the series. It places in the strongest light, the impiety of the slave-owner's claim and the atrocious guilt of the prevailing practice. Whatever property the law may give the owner in the sinews and muscles of the slaves, he has not bought their souls; and yet, over these, he claims to exercise the most infernal tyranny.

That the laws tolerate the bodily subjection of man to man,' says Mr. Eliot, I readily admit; but the enactments which have been made by human authority with a view to secure the proprietary right of a master to the services of his slave, could never have contemplated the surrender of the soul of man into the hands of his fellow-man. They may have given absolute and uncontrolled power over the body, -even to the deprivation of life; but they can never sanction the right to seize on the soul for a possession, and to barter the eternal interests of the bondsman for money.'-pp. 154, 5.

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But is the slave a free agent in the services required from the creature to the Creator? Is there no constraint on the soul, arising out of the mistaken views of the extent to which the ' recognized bondage of the body gives authority to the pro'prietor over his servants? The following is Mr. Eliot's reply to these pertinent and significant questions.

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When services are required which involve an unavoidable violation of the sabbath-whether it be directly for the benefit of the master, or for the more immediate and necessary support of the slave,—or when encouragement is given to the sale and barter of goods, or to the public dance on the Lord's day, on the plea that no other time can be spared for these purposes, it may with truth be affirmed, that the

souls of the slaves are endangered through the unwillingness of the proprietor to relax his hold upon rights which trench on their spiritual welfare. And again, when the ordinance of marriage is discountenanced, because the owner of slaves is afraid that his worldly interests may suffer by its recognition; and all the evils of an unhallowed concubinage are sanctioned, because it is deemed to be a state more in conformity with absolute servitude than the solemn and indissoluble bond which unites those who are of free condition; I cannot but admit that the slave is directly precluded from obeying the commands of the Almighty, and that the master is exercising an undue, and I must add, if I am to regulate my expressions by the laws of God, rather than by the opinions of man, an unauthorized, a sinful, control over the souls of his dependents.

Is he called on by the authorized minister of God's word, to allow the young and ignorant on his plantation to be instructed, so that the darkness of heathenism may give place to the light of the gospel?..... Hear the reply which the master who claims an absolute right to the souls of his slaves will confidently make, nor will his practice vary from it; "I can afford neither the time nor the money for the instruction of my people, nor am I sensible that a knowledge of the gospel truths will add to their value. I object to their being taught to read, because they will acquire a knowledge which is calculated to raise them above their present condition, and to inspire them with hopes of advancement in society. I object to it also, because they may read books of an injurious tendency, and may learn to be dissatisfied with the evils almost inseparable from servitude"...... Would he thus think and act, if he were brought to regard the dependent as master of his own soul, and as under an obligation to provide for its everlasting welfare ?* pp. 168-173.

We heard it adduced, the other day, in proof that slave-holding was not forbidden by Christianity, that St. Paul, in writing to Philemon on behalf of Onesimus, a runaway slave, styles his master, though a slave-owner, his beloved brother and fellow la bourer. We could not but admire the specious ingenuity of the argument; it reminded us of the dexterity of the Tempter in his appeal to the Old Testament Scriptures-" it is written." But what else is written in the Epistle to Philemon? "Receive him that is as my own son; (such is the obvious import of the phrase, τὰ ἐμα σπλαγχνα, referring to his having been converted to the Christian faith, or regenerated, by the preaching of St. Paul;)-"no longer as a servant (or slave), but above a servant, a brother beloved. If thou consider me as a companion, receive him as myself." Our modern Philemons of Barbados or Jamaica would consider this as strange language to be held respecting one of their slaves. If one of their runaways, having become baptised and converted to the faith, were sent back to his master, by a Christian minister, with the exhortation, Forgive him, receive him now as no longer a slave, but a brother,'-it is not difficult to anticipate the manner in which both the message

and its bearer would be treated. Of all parts of the New Testament, a pro-slavery advocate would do well to keep clear of the Epistle to Philemon, which teaches such monstrous doctrine as that the Christian slave is to be viewed by his master as a brother, a brother beloved. Let the Christian planters so regard and so treat their Onesimuses, and we will own them to be Philemons indeed.

We have recently shewn, however, that the Roman servitude differed so essentially from the colonial slavery of our own times, that to confound them under a common name, and then to reason from the presumed lawfulness of the one to the lawfulness of the other, is a mere artifice; an attempt to build an argument upon a pure fallacy. Onesimus was a bond servant (douros, servus), but not an ergastulus, a field-slave. Had Christianity directly prohibited the domestic bondage of the Romans, it would virtually have forbidden the Christians of those days to have any servants at all. But while it abstained from interfering with either the political or the domestic institutions of any nation, it classed the man-stealer with the murderer, the parricide, the most flagitious criminal t; and addressed the oppressor of the labourer in language which might well make the Christian tyrants of the colonies tremble: "Behold, the hire of the labourers who have reaped down your fields, which is unjustly kept back by you, crieth out; and the cries of the reapers have entered into the ears of the Lord of Hosts."§

Art. III. Whychcotte of St. John's; or the Court, the Camp, the Quarter-deck, and the Cloister. Two Volumes, 12mo. London, 1833.

UNDER a title which looks too much like a bookseller's puff to lead us to expect much that is substantial in the work itself, these volumes contain a collection of very clever and entertaining original papers. In the getting up of the volumes, there is, indeed, a palpable air of book-making; and the publication has altogether the appearance of a catch-penny. We must say too, that we cannot entirely applaud the taste displayed in the concoction of the materials. The liberty that is taken with living characters, is scarcely allowable; although the writer may plead in extenuation, that his portraits are generally those of the panegyrist, not of the satirist. We know not what Professor

* Eclectic for April. Art. Blair on the Roman Slavery. § James v. 4.

1 Tim. i. 10.

VOL. IX.-N.S.

3 D