that have been more widely lamented. The quiet rectness and ease, but are schooled in the ideas beauty and attractiveness of his daily life, his and the habits of self-respecting, self-governing delicate regard for the feelings of others, his un- freemen. There are inevitably some bad characaffected courtesy, frankness, and benignity of man-ters among them—gambling, fighting, cheating. ners, his nice sense of honor, his generous and dissipated men, who have outlived their respectadisinterested kindness, his strong love of truth bility and the last remnant of their neighbors and justice, his sterling honesty, and his rigid confidence elsewhere, and who go thither to comconscientiousness, all happily blended in just pro-mence a new career of debauchery and crime; but portions, could not fail to inspire affection, confi- these bear but a small proportion to the whole dence, and respect. His moral principles had number, and will find their proper level much peculiar strength. No one could know him, sooner than they now imagine. A large number without feeling that no temptation could move go out expecting to live by trade, or law, or some him from his purpose to be a perfectly upright sort of intellectual exertion; but the great majorand honorable man. Neither indignation at im-ity go calculating to dig their fortunes out of the posture and injustice, personal friendship, nor a naked earth by their own honest toil, and these desire to advance his own interests, could make him swerve, in the slightest degree, from his convictions of honor and right. No physician in the city has for many years, it is believed, been so often called upon to testify in courts of justice, in cases involving questions of medico-chemical sciOn such occasions, legal gentlemen, emi-growing, to cattle-rearing, lumbering, &c., and, nent for station and ability, have pronounced him to have been unsurpassed for fairness, clearness, and accuracy, and for the confidence which he inspired as a man of science and of truth. ence. Dr. Gay's character in his domestic relations was in beautiful harmony with the rest of his ife. His memory will long be affectionately cherished, and faith in man and in virtue will be the stronger in many hearts because he has lived. CALIFORNIA. From the Tribune. must generally succeed. The gold may be exhausted-nay, in time it must be-but the earth and its better uses will yet remain; and they who shall not have grasped the shining dust must also in good part linger on some portion of our Pacific waters. They will turn their attention to grain after enduring a season of disappointment, privation, and struggle for mere subsistence, they will become the founders of a populous and flourishing community. The long season of drought experienced over a great portion of California and Oregon is a serious drawback, but it is compensated by the mildness of their winters and the general salubrity of their climate, rendering them among the best regions for extensive flocks and herds in the world. Very great diversities of temperature may be obtained in California by a removal of not many miles up or down the slope THERE is no novelty in the procession of the from the crests of the mountains to the deepest of most important political and social results from the the valleys, and thus cattle and sheep may avoid blind eagerness of individual adventure in quest the drought of summer amid the cool breezes and of sudden wealth. The golden fleece has often dashing streams of the mountain declivities, and dazzled the vision and allured the steps of the the snows of winter upon the rich bottoms and needy and sanguine, and though they may have grassy glades of the Sacramento and San Joachin, returned thoroughly shorn and naked, or never costing their owners the merest trifle for food and lived to return at all, the foundation of new em- shelter. Though not so well adapted to grainpires, the transference of the centres of power and growing, it does not appear that the absence of of trade, have nevertheless resulted. No matter rain in summer is by any means universal, nor that whether the gold of California shall or shall not it prevents the growth of bounteous harvests of continue to justify the towering expectations of wheat and other early ripening cereals where it those now hurrying in quest of it, the first day of exists. Of fruits, many of the finest known to next November will see the valley of the Sacra- man now ripen and rot in neglected profusion mento peopled by not less-probably many more around the ruins of the old Jesuit missions, and than one hundred thousand of the Anglo-Saxon there seems little reason to doubt that Upper Calrace, to say nothing of the Aborigines, Spanish ifornia may justify Colonel Fremont's designation Americans, and Pacific Islanders, whom the same of it as "the Italy of the New World," when its devouring passion will have precipitated upon the resources shall have been developed and its capacnew Land of Gold. Nothing like this immigra-ities fully understood. In time it cannot fail to betion, in suddenness or importance, has occurred come the home of many millions of people, irradisince the days of Columbus and his immediate ated by the light of Christianity, and skilled in al} Buccessors, if ever. Nine tenths of the whole the arts of modern civilization. With jury trials, number will have been lured thither within a year the printing press, regular mails, and Christian by the glitter of the yellow metal alone. ministrations, among the fundamental basis of its No emigration equal to this in average intelli-social frame-work, while land monopoly, war, and gence and vigor was ever before known. With the subjection of labor to capital, are for the present scarcely an exception, the whites now in Califor- precluded, the social condition of California ought nia, or hastening thither, can not only read and speedily to exhibit an improvement on that of any write, compute and keep accounts, &c., with cor- other portion of the globe. There is one fearful, but we trust temporary, if they wil. go to cnurch, should take some sopodrawback on these initial advantages in the ab-rific or composing powder before starting. sence of woman. Probably nine tenths of the We have seen those who on awaking betray a feelcivilized population of California, now and for the next year at least, will consist of men, generally in the prime of life. This disparity will lead to deplorable disorders and mischief. Men, unblest by the refining and hallowing influences of female society, naturally tend to become selfish, coarse and cruel-tend toward a condition of barbarism. But this disparity cannot long continue. Many of the Californians have left families behind them only because of their inability to pay their passage, and the notorious destitution of dwellings and other comforts in the Gold Region. Many more have gone resolved to return for those whom they are under engagement to marry, as soon as they can afford to do so. These and others, if fortunate, will take out their mothers, sisters, and other relatives, and thus, in the course of two or three years, should the gold diggings fulfil | the expectations they have excited, the present scarcity of women will be partially remedied, though a considerable disparity in the numbers of the two sexes will doubtless continue for many years. This, however, is common to all countries in the early stages of settlement by coloni zation. ness. ing of manifest amazement and bewilderment, as if they did not immediately recollect where they were, or what they had been doing. Such conduct is, to say the least, highly impolite. An experienced sleeper, under whatever circumstances he may awake, will exhibit no unusual emotion of surprise. It is in equally bad taste to appear to notice the slumbers of others. A single officious gazer will often direct the attention of half the house to a sleeper, who, but for him, would have escaped observation. Snoring in respectable congregations has long passed into disuse. But it may sometimes happen that you may have taken an old style sleeper into your pew, who either has not abandoned the habit or cannot do so. In such a case, the only way of determine to sacrifice your own comfort for the saving yourself from mortification is, to resolutely good of your friend; in other words, to keep awake yourself that you may keep him awake. In this connection we may suggest, that children who have not been taught to smother their risible or lachrymose tendencies should be sedulously kept from church. Ladies, also, who have ever been known to faint, should, in warm weather, sit near a window, or bustle and confusion created by a regular faint necessarily awaken many who would otherwise have enjoyed their nap to the last prayer. A choleric old gentleman of our acquaintance was once so exasperated on being awakened in the middle of his nap, by a woman who had fainted, that, in the ele-heat of his passion, he solemnly vowed never again to sleep in meeting, from sheer spite. else be well instructed in the fan exercise. The Some method should be devised for freeing the churches from flies. A single merciless, persevering fly, will often break the rest of a sleeper more effectually than the animated tones of the most eloquent preacher. All things considered, we believe California will soon enter upon the stage of independent existence as a state of the Union with as many ments of order, stability, and prosperity, as Ohio or Louisiana had on coming into the Union, and with as fair a prospect of rapid growth to greatWe trust she will experience no difficulty in creating for herself those political institutions which Congress ought at the late session to have It is possible that there may be some who will provided for her, but failed to do through disagree-object to the propriety of offering these suggestions, or of treating of the subject at all. Our space will ment on the subject of slavery. We trust she will not permit us to discuss the objections of these illustrate the truth of a remark of the late Hugh critics, or to develop what we conceive to be the S. Legare," that neither the Declaration of Inde- ultimate causes of sleeping in meeting. But though pendence nor the Constitution of '87 was the basis we should grant the existence of valid objections, of American Liberty, but that every man who still we have ground enough left to-sleep upon. landed on Plymouth Rock stepped on shore a LIVFor, in all our reasoning upon human nature, we must take it as we find it, and instead of censuring ING CONSTITUTION." We do not fear the preva- a practice which so universally prevails, it must, lence of anarchy among her adventurous popula- we think, be acknowledged to be the office of true tion; we believe there is far greater danger of the wisdom to soften and obliterate its abuses.-Chrisinsidious creeping in of slavery; and we trust she tian Watchman. will be shielded from that scourge by the enlightened vigilance of her own people and the resolute energy of those of the free states. A few months must decide the question. SLEEPING IN MEETING. ANTIQUITY OF MAN ON THE EARTH.-M. Paul Jervais has lately discovered in the upper tertiary stratum of Montpellier a species of fossil ape, probably belonging to the Macaque genus. On comparing this discovery with that of M. Lartet, in the Gers, and those made in the environs of THERE are some persons of a temperament which London, it appears that fossil apes have been disshould preclude them from indulging in sleep at covered in the three principal tertiary strata of meeting. Of this class are those who start, kick, Western Europe; that is to say, in every part of or jump, in their sleep. Such an unfortunate pre- the level of sedimentary earths in which the bones disposition is annoying and troublesome in the ex- of mammalia abound. If man had existed at the petreme. A single sleeper of this description may riod when these strata were deposited, the non-disbreak the slumbers of a whole slip of orderly hear-covery hitherto of the slightest trace of human ers. We once held a seat by the side of a man who skeletons, or remains attesting human industry, regularly overturned the cricket on waking up, and would be very astounding. The discovery of these who had, on several occasions, scattered the con- fossil apes is, therefore, an additional indirect tents of the box of saw-dust in every direction. proof of the very inferior antiquity of man on the Persons afflicted with such constitutional maladies, | earth. From Fraser's Magazine. ful and all-bewildering jargon," the product of "hearts left destitute of any earnest guidance, and disbelieving that there ever was any, Chris THE NEGRO QUESTION.* sided over by strictly impartial chairmen, they TO THE EDITOR OF FRASER'S MAGAZINE. SIR,-Your last month's number contains a speech against the "rights of Negroes," the doc trines and spirit of which ought not to pass without remonstrance. The author issues his opinions, or rather ordinances, under imposing auspices; no less than those of the "immortal gods.' The Powers," "the Destinies," announce, through him, not only what will be, but what shall be done; what they "have decided upon, 66 66 ment. Ir all the meetings at Exeter Hall be not pre-tian or heathen," the "human species” is “reduced to believe in rose-pink sentimentalism alone." On this alleged condition of the human species I shall have something to say presently. But I must first set my anti-philanthropic opponent right on a matter of fact. He entirely misunderstands the great national revolt of the conscience of this country against slavery and the slave-trade if he supposes it to have been an affair of sentithan any cause which so irresistibly appealed to It depended no more on humane feelings them must necessarily do. Its first victories were gained while the lash yet ruled uncontested in the barrack-yard, and the rod in schools, and while men were still hanged by dozens for stealing to it was the cause of justice; and, in the estimation the value of forty shillings. It triumphed because of the great majority of its supporters, of religion. Its originators and leaders were persons of a stern passed their eternal act of parliament for." sense of moral obligation, who, in the spirit of This is speaking as one having authority;" the religion of their time, seldom spoke much of but authority from whom? If by the quality of benevolence and philanthropy, but often of duty, the message we may judge of those who sent it, crime, and sin. For nearly two centuries had not from any powers to whom just or good men acknowledge allegiance. This so-called "eternal negroes, many thousands annually, been seized by act of parliament" is no new law, but the old Indies to be worked to death, literally to death; force or treachery and carried off to the West law of the strongest-a law against which the for it was the received maxim, the acknowledged great teachers of mankind have in all ages pro- dictate of good economy, to wear them out quickly tested it is the law of force and cunning; the : and import more. In this fact every other poslaw that whoever is more powerful than an-sible cruelty, tyranny, and wanton oppression was other, is "born lord" of that other, the other by implication included. And the motive on the being born his "servant," who must be compelled to work" for him by "beneficent whip," part of the slave-owners was the love of gold; or, to speak more truly, of vulgar and puerile ostenif "other methods avail not." I see nothing tation. divine in this injunction. If "the gods" will detestable than this has been done by human I have yet to learn that anything more this, it is the first duty of human beings to resist beings towards human beings in any part of the such gods. Omnipotent these "gods" are not, earth. It is a mockery to talk of comparing it for powers which demand human tyranny and inwith Ireland. And this went on, not, like Irish justice cannot accomplish their purpose unless human beings cooperate. The history of human beggary, because improvement is the record of a struggle by which inch after inch of ground has been wrung from these maleficent powers, and more and more of human life rescued from the iniquitous dominion of the law of might. Much, very much of this work still remains to do; but the progress made in it is the best and greatest achievement yet performed by mankind, and it was hardly to be expected at this period of the world that we should be enjoined, by way of a great reform in human affairs, to begin undoing it. 66 The age, it appears, is ill with a most pernicious disease, which infects all its proceedings, and of which the conduct of this country in regard to the negroes is a prominent symptom-the disease of philanthropy. "Sunk in deep froth-oceans of benevolence, fraternity, emancipation-principle, Christian philanthropy, and other most amiablelooking, but most baseless, and, in the end, bale England had not the skill to the laws of the English nation. At last, howprevent it not merely by the sufferance, but by ever, there were found men, in growing number, who determined not to rest until the iniquity was much the business and end of their lives, as ordiextirpated; who made the destruction of it as would not be content with softening its hideous nary men make their private interests; who features, and making it less intolerable to the sight, but would stop at nothing short of its utter and irrevocable extinction. I am so far from seeing anything contemptible in this resolution, that, in my sober opinion, the persons who formed and executed it deserve to be numbered among those, not numerous in any age, who have led noble lives according to their lights, and laid on mankind a debt of permanent gratitude. After fifty years of toil and sacrifice, the object was accomplished, and the negroes, freed from the despotism of their fellow-beings, were left to themselves, and to the chances which the arrangements of existing society provide for those who 66 some wise means," everything should be made right in the world? While we are about it, wisdom may as well be suggested as the remedy for all evils, as for one only. Your contributor incessantly prays Heaven that all persons, black and white, may be put in possession of this " divine right of being compelled, if permitted will not serve, to do what work they are appointed for." But as this cannot be conveniently managed just yet, he will begin with the blacks, and will make them work for certain whites, those whites not working at all; that so "the eternal purpose and supreme will" may be fulfilled, and injustice," which is "forever accursed," may cease. 66 have no resource but their labor. These chances proved favorable to them, and, for the last ten years, they afford the unusual spectacle of a laboring class whose labor bears so high a price that they can exist in comfort on the wages of a comparatively small quantity of work. This, to the ex-slave-owners, is an inconvenience; but I have not yet heard that any of them has been reduced to beg his bread, or even to dig for it, as the negro, however scandalously he enjoys himself, still must a carriage or some other luxury the less, is in most cases, I believe, the limit of their privations-no very bad measure of retributive justice; those who have had tyrannical power taken away from them, may think themselves fortunate if they come so well off; at all events, it This pet theory of your contributor about work, is an embarrassment out of which the nation is we all know well enough, though some persons not called on to help them; if they cannot con- might not be prepared for so bold an application tinue to realize, their large incomes without more of it. Let me say a few words on this "gospel laborers, let them find them, and bring them from of work"-which, to my mind, as justly deserves where they can best be procured, only not by the name of a cant as any of those which he has force. Not so thinks your anti-philanthropic opposed, while the truth it contains is immeasuracontributor. That negroes should exist, and en- bly further from being the whole truth than that joy existence, on so little work, is a scandal, in contained in the words Benevolence, Fraternity, his eyes, worse than their former slavery. It or any other of his catalogue of contemptibilities. must be put a stop to at any price. He does not To give it a rational meaning, it must first be "wish to see" them slaves again "if it can be known what he means by work. Does work avoided;" but " decidedly" they "will have to mean everything which people do? No; or he be servants," servants to the whites," "com- would not reproach people with doing no work. pelled to labor," and "not to go idle another Does it mean laborious exertion? No; for many minute." "Black Quashee,' 99 66 up to the ears in a day spent in killing game, includes more muscupumpkins," and "working about half an hour alar fatigue than a day's ploughing. Does it mean day," is to him the abomination of abominations. I have so serious a quarrel with him about principles, that I have no time to spare for his facts; but let me remark, how easily he takes for granted those which fit his case. Because he reads in some blue-book of a strike for wages in Demerara, such as he may read of any day in Manchester, he draws a picture of negro inactivity, copied from the wildest prophecies of the slavery party before emancipation. If the negroes worked no more than "half an hour a day," would the sugar crops, in all except notoriously bad seasons, be so considerable, so little diminished from what they were in the time of slavery, as is proved by the custom-house returns? But it is not the facts of the question, so much as the moralities of it, that I care to dispute with your contributor. A black man working no more than your contributor affirms that they work, is, he says, an eye-sorrow," a "blister on the skin of the state," and many other things equally disagreeable; to work being the grand duty of man. "To do competent work, to labor honestly according to the ability given them; for that, and for no other purpose, was each one of us sent into this world." Whoever prevents him from this his "sacred appointment to labor while he lives on earth" is "his deadliest enemy." If it be "his own indolence" that prevents him, “the first right he has❞ is that all wiser and more industrious persons shall, "by some wise means, compel him to do the work he is fit for." Why not at once say that, by useful exertion? But your contributor always scoffs at the idea of utility. Does he mean that all persons ought to earn their living? But some earn their living by doing nothing, and some by doing mischief; and the negroes, whom he despises, still do earn by labor the " pumpkins" they consume and the finery they wear. Work, I imagine, is not a good in itself. There is nothing laudable in work for work's sake. To work voluntarily for a worthy object is laudable; but what constitutes a worthy object? On this matter, the oracle of which your contributor is the prophet has never yet been prevailed on to declare itself. He revolves in an eternal circle round the idea of work, as if turning up the earth, or driving a shuttle or a quill, were ends in themselves, and the ends of human existence. Yet, even in the case of the most sublime service to humanity, it is not because it is work that it is worthy; the worth lies in the service itself, and in the will to render it-the noble feelings of which it is the fruit; and if the nobleness of will is proved by other evidence than work, as for instance by danger or sacrifice, there is the same worthiness. While we talk only of work, and not of its object, we are far from the root of the matter; or, if it may be called the root, it is a root without flower or fruit. In the present case, it seems, a noble object means "spices."-"The gods wish, besides pumpkins, that spices and valuable products be grown in their West Indies"-the "noble elements of cinnamon, sugar, coffee, pepper black and gray,' ,"in Belgrave Square. We would not withhold from the whites, any more than from the blacks, the "divine right" of being compelled to labor. Let them have exactly the same share in the produce that they have in the work. If they do not things far nobler than pumpkins." Why so? Is what supports life inferior in dignity to what merely gratifies the sense of taste? Is it the verdict of the "immortal gods" that pepper is noble, freedom (even freedom from the lash) contempt-like this, let them remain as they are, so long as ible? But spices lead "towards commerces, arts, polities, and social developments." Perhaps so; but of what sort? When they must be produced by slaves, the "polities and social developments" they lead to are such as the world, I hope, will not choose to be cursed with much longer. they are permitted, and make the best of supply and demand. 66 They Your contributor's notions of justice and proprietary right are of another kind than these. According to him, the whole West Indies belong to the whites the negroes have no claim there, The worth of work does not surely consist in to either land or food, but by their sufferance. its leading to other work, and so on to work upon" It was not Black Quashee, or those he reprework without end. On the contrary, the multi-sents, that made those West India islands what plication of work, for purposes not worth caring they are." I submit, that those who furnished about, is one of the evils of our present condition. the thews and sinews really had something to do When justice and reason shall be the rule of hu- with the matter. Under the soil of Jamaica the man affairs, one of the first things to which we bones of many thousand British men"-" brave may expect them to be applied is the question, Colonel Fortescue, brave Colonel Sedgwick, brave How many of the so-called luxuries, conveniences, Colonel Brayne," and divers others," had to be refinements, and ornaments of life, are worth the laid." How many hundred thousand African labor which must be undergone as the condition men laid their bones there, after having had their of producing them? The beautifying of existence lives pressed out by slow or fierce torture? is as worthy and useful an object as the sustaining could have better done without Colonel Fortescue, of it; but only a vitiated taste can see any such than Colonel Fortescue could have done without result in those fopperies of so-called civilization, them. But he was the stronger, and could which myriads of hands are now occupied and "compel;" what they did and suffered therefore lives wasted in providing. In opposition to the goes for nothing. Not only they did not, but it "gospel of work," I would assert the gospel of seems they could not, have cultivated those islands. leisure, and maintain that human beings cannot "Never by art of his" (the negro) "could one rise to the finer attributes of their nature compati- pumpkin have grown there to solace any human bly with a life filled with labor. I do not include throat." They grow pumpkins, however, and under the name labor such work, if work it be more than pumpkins, in a very similar country, called, as is done by writers and afforders of their native Africa. We are told to look at "guidance," an occupation which, let alone the Haiti: what does your contributor know of Haiti? vanity of the thing, cannot be called by the same "Little or no sugar growing, black Peter extername with the real labor, the exhausting, stiffen- minating black Paul, and where a garden of the ing, stupefying toil of many kinds of agricultural | Hesperides might be, nothing but a tropical dogand manufacturing laborers. To reduce very kennel and pestiferous jungle." Are we to listen greatly the quantity of work required to carry on existence is as needful as to distribute it more equally; and the progress of science, and the increasing ascendency of justice and good sense, tend to this result. There is a portion of work rendered necessary by the fact of each person's existence: no one could exist unless work, to a certain amount, were done either by or for him. Of this each person is bound, in justice, to perform his share; and society has an incontestable right to declare to every one, that if he work not, at this work of necessity, neither shall he eat. Society has not enforced this right, having in so far postponed the rule of justice to other considerations. But there is an ever-growing demand that it be enforced, so soon as any endurable plan can be devised for the purpose. If this experiment is to be tried in the West Indies, let it be tried impartially; and let the whole produce belong to those who do the work which produces it. We would not have black laborers compelled to grow spices which they do not want, and white proprietors who do not work at all exchanging the spices for houses to arguments grounded on hear-says like these? In what is black Haiti worse than white Mexico? If the truth were known, how much worse is it than white Spain? But the great ethical doctrine of the discourse, than which a doctrine more damnable, I should think, never was propounded by a professed moral reformer, is, that one kind of human beings are born servants to another kind. "You will have to be servants," he tells the negroes, "to those that are born wiser than you, that are born lords of you-servants to the whites, if they are (as what mortal can doubt that they are?) born wiser than you." I do not hold him to the absurd letter of his dictum; it belongs to the mannerism in which he is enthralled like a child in swaddling clothes. By "born wiser," I will suppose him to mean, born more capable of wisdom: a proposition which, he says, no mortal can doubt, but which, I will make bold to say, that a full moiety of all thinking persons, who have attended to the subject, either doubt or positively deny. Among the things for which your contributor professes entire disrespect, is the analytical examination of |