tion it is proposed that the manufacturer shall take his workpeople with him, whether he numbers them by hundreds or thousands; and it is supposed that he would then commence business with every advantage he possesses in this country, combined with others the New World alone can give him.

We will not say that any scheme of this kind has yet been decided on, or even that it is in serious contemplation. But we can affirm that the principle of manufacturing emigration is earnestly and anxiously discussed by several of the most influential and enterprising of the Lancashire mill-owners. This fact is sufficient of itself to show how greatly their faith has been weakened in the efficacy of free trade.-Britannia, 28 Nov.

says, I was nobody; and gals don't kiss no bodies like somebodies. For all that, I'm a little riled when I think of it. For I remember, how at New York they used to look at me, and mince round and round me, and put their hands under my chin, as if I warn't a human cretur, but a gooseberry bush, and they were afraid of their fingers. And then the boldest on 'em kissed me short and not at all satisfactory; for all the world as if they thought they was doing me a service, and not themselves an honor. They'll find me rayther different when I get back, I calculate; so they'd better practise a little afore I come among 'em.

Now in England kissing is mighty hearty. The gals arn't a bit ashamed on it. I shall say no more here about the maids-of-honor as kissed me a milTHE EQUADOR EXPEDITION.-The attention of lion times in the palace, but speak of the 'Gyptian our merchants and others having relations with Hall, where I was kissed four thousand times a South America has been drawn to an expedition day, which is only allowing eight kisses a piece for preparing in this country under the command of every female: some on 'em took more-some less, General Flores, and at the cost, it is said, of Queen but I'm striking the averages. I had when I first Christina, for the invasion of Equador. The avowed showed there, tarnation pretty dimples; and in a purpose of the invasion is the restoration of Flores month, my cheeks was as smooth as an apple. to the presidency of the republic; the real object The dimples was kissed out; run away with by the is said to be the erection of a kingdom for the eldest lips of the ladies. I often said to Barnum, "Govson of Christina by her second husband, Munos. ernor, this is by no means the Cheshire. I feel my The Manchester Commercial Association, following face is wasting away with so much kissing; meltthe example of the London merchants, have addressed ing slick like a sugar-plum in a baby's mouth. Lord Palmerston, representing the injuries likely to Tell you what it is; if I'm to lose my cheeks, 1 be inflicted on English property and commerce if ought to make something by 'em. Therefore, its this expedition be permitted to leave our shores, and my opinion you should alter the price, in this way. the following reply has been sent from the Foreign-Them as only looks, a shilling; them as kisses, eighteenpence.'

office :

"Foreign-office, November 11. "Sir-I am directed by Viscount Palmerston to acknowledge the receipt of the letter which you addressed to his lordship on the 6th of November,

on behalf of the directors of the Commercial Asso

Once or twice-for to be kissed eight different ways by five hundred females is nation hard work-once or twice, I thought I'd have a notice writ, and hung about my neck; sich a one as I seed at a flower show, with these words

"Admire, but touch not." I confess it now and then I used to be riled; used to say to myself, "Have you nobody at home to kiss; that you will put on your bonnets and pattens to come and kiss a little gentleman in public?" But as I said afore; take the people altogether. English kissing is mighty pleasant.

ciation at Manchester, requesting the interference of her majesty's government in order to put a stop to an expedition which General Flores and his agents are said to be preparing against the state of the Equator, and which the directors consider likely to be injurious to the trade of this country with South America; and I am to inform you, in reply, that In Scotland I was only kissed outright at private the matter to which this letter relates has already parties. Of that, as a man of honor, I say nothing. been brought under the attention of her majesty's In public, the ladies used to blow kisses at me government, and that Lord Palmerston is fully through their fingers. aware how important the South American trade is to the commercial interests of this country.-I am, sir, your most obedient, humble servant,

"E. J. STANLEY. "To J. Aspinall Turner, Esq., President of the Commercial Association, Manchester."

TOM THUMB ON KISSES.

AN American as I am a free citizen of the smartest nation in creation, 't is n't for me to find fault with the gals of free Columbia. Nevertheless, truth is mighty, and with fair play will whip her weight in wild-cats. Therefore, I cannot say much for the kissing of America. Governor Barnum tells me that I ought n't to give any 'pinion of the matter till I get back again, with all my snuffboxes and tooth-picks, and pencil-cases of crowned heads about me; when the kisses will be a different matter, as the royalty of Europe will be saluted through me. But this I must say; the kissing of America, of my own countrywomen, was terrible cautious; nothing more than what you might call respect with the chill off. But, then, Barnum

Was kissed tarnation in France. Rayther disaoften left the paint upon my nose. greeable in one particular, as the ladies so very

Talking of France, it's a wonder I'm a single

man.

For when the king of the French heard from Barnum that I had got the fortin I have, I'm darned if he did n't say he must have me for one of the princesses. Now, being a true republican, that didn't suit my book at all." No, no," says I to Barnum; "don't mind the princesses kissing me now and then, when I'm in a good temper, but I'd as soon run upon a snag as upon the marriage service. Seen too much of life, and been kissed a little too much round the world for that." So I escaped-cut stick from the Tuileries-going off in Barnum's hat-box.

Well, I did think that I should give a whole account of all the kissing I've gone through, but on second thoughts it can't be done here, no how. The subject is so full-as Barnum says-that I can't do it justice in a little book, so I intend to make it a big history, by itself, with picturs of the ladies, with their lips made up jest as they attacked me; made up now peaking like rose-buds, and now as if I was a cake at a pastry-cook's, made for

nothing but to be eaten. It's wonderful to a man | And so, perhaps, you'll say I ought,

with my experience of lips to know what mouths can be made on 'em. Nobody would believe it, but they will when they see my book. And so to get back to Queen Victoria's palace.

When the maids-of-honor had done kissing me, and stood-like flustered birds of Paradise-a taking breath, the lord-in-waiting comes in agin, and says, "General, her majesty the Queen will be very happy to see you." All the maids-ofhonor fell back, and I following the lord, andBarnum following me-walks into the presence of the queen of the British Isles. I'd made my mind up to show my independence, to go in whistling "Yankee Doodle," or "Star of Columbia," but somehow I found my voice had departed-gone slick, and not even left its ghost behind-and Barnum, too, I should n't ha' known him; he shook all over, and his face looked as if it had been dabbed with a powder-puff. I thought to myself, the British lion must be somewhere, under some sofa p'raps, in the 'partment, and the governor sees him, and shakes, and is pale accordin'.

66

I walks up to the queen, who was a sittin' by the tea-things. "I'm very happy, general," said her majesty, to see you here. Genius, though ever so small-if it is genius, general-is welcome to this fire-place."

Upon this, I bowed, as any gentleman would do to any lady.

"General," said gracious majesty, "allow me to introduce my husband." Whereupon Prince Albert said in the most affable manner

"I hope to improve the acquaintance of the general, when we go a gunning together," and then royal highness went on with his tea.

"Do you take sugar, general?" said gracious majesty with tongs in her hand.

I do, madam," said I; for I found my voice a coming back agin.

"Which do you prefer?"-said gracious majesty, with a smile that seemed to turn me into a lump of honey-" which sugar do you prefer, white or brown?"

"Either," said I, "but if it is n't slave-grown, I'm a true republican, and won't touch a tarnation morsel."-Punch.

THE PRIZE PIG AND THE PRIZE PEASANT.

I NEVER pass a fat pig by,

But off I take my hat,

And I'm your servant, Sir," says I :

What makes me act like that?

Or else it would be hard.

A prize I receiv'd the good gentlefolks griev'd
They could n't give more to me;

Two pounds was the touch-and a cow got as much;

But a fat hog, three.

So to a pig I make a bow,

As manners do require,
And touch my hat to boar and sow,
With parson and with 'squire.
Though a Christian am I, yet a pig in a sty,
My betters is, I see;

For the pig makes fine pork, and I'm nearly past
work;

And they can't eat me!-Punch.

WE mentioned last week the appearance, in Rome, of a weekly English journal under the title of the Roman Advertiser :-and may add now, that no less than five new daily and weekly papers or periodicals have, in addition to the English one, been announced, to meet the growing demands of the Italian public.—Athenæum.

THE electric telegraph is gradually spreading its network of nerves throughout the land; creating a system so highly sensitive that literally a throb at its metropolitan heart will be felt almost simultaneously in every distant part. There are none of the discoveries by which the conditions of intercommunication have been so marvellously changed within the last few years that seem so strange, and all but incredible, in their expression as this. All England is, as it were, brought to one moment of time by the intended arrangements. All its dials are made to report the same hour of action at the same second. In the first place, all the railway lines of telegraph that run to London are to deliver their messages at a common metropolitan station in the neighborhood of the Royal Exchange, adjacent to Lloyd's rooms;-and workmen are busily engaged in laying down the wires. Then, government have taken into consideration the means of effecting an immediate communication with the royal palaces, government dockyards, garrisons, and fortresses throughout the kingdom-and the various country lines are extending in all directions their means of communicating with one another. The whole is under the direction of the Electric Telegraph Company, and independent of the various railway companies.-We may mention, in connexion with this subject, that government is

Why, because I've been taught to behave as I about to erect a great central barrack for England,

ought,

And know my own degree;

And I never neglect to pay proper respect,

When 't is due from me.

For forty years, as man and boy,

I've driven my master's plough;

Was never out of his employ,

And still am in it now:

My children and wife I have kept all my life
From off the parish clear:

But merit like mine, to the worth of a swine,
People think small beer.

True I've not toil'd so long for nought;
I've met with some reward:

on fourteen acres of ground which it has purchased for the purpose, on the east side of Birmingham. At this point, also-which may be called the geographical heart of England-the electric telegraph is to be brought to a common centre from all parts of the United Kingdom :-so that, on instantaneous intimation from any quarter, however remote, troops may be poured along the railway lines to any part where their presence is needed in the space of a few hours. A system of arrangements like this-which we read of so calmly to-day as mere corollaries of miracles already grown familiar would have been received by our fathers, if offered for predictions, as the wildest dreams-exceeding even the license of fable, and making romance unpoetical for want of verisimilitude.-Athenæum

PARIS ACADEMY OF SCIENCES.-Nov. 9.-M. A.

and

WE hear, with pleasure, that the Council of the | sufficient to interfere with its use in those cases Royal Society have awarded the Copley Medal to where the presence of acid vapor would do injury." M. Leverrier for his investigations relating to the It is probable that this very remarkable discovery disturbances of Uranus. This prompt action of a will, after all, prove valuable principally for mining body not famous for the rapidity of its movements purposes.-Athenæum. in the distribution of honors, will do much to remove from the minds of French philosophers the suspicion Brongniart read a report on a paper, by M. Cheof English scientific jealousy or unfairness-and to vaudier, relative to the quantity of water contained silence the French newspaper writers who so scan-in firewood at different periods after its having been dalously assumed them. It is worth mentioning, by cut down.-Three papers were received, from M. the way, that, in 1781, the Copley Medal was given Regnault, on the compressibility and dilatation of to Sir William Herschel for his discovery of Geor- liquids, and on the improvements to be effected in gium Sidus-subsequently called Uranus; which, the manufacture of instruments for measuring temaccording to his paper on the subject in the "Philosophical Transactions" for the above year, he found perature.A note was received from M. Bréguet, between ten and eleven o'clock on the night of Tues-din, of Lille, in which that gentleman suggested jun., relative to a communication from M. Dujarday, the 13th of March—and which at first he sus- the adoption in the battery for electrical telegraphs pected to be a comet. of a bar of magnetized steel in place of the soft iron which is attracted by the magnet, as a means of THE results of the experiments instituted by the making the signals with greater certainty and degovernment authorities on the gun-cotton of Dr. spatch. M. Bréguet states that he and M. Gonnelle Schönbein have, we understand, induced the Board made the experiment suggested by M. Dujardin, of Ordnance to decline its adoption for the use of more than twelve months ago, but it was found not the British military services. The following are to produce all the desired results.-A report was the principal of the objections which have led to this received of some experiments made with explosive decision as we find them stated by à contem- cotton, prepared with azotic and sulphuric acid; porary:It explodes at a far lower temperature it results, from the table drawn up of the experithan gunpowder-even the least explosive gun-cot-ments, that five grammes are equal in effect to thirton requiring a heat very considerably below red-teen or fourteen grammes of the gunpowder genness for its explosion, whilst some of the varieties can be fired by the heat of boiling water. This is a serious objection in all cases where any number of charges have to be fired in succession; as the heat caused by the explosions very soon raises the temperature of the gun above that point at which it is hot enough to cause the charge to explode spontaneously-thus rendering its use exceedingly THE advocates of temperance at Cork have been inconvenient and dangerous. The great facility erecting a tower, 100 feet high, in their city, to with which gun-cotton explodes, even when not commemorate the reception by the citizens of perfectly dried, would, of course, render its manuFather Mathew; and inaugurating it by a soirée, at facture more hazardous than that of powder; and which we see it stated that "Father Mathew's for the same reason, its preservation in bulk, when health was drunk"-we hope in tea, or soda-waof necessity it must be kept in a state of compres-terior of the tower:-" Nothing in their style could ter. The following description is given of the insion, would be attended with a considerable degree of risk; since it is very probable that any mass of gun-cotton or other similar combustible compound, particularly when compressed, would have a tendency to undergo spontaneous combustion-and Gothic order-the upper portions being composed there can be no doubt that a magazine of gun-cot- signs. The window-frames and outer edgings are of beautiful stained glass, shaped in various deton would be far more dangerous than a powder of fluted oak-and the latter are surmounted with magazine. A very considerable quantity of steam carved heads. Over these rises, splendidly-execuis produced by the explosion of gun-cotton, so much, in fact, that the inside of the gun becomes ted stucco work-which is continued along the enquite wet. The inconvenience of this is obvious. A tire ceiling, and gives the apartment a grand and last objection, and one which it is to be feared may in-classic appearance. In a niche between two of the terfere with some of the most valuable applications of this very interesting substance, is the production of acid vapors when it is fired. It is generally stated that gun-cotton leaves no residue, and pro

duces no noxious fumes when fired. As regards the first statement, it is practically true; for when tried against gunpowder it does leave no residue. The minute quantity of solid matter left after its explosion is as nothing compared with the saline residue of gunpowder. It is also true that gun-cotton, being free from sulphur, no sulphurous acid gas is formed when it is fired; and hence, none of those suffocating fumes are perceived which result from the explosion of powder-in which various alkaline salts are mechanically suspended in an atmosphere loaded with sulphurous acid gas. No inconvenience, therefore, is felt when gun-cotton is fired in a mine. At the same time, a small quantity of nitric and nitrous acids is always produced,

erally used in the army.-M. Pelouze made some observations on the preparation of explosive paper; and mentioned a discovery by which it is easy to ascertain whether the paper has been well prepared. If the paper dissolves in ether it is perfect if not, it has been badly prepared.-Athenæum.

exceed the artistical decorations of the principal

room.

It is, of course, circular, being about sixteen feet in diameter. The windows are in the

windows, stands, on a handsome rosewood pedestal, and covered with a glass shade, an exquisite marble above this, is a bust of our venerated bishop, the bust of the Very Rev. T. Mathew, by Hogan; and Right Rev. Doctor Murphy. This apartment is also adorned by a massive chimney-piece; on the front of which is a small basso-rilievo figure of Father Mathew, holding Britannia and Erin by either hand, surrounded by the emblems of both countries: and from the centre of the ceiling hangs a very

beautiful chandelier."-Athenæum.

IN France the royal ordinance has appeared which creates two new chairs at the Faculty of Sciences in the capital: one, of the higher Geometry—which the minister has filled by the appointment of M. Chasles; and the other of Mathematical Astronomy or Celestial Mechanism-which, as our readers know, has been created with the express intention of making M. Leverrier its first occupant.

From the Christian Remembrancer.

1. The Influence of Christianity in promoting the Abolition of Slavery in Europe. A Dissertation which obtained the Hulsean Prize for the Year 1845. By CHURCHILL BABINGTON, B.A. Scholar of St. John's College. Cambridge: Deightons.

cule fastens itself upon almost all human characters and actions, which are for any length of time the object of contemplation. Blanco White tells us that the idea of a nun and of a nunnery carried with it something of the ridiculous in his time, and in the circle in which he lived, in Spain; and so the sufferings of the negro became the subject of many a joke in the John Bull, and papers of a similar charBut all the accidental features of the struggle have died from memory; all that was ridiculous, mismanaged, and imprudent in the means employed. may safely and justly be now forgotten, now that their just end is obtained; and gratitude and admiration may well be the only feelings entertained towards those brave and worthy men who devoted their whole lives, time, fortunes, and character, to the attainment of this end.

2. Remarks on the Slavery and the Slave Trade of
the Brazils. By T. NELSON, R.N., late Sen-acter.
ior Assistant Surgeon of H. M. S. Crescent,
at Rio de Janeiro. London: Hatchards.
3. Excursion through the Slave States of South
America. By G. W. FEATHERSTON HAUGH.
2 vols. 8vo. London: Murray.

WE are not purposing, at this day, to enter into an argument to prove the iniquity of the African Slave Trade, or to recite any of its horrible details for the purpose of rousing our readers' feelings against it. It is a question on which we believe there is but one feeling throughout not only this country, but the whole of civilized Europe. In reprobating its detestable cruelties, exaggeration is impossible; and language which on almost any other subject would be felt to be heated and extravagant, on this fails of giving just expression to the indignation which human nature-for Christianity may be put aside for the moment-feels, at seeing itself so outraged; at seeing one human being inflict, and another suffer, such atrocities. It is impossible to acquit Mr. Wilberforce's speeches on the subject, either at public meetings or in the House of Commons, of some degree of violence; but it is violence which here, if anywhere, is rightly placed; and to a reader it is no more than the cordial required by his spirit, as it were, fainting at the spectacle of so much misery and crime.

We would rather not, we repeat, open out the private history of Abolition. But there are occasions when we are almost compelled to do so, when we are challenged to the inquiry, much against our will, by the continued repetition of a strain of selfcongratulation on the virtue, benevolence, and philanthropy of the British public, shown in their aboli tion of slavery. When this is no more than the rant of Exeter Hall, it would not deserve serious notice; but it is a text too often adopted without reflection by men who are ordinarily in the habit of thinking of what they are saying, and of attaching some meaning to the words they use. Let any man who is capable of forming an impartial judgment, go over the history of the connexion of this country with the slave trade, from the time that Las Casas first proposed to substitute the Negro race for the sake of saving that of the native Indian, down to the 1st August, 1834, itself, and so far from feeling anything to be proud of-anything on which to hold ourselves out, as is so often done, as a pattern to the other nations, the only sentiment of real patriotism must be one of shame and sorrow on such a retrospect of the past. It is, indeed, easy to talk, and to make a favorite topic of such pharisaical declamation, of the noble sacrifices, the magnificent compensation of twenty millions made by the country for the attainment of its object, and the energetic efforts she still continues to use to check the evil in other nations less humane than herself. But what are the facts of the case? Such was our original and long-continued share in this traffic, that all we have hitherto done, and continued to do, to effect its discontinuance, would be little to remove the indelible stain of the past.

Thirty years ago, indeed, an Englishman's mind had almost become callous from the continual repetition, in print, of such exhibitions; it was so impossible to take up a book, pamphlet, review, magazine, or newspaper, which did not open at some horrible tale of African suffering, that the natural impression was lost. The question of the slave trade had shared the fate of every question which is made the subject of public dispute, and is attempted to be carried by public agitation. It is peculiarly unfortunate and distressing to the feelings of the good, where such a question happens-like that of Irish distress, or the workhouse system-to involve the sufferings of thousands. In the course of that long public struggle which was crowned by the Emancipation Act of 1833, it will not be denied The African slave trade dates almost as far back that the conduct of the Abolitionists was far from as the first settlement of the West Indies. Barperfect, often far from wise: they had all the faults tholomew Las Casas, a Dominican, and afterwards of agitators. Injurious language, libellous personal Bishop of Chiapa, in Mexico, had spent the greater attacks, inflammatory speeches, and all the unworthy part of his life in St. Domingo, as a missionary machinery of religious quackery, contributed to carry among the Indians. Struck with horror and pity at a series of measures of relief and emancipation, the unavailing sufferings which were inflicted by which were so clearly right, that they ought to have the whites on this helpless race, he formed the idea stood in no need of such auxiliaries. Yet, unhap- of transporting from the Portuguese settlements pily, such were the hasty, crude, and intemperate large numbers of Africans, whose hardy nature and projects of the Abolitionists, that themselves justify powers of endurance rendered them capable of toil some of the opposition which their noisy and ill-which the feeble and listless Indian races could not informed zeal excited. The Sunday-school and old-maid portion of the agitation was justly open to ridicule; and we cannot suppress a smile when we find the venerable leader himself, in introducing the since better known T. B. Macaulay on the scene of an anti-slavery meeting, finding "a clear proof of the interposition of Heaven in favor of the cause, in providing such an advocate for its support." By a subtle and circuitous process of imagination, ridi

support. It is probable that he did not contemplate any forcible or piratical seizure of the persons of the Africans, but imagined that their transportation (a few had been carried over by the Portuguese as early as 1503) was with their own consent; and also that he was in expectation of a code of laws being promulgated in favor both of Africans and natives in the Spanish settlements, and he flattered himself that being about to return and live in the

and obtained, in 1834, the emancipation of the Negro, is a more humane and enlightened public than that which, in 1774, petitioned in favor of slavery? When the inhabitants of Liverpool signed this petition, they had before their eyes, not the sufferings of the Negro between the tropics, but the opulence, splendor, and grandeur, produced on the banks of the Mersey; just as when we dwell with admiration on the splendid career of Napoleon, we do not admit into our minds the thought that this career cost the lives of three millions of men.

more

country of their slavery, he could look to the execution of it. The proposition, however unfortunate, thus originated in motives of humanity; it was an attempt to remedy a present and pressing evil by the introduction of another, which seemed at the time to involve less misery and suffering. Cardinal Ximenes, however, the Regent of Spain at the time, to whom the proposition was made, with a foresight and justice that might be expected from that great man, absolutely rejected it. But the experiment once begun to be made, was found to succeed so well for the purposes of the settlers, that a regular piratical trade was soon established. And now be- But the magnificence of the sum which the gan the share of England in the business. Before country was willing to pay for the attainment of its we had a colony of our own, and long without any philanthropic design seems a sufficient proof in views for our own settlements after we had made itself of its sincerity and real heartiness in the printhem, we undertook the carrying trade in slaves for ciple of liberty, and has dazzled the eyes of foreign the Spanish colonies. The first importation of nations, not more by its evidence of our wealth, slaves by English ships was in the reign of Eliza- than of our magnanimity. "Great Britain," says beth, in 1562, by a Captain Hawkins, who was Dr. Channing, "loaded with an unprecedented afterwards knighted by her. The trade was encour- debt, and with a grinding taxation, contracted a aged by statute and proclamation through the suc- new debt of a hundred million dollars, to give freecessive reigns of Charles I., II., and James II. dom, not to Englishmen, but to the degraded AfriThe acquisition of Jamaica under Cromwell, who can! I know not that history records an act so introduced the practice of selling his political cap- disinterested, so sublime. In the progress of ages tives, English and Scotch, but chiefly Irish Royal England's naval triumphs will shrink L ists, as slaves to the plantations, gave it a fresh and more narrow space in the records of our stimulus. But it was William III. who outdid This moral triumph will fill a broader, bright. them all. With Lord Somers for his minister, he page.' Without any intention of extenuating the declared the slave trade to be "highly beneficial to real merit of our sacrifice, we may, and with no the nation;" and that this was not meant merely affectation of modesty, decline this highly scented as beneficial to the nation through the medium of incense of flattery offered to Great Britain from a the colonial prosperity, is demonstrated by the Assi- quarter so unusual. The present in itself is of dazzling ento treaty in 1713, with which the colonies had splendor; but as regards the giver, it costs little nothing to do, and in which Great Britain binds when it can be paid by a bill drawn on posterity; herself to supply 144,000 slaves, at the rate of and as regards the receivers, besides that it did not, 4,800 per annum, to the Spanish colonies. From in point of fact, compensate the planters for the that time till within a few years of the present time, losses of one season, it should be remembered that cour history is full of the various measures and it was but a return of a trifling portion of that grants which passed for the encouragement and pro-wealth which for years we had been drawing into tection of the trade. In 1760, South Carolina (then our exchequer at the expense of these very planta British colony) passed an act to prohibit further importation. Great Britain rejected this act with indignation, and declared that the slave trade was beneficial and necessary to the mother country. The colonial assembly of Jamaica made more than one attempt, towards the close of the last century, to prohibit it, but the British government resisted the restriction. Bristol and Liverpool, the foundation of the prosperity of both of which towns may be said to have been laid in the slave trade, petitioned in favor of it. The matter was referred to the Board of Trade, and the Earl of Dartmouth, then president of the board, (in 1774,) answered by the following declaration,-"We cannot allow the colonies to check or discourage, in any degree, a traffic so beneficial to the nation." Still less can we lay claim to a national character for humanity, from a consideration of the progress of the Abolition struggle. The energy and motion of the struggle came from a few high-minded and generous men, who, after a long and indefatigable warfare, succeeding in conquering public sentiment, and through it the government. The history of the Abolition cause is the history of an ably conducted agitation, and those who wish to learn the secret machinery by which any point whatever, which is sufficiently in harmony with the spirit of the age, may be carried in constitutional states, could not study a better or more perfect instance. But, would it be a just inference from this success that a nation had made an advance thereby in the virtues of charity and humanity? and that the public which demanded

ers themselves. It is a delicate task, in dissecting the acts of individuals, to be just in ascribing motives; it is still more difficult, in considering national acts, to decide how much is owing to the prevalence of a really humane and generous sentiment in the people, and how much to fashion, to imitation, to the catching nature of a popular cry, when once the small party in whom the sentiment is genuine, have succeeded in raising it. And in the instance under discussion, it must be remembered that if Abolition was a British act, the opposition to Abolition. with all the hardness, cruelty, and base self-interest displayed through the protracted struggle, were equally of British growth, and met with countenance, encouragement, and eloquent support from men then and since high in public estimation, and not thought the worse of for the part they took on that question. Let all due allowances then be made, and the Abolition may be still justly set down among the great and good deeds of Protestant England; but always remembering that it is at best but a poor atonement for the past; that it was, after all, but a tardy and reluctant assent to an act of bare justice, a putting an end to an evil of which we had ourselves been among the creators and most active maintainers, let us have the good taste not to be perpetually quoting it as an instance of generosity, or habitually assuming that on the continent of Europe, or in America, the understandings and feelings of society are comparatively insensible to the principles of justice and freedom.

But while we are thus sounding the note of tri