Black men, and produce West-Indian fruitfulness by means of them? West-Indian fruitfulness will need to be produced. If the English cannot find the method for that, they may rest assured there will another come (Brother Jonathan or still another) who can. He it is whom the gods will bid continue in the West Indies; bidding us ignominiously, "Depart, ye quack-ridden, incompetent!" One other remark, as to the present Trade in Slaves, and to our suppression of the same. If buying of Black war-captives in Africa, and bringing them over to the Sugar-Islands for sale again be, as I think it is, a contradiction of the Laws of this Universe, let us heartily pray Heaven to end the practice; let us ourselves help Heaven to end it, wherever the opportunity is given. If it be the most flagrant and alarming contradiction to the said Laws which is now witnessed on this Earth; so flagrant and alarming that a just man cannot exist, and follow his affairs, in the same Planet with it; why, then indeedBut is it, quite certainly, such? Alas, look at that group of unsold, unbought, unmarketable Irish "free" citizens, dying there in the ditch, whither my Lord of Rackrent and the constitutional sheriffs have evicted them; or at those "divine missionaries," of the same free country, now traversing, with rags on back, and child on each arm, the principal thoroughfares of London, to tell men what "freedom" really is ; — and admit that there may be doubts on that point! But if it is, I say, the most alarming contradiction to the said Laws which is now witnessed on this earth; so flagrant a contradiction that a just man cannot exist, and follow his affairs, in the same Planet with it, then, sure enough, let us, in God's name, fling aside all our affairs, and hasten out to put an end to it, as the first thing the Heavens want us to do. By all manner of means. This thing done, the Heavens will prosper all other things with us! Not a doubt of it, provided your premise be not doubtful. But now, furthermore, give me leave to ask, Whether the way of doing it is this somewhat surprising one, of trying to blockade the Continent of Africa itself, and to watch slave ships along that extremely extensive and unwholesome coast? The enterprise is very gigantic; and proves hitherto as futile as any enterprise has lately done. Certain wise men once, before this, set about confining the cuckoo by a big circular wall; but they could not manage it! Watch the coast of Africa? That is a very long Coast; good part of the Coast of the terraqueous Globe! And the living centres of this slave mischief, the live coals that produce all this world-wide smoke, it appears, lie simply in two points, Cuba and Brazil, which are perfectly accessible and manageable. If the Laws of Heaven do authorize you to keep the whole world in a pother about this question; if you really can appeal to the Almighty God upon it, and set common interests, and terrestrial considerations, and common sense, at defiance in behalf of it, — why, in Heaven's name, not go to Cuba and Brazil with a sufficiency of Seventy-fours; and signify to those nefarious countries: "Nefarious countries, your procedure on the Negro Question is too bad; see, of all the solecisms now submitted to on Earth, it is the most alarming and transcendent, and, in fact, is such that a just man cannot follow his affairs any longer in the same Planet with it. You clearly will not, you nefarious populations, for love or fear, watching or entreaty, respect the rights of the Negro enough; wherefore we here, with our Seventy-fours, are come to be King over you, and will on the spot henceforth see for ourselves that you do it!" Why not, if Heaven do send us? The thing can be done; easily, if you are sure of that proviso. It can be done it is the way to "suppress the Slave-trade;" and so far as yet appears, the one way. Most thinking people, if hen-stealing prevail to a plainly unendurable extent, will you station police-officers at every hen-roost; and keep them watching and cruising incessantly to and fro over the Parish, in the unwholesome dark, at enormous expense, with almost no effect? Or will you not try rather to discover where the fox's den is, and kill the fox! Which of those two things will you do? Most ple, you know the fox and his den; there he is, discharge your cruisers and police-watchers ! thinking peo kill him, and [Laughter.] O my friends, I feel there is an immense fund of Human Stupidity circulating among us, and much clogging our affairs for some time past! A certain man has called us, "of all peoples the wisest in action; " but he added, "the stupidest in speech: "—and it is a sore thing, in these constitutional times, times mainly of universal Parliamentary and other Eloquence, that the "speakers" have all first to emit, in such tumultuous volumes, their human stupor, as the indispensable preliminary, and everywhere we must first see that and its results out, before beginning any business. (Explicit MS.) TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS AGO.1 DUELLING. DUELLING, in Queen Elizabeth's reign, was very prevalent; nor has it abated in King James's. It is one of the sincerities of Human Life, which bursts through the thickest-quilted formulas; and in Norse-Pagan, in Christian, New-Christian, and all manner of ages, will, one way or the other, contrive to show itself. A background of wrath, which can be stirred up to the murderous infernal pitch, does lie in every man, in every creature; this is a fact which cannot be contradicted; - which indeed is but another phasis of the more general fact, that every one of us is a Self, that every one of us calls himself I. How can you be a Self, and not have tendencies to self-defence! This background of wrath, which surely ought to blaze out as seldom as possible, and then as nobly as possible, — may be defined as no other than the general radical fire, in its leastelaborated shape, whereof Life itself is composed. Its leastelaborated shape, this flash of accursed murderous rage ; — as the glance of mother's-love, and all intermediate warmths and energies and genialities, are the same element better elaborated. Certainly the elaboration is an immense matter, indeed, is the whole matter! But the figure, moreover, under which your infernal element itself shall make its appearance, nobly or else ignobly, is very significant. From Indian Tomahawks, from Irish Shillelahs, from Arkansas Bowie-knives, up to a 1 Found recently in Leigh Hunt's Journal, Nos. 1, 3, 6 (Saturday, 7th December, 1850 et seqq.). Said there to be "from a Waste-paper Bag" of mine. Apparently some fraction of a certain History (Failure of a History) of James I., of which I have indistinct recollections. (Note of 1857.) deliberate Norse Holmgang, to any civilized Wager of Battle, the distance is great. Certain small fractions of events in this kind, which give us a direct glance into Human Existence in those days, are perhaps, in the dim scarcity of all events that are not dead and torpid, worth snatching from the general leaden haze of my erudite friend, and saving from bottomless Nox for a while. No. I. HOLLES OF HAUGHTON. JOHN HOLLES, ESQUIRE, or, to speak properly, Sir John Holles, of Haughton, in Notts; the same Sir John whom we saw lately made Comptroller of the Prince's Household;—an indignant man, not without some relation to us here: John Holles indignantly called it "political simony" this selling of honors; which indeed it was: but what then? It was doable, it was done for others; it was desirable to John also, who possessed the requisite cash. He was come of London citizens, had got broad lands and manors, Haughton, Erby and others; had wealth in abundance, "his father used to keep a troop of players:" he now, in this epoch, for a consideration of £10,000, gets himself made Earl of Clare. We invite our readers to look back some twoscore years upon his history, and notice slightly the following circumstances there. John Holles, Esquire, of Haughton, in Notts, a youth of fortune, spirit and accomplishment, who had already seen service under the Veres, the Frobishers, by land and sea, did in 1591, in his twenty-sixth year, marry his fair neighbor, Anne Stanhope;- Mistress Anne Stanhope, daughter of Sir Thomas Stanhope, in those parts, from whom innumerable Chesterfields, Harringtons and other Stanhopes extant to this very day descend. This fair Anne Stanhope, beautiful in her fardingales and antiquarian head-gear, had been the lady of John Holles's heart in those old times; and he married her, thinking it no harm. But the Shrewsburys, of Worksop, took offence |