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fairly rated at 150,000; of these 20 per cent, or 30,000, die in the seasoning, leaving 120,000 available for the planter.

'If 150,000 were landed, there must have been embarked 25 per cent, or 37,500 more, who perish in the passage: and if 187,500 were embarked, 100 per cent, or 187,500 more, must have been sacrificed in the seizure, march, and detention.

'It is impossible for any one to reach this result, without suspecting, as well as hoping, that it must be an exaggeration; and yet there are those who think that this is too low an estimate.

'I have not, however, assumed any fact, without giving the data on which it rests; neither have I extracted from those data any immoderate inference. I think that the reader, on going over the calculation, will perceive that I have, in almost every instance, abated the deduction, which might with justice have been made. If then we are to put confidence in the authorities (most of them official) which I have quoted, we cannot avoid the conclusion,-terrible as it is,-that the Slave Trade between Africa and America annually subjects to the horrors of slavery

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120,000

30,000

37,500

187,500

255,000

375,000

100,000

475,000

-pp. 168-170.

Annual loss to Africa

We are not now about to indulge ourselves in passionate exclamations. The emotions excited by the contemplation of such a state of things are too big for words. There must be cherished a deep, a solemn, a holy purpose to pursue this system of nameless crimes, atrocities, and horrors to its extinction; a purpose by the execution of which alone we can either fulfil the imperative dictates of humanity, or discharge ourselves of our responsibility to our fellow men and to our Maker.

But has not the voice of the British nation condemned the Slave Trade, and, in obedience to it, has not the power of the British government been, for thirty years, unceasingly directed to its suppression? We admit this. But what is the effect of the admission? Only to render it unspeakably more mortifying that the Slave Trade should be continued in spite of us. The galling and melancholy fact stares us in the face, that notwithstanding twenty millions of money, probably as many thousands of lives, and scores of treaties, we have not suppressed this wickedness. Under the utmost pressure of our exertions for the third part of a century, it has increased, both in extent and atrocity. We are not called upon to say, that our interference has done no good, or

And

that it has done unmixed evil. It has doubtless withheld the traffic from acquiring the magnitude it would have reached, had it been encouraged by all nations. But it has done no more. in doing this, it has fearfully aggravated the misery of what it has failed to prevent. By exposing slavers to the chase of ships of war, it has compelled them to sacrifice accommodation to speed; by making it difficult for them to put to sea, it has caused many to perish on the coast of Africa; by rendering every voyage perilous, it has crowded the cargoes to fatal excess; and by making vessels liable to capture only with slaves on board, it has caused multitudes to be cast alive into the sea. It is our compassionate interference which has done all these mischiefs; and we can scarcely admit the solitary benefit named above to be a compensation for them.

We must do something more, and something better, Mr. Buxton fully states his conviction that no augmentation of our present plans will put down the Slave Trade. We give his argument, which is in few words, and is as conclusive as it is brief.

The power which will overcome our efforts, is the extraordinary profit of the slave-trader. It is, I believe, an axiom at the Customhouse, that no illicit trade can be suppressed where the profits exceed 30 per cent.

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I will prove that the profits of the slave-trader are nearly five times that amount. 'Of the enormous profits of the Slave Trade,' says Commissioner Macleay, the most correct idea will be formed by taking an example. The last vessel condemned by the Mixed Commission was the Firm.' He gives the cost of

Dollars. 28,000

Provisions, ammunition, wear and tear, &c. 10,600

Her cargo

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There was a clear profit on the human cargo of this vessel, of £18,640, or just 180 per cent.; and will any one who knows the state of Cuba and Brazil, pretend that this is not enough to shut the mouth of the informer, to arrest the arm of the police, to blind the eyes of the magistrates, and to open the doors of the prison?'-pp. 187, 188.

If in this state of things we ask the author what must be done, he tells us that he has a plan by which he hopes the object may be attained. We will not here criticise the partial and temporary secresy which he has thought it best to observe in relation to this matter; nor will we take advantage of the few hints he has thrown out to express our opinion upon it at present. It affords us pleasure to know that so benevolent and experienced a mind

has been employed on a subject confessedly so difficult, and still more that he sees any light breaking in upon what has long seemed a region of impenetrable darkness. We are happy also to learn, that he has been so closely engaged in maturing his plan, and so successful in procuring what he deems the necessary sanction, that the public may ere long expect its full development. In the meantime, without (we are sure) any desire to anticipate the efforts of Mr. Buxton, or to preoccupy the public regard, other labourers in the same cause (the names of some of whom will not be placed too high in being associated with the best of those who have already lived for it) have conceived and brought forward a plan of great simplicity and beauty. It is that of attempting the abolition of slavery and the Slave Trade by moral, religious, and other pacific influences exclusively. This plan having previously been discussed with many friends of humanity in various parts of the country, was at length submitted to a most respectable meeting of delegates, assembled for the purpose at Exeter Hall, on the 17th and 18th of April last; when it was with much cordiality and zeal adopted, and embodied in the constitution of a new society, to be known as the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society.

This society, without committing ourselves to its proceedings as partisans, we wish to introduce to the very favourable regard of our readers. Whether the extreme position be tenable or not, that the annihilation of the Slave Trade can be accomplished by nothing short of extinguishing the slavery which it nourishes-a position in support of which, we are sorry to say, very strong arguments may be adduced-it is perfectly clear that all progress made towards destroying slavery must not only diminish the Slave Trade, but diminish it in the best possible manner; and that, if the world should ever be so happy as to see the extinction of the former, the annihilation of the latter must follow of course, without the possibility of revival, or necessity of prohibition. Nor do we think the extinction of slavery an object altogether Utopian, especially by moral, religious, and other pacific influences. In those of the British colonies to which they have been directed these have extinguished it. In the United States they are powerfully operating to the same end. French_slavery, also, is feeling their energy. In the empire of Brazil, in Buenos Ayres, in the Spanish, Portuguese, and Danish colonies, the experiment of such influence has never been tried; but there is no reason to think it could be exerted in them without beneficial effect. The season is eminently favourable for such an effort; and, without expressing either condemnation or distrust of other means, which, by all who approve them, may be separately carried out to the fullest extent-we may say that we are glad to see the use of pacific measures taken up vigorously, and taken up apart from

coercive processes, which could not but tend to diminish their acceptableness, and to render suspected the motives in which they originated.

Art. V. Christianity Consistent with the Love of Freedom. By the Rev. ROBERT HALL, A.M.

EV

VERY little urchin in the country knows what a scarecrow is, and, albeit he may never have heard of genus, and species, and so forth, knows full well that of this said scarecrow there are different kinds. A string with a few feathers tied to it answers his purpose, and frightens the sparrows from the tiny plot of garden which he calls his own; but there's Master Johnson, the farmer, he must have something on a larger scale when his fields are white unto the harvest; there must be a man of straw set up, with outspread arms and a shocking bad hat on, which the village boys, by the bye, are plotting to secure for their next bonfire day. Oh, if one might but make this a chapter on scarecrows, what an extent we might range over; for be it known, gentle reader, that we have found some species or other of this genus, scarecrow, set up wherever there was any thing worth obtaining, and have often seen men forsooth, at least bipeds so calling themselves, as much terrified at what you may term, if you like, a moral scarecrow, as ever a poor cocksparrow was at a string of feathers tied across a schoolboy's radish-bed. Well, as we said, there are things of this kind to be met with every where, but of course variously constructed according to the class they are intended to frighten. Different classes must be differently managed, but the raw head and bloody bones, that used to silence the child in the nursery, is only exchanged for something else as much like it as may be when the child becomes of a larger growth: there is always some mysterious fe-fa-fum that announces the approach of the grim giant, and the scene of the nursery is repeated in the world. Thus there are mercantile scarecrows, and scarecrows political, and even scientific, but one would not care so much if it were not that there are religious scarecrows too. We can all remember, before the Catholics were admitted to their rights as citizens, how the pastures of St. Stephen's were guarded by a no-popery figure, horribile visu, clothed with a garment dipped in blood; very terrible truly was the same, and it did famously for a time. Besides this there was the Church-in-danger thing, which many still keep far away from, though as we have seen some birds, more naughty than the rest,

venture to explore the object of their dread, and then absolutely to perch thereon, and plume their feathers, and look quite saucy; so this ecclesiastical scarecrow is coming to be treated with little ceremony. But still, to this day, merchants and politicians of every party, and churchmen, and all other men, are often frightened out of their wits, and what is worse, frightened away from something that is good, from the finest fruit and the ripest grain, by a mere string of feathers or a man of straw. And thus is it with the Dissenter too, alas for him! but he will learn wisdom, (and well for him if he has not to buy it first,) and will treat the object of his dread as the frogs in the fable did King Log. What then did these same frogs? Why at first they were all reverence to be sure, as frogs should be, and kept at an awful distance, but at length some bolder than the rest ventured nearer and nearer, and round and round, till at last they leaped on the object of their former fear and-but no matter.

But what in the world can scare the Dissenters of England, the sons of the stout hearted puritans? one would have thought that, like young Nelson, they would not have known what fear was. We shall see that e'en their failing leans on virtue's side. To their credit be it said, that whatever only seems to deteriorate and injure religion makes them pause in their career: they can forego their right then: they are bold besiegers, but if, while they attack the stronghold of corruption, their enemies hold up as if to receive and intercept the blows the sacred form of religion, their weapons fall from their hand, and they prostrate themselves in lowliest homage, not to their foes, before whom they never quail, but to the adored object of their affection. This trait in their character is the proper key to the right understanding of that silly phrase which, invented by their enemies, is, strange to say, adopted by some amongst themselves. The fact is this, their wily adversaries, political and ecclesiastical, lay and clerical, seeing that the Dissenters, whom they choose to regard as ill-omened birds, could by their numbers peck up every tithe-sheaf in the country if so they were minded, stuck up, to guard the preserves of Toryism and Church, one of the queerest things ever seen-but it answered the purpose amazingly well in some quarters. It was a figure of one who had lost every trace of piety, and had brought disgrace upon religion and odium on Dissent, and, teneatis risum? they called it a political Dissenter, forsooth, and with much chatter and gabbling, set it up to frighten all the Dissenters out of their propriety. And a capital plan it was, quite a new thing, and a manifest improvement on all former scarecrows; the inventor deserved a patent. Now Churchmen chuckled and Tories triumphed, for corruption found a Palladium, since so long as this effigy should continue their Troy would be impregnable. But when it was found to be to a certain degree successful, it was

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