structed." The Editor of the Southern Religious Telegraph, who is a clergyman and a warm friend of the colonization scheme, remarking upon the instruction of the coloured population of Virginia, says:

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Teaching a servant to read, is not teaching him the religion of Christ. The great majority of the white people of our country are taught to read; but probably not one in five, of those who have the Bible, is a Christian, in the legitimate sense of the term. If black people are as depraved and as averse to true religion as the white people are and we know of no difference between them in this respect-teaching them to read the Bible will make Christians of very few of them. [What a plea!].. If Christian masters were to teach their servants to read, we apprehend that they would not feel the obligation as they ought to feel it, of giving them oral instruction, and often impressing divine truth on their minds. [!!] . . If the free coloured people were generally taught to read, it might be an inducement to them to remain in this country. We would offer THEM NO SUCH INDUCEMENT. [!!] . . A knowledge of letters and of all the arts and sciences, cannot counteract the influences under which the character of the negro must be formed in this country... It appears to us that a greater benefit may be conferred on the free coloured people, by planting good schools for them in Africa, and encouraging them to remove there, than by giving them the knowledge of letters to make them contented in their present condition."-[Telegraph of Feb. 19, 1831.]

'Jesuitism was never more subtle, Papal domination never more exclusive. The gospel of peace and mercy preached by him who holds that ignorance is the mother of devotion! who would sequestrate the Bible from the eyes of his fellow-men! who contends that knowledge is the enemy of religion! who denies the efficacy of education in elevating a degraded population! who would make men brutes in order to make them better Christians! who desires to make the clergy infallible guides to heaven! Now what folly and impiety is all this! Besides, is it not mockery to preach repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ, to the benighted blacks, and at the same time deny them the right and ability to "search the Scriptures" for themselves?

The proposition which was made last year, to erect a college for the education of coloured youth in New Haven, it is well known, created an extraordinary and most disgraceful tumult in that place, (the hot-bed of African colonization,) and was generally scouted by the friends of the Society in other places. The American Spectator at Washington, (next to the African Repository, the mouth-piece of the Society,) used the following language, in relation to the violent proceedings of the citizens of New Haven. "We not only approve the course which they have pursued, but we admire the moral courage which induced them for the love of right, (!) to incur the censure of both sections of the country."

'As a further illustration of the complacency with which colonizationists regard the laws prohibiting the instruction of the blacks, I extract the following paragraph from the "Proceedings of the New-York, State Colonization Society, on its second anniversary:"

"It is the business of the free-their safety requires it-to keep

the slaves in ignorance. Their education is utterly prohibited. Educate them, and they break their fetters. Suppose the slaves of the south to have the knowledge of freemen, they would be free, or be exterminated by the whites. This renders it necessary to prevent their instruction to keep them from Sunday Schools, and other means of gaining knowledge. But a few days ago, a proposition was made in the legislature of Georgia, to allow them so much instruction as to enable them to read the Bible; which was promptly rejected by a large majority. I do not mention this for the purpose of condemning the policy of the slave-holding States, but to lament its necessity."

Elias B. Caldwell, one of the founders, and the first secretary of the Parent Society, in a speech delivered at its formation, advanced the following monstrous sentiments:

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The more you improve the condition of these people, the more you cultivate their minds, the more miserable you make them in their present state. You give them a higher relish for those privileges which they can never attain, and turn what you intend for a blessing into a curse. No, if they must remain in their present situation, keep them in the lowest state of ignorance and degradation. The nearer you bring them to the condition of brutes, the better chance do you give them of possessing their apathy."

So, then, the American Colonization Society advocates, and to a great extent perpetuates, the ignorance and degradation of the coloured population of the United States!' pp. 148, 149.

The reason why the slaves are so ignorant, is, because they are held in bondage; and the reason why they are held in 'bondage, is, because they are so ignorant. They ought not to 'be freed until they are educated; and they ought not to be 'educated, because, on the acquisition of knowledge, they would 'burst their fetters.' Such, Mr. Garrison says, is the logic of the American apologists for slavery, as we know it to be that of the Jamaica planters; and within this vicious circle, all their miserable shifts and evasions move round. We have the best authority, then, for the conclusion, that slavery and education are incompatible; that the plan of educating slaves for freedom is altogether chimerical and impracticable. What! educate a man's property for becoming alienated from him? Will those who view emancipation in this light, ever be induced to take, in good faith, the steps preparatory to the issue they deprecate? Such an expectation would betray an utter ignorance of human nature, and an extreme of credulity perfectly ridiculous. Let us then hear no more of educating slaves with the consent of their masters*. There may be a few honourable exceptions; but the slave-holders of Jamaica, and those of the United States, are generally quite in

We transcribe the following from the Globe of Jan. 24. On the 12th of Dec. last, in the House of Representatives of South Carolina, a bill prohibiting the teaching of slaves to read, was called up, read a third time, passed, and sent to the senate for concurrence.'

accordance upon this point. They say, that their slaves shall not be instructed, for then they would know themselves to be men. As to those who profess their willingness to consent to the abolition of slavery, as soon as the slaves are prepared for it, let it be recollected, that the apologists for the slave-trade consented that the trade should be abolished, as soon as the colonies on the coast of Guinea should have become civilized.

Wo to the policy,' exclaims the philanthropic Bishop Gregoire, the enlightened Ami des Noirs, that would found the prosperity of a nation on the misery of others! And wo to the man whose fortune is cemented by the tears of his fellow men! 'It is according to the established order of things under the con'trol of Divine Providence, that whatever is iniquitous should be at the same time impolitic, and that fearful calamities should be 'the chastisement of crime. The individual culprit suffers not 'always here below, the punishment due to his offence; because, to use the words of St. Augustine, God has eternity to punish 'in. It is not so with nations: in their collective capacity, they 'do not belong to the future state of existence. In this world, 'therefore, according to the same Father, they are either recom'pensed, or punished, as so many nations have been, for national crimes, by national calamities.'*

In the political and moral effects of slavery, and its contingent dangers, the crime carries with it in some degree its own punishment; and nothing can more strikingly illustrate this, than the present aspect of things in the United States. There, we have all classes affecting to deplore its existence in the heart of society as a calamity, yet, refusing to repent of or to abjure the sin. There, by a monstrous inversion of sentiment, we find it seriously maintained, that it is the slave-holders, not the slaves, who are to be commiserated, as being, by an unhappy necessity, involved in the system. The whites, not the blacks, who are a nuisance', are to be pitied. There is a sense, perhaps, in which this may be partially true. The injurer is more to be pitied than the injured, the criminal than the sufferer; and that perversion of moral feeling which seems to have spread, like a contagion, from the south to the north, through all the classes of American society, has something in it more frightful than the physical degradation of the blacks themselves. The plague-spot, slavery, has infected every thing within reach of contact. Its effects are seen in the

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morbid pride, the tremulous apprehension, the short-sighted efforts of the whites. Slavery, in America, has rendered the constitution a lie, changed nature into an enemy, made the increase of population a tremendous evil, and occasioned the increase of knowledge and virtue in the proscribed caste, to be dreaded as a still

* "De La Traite et de l'Esclavage." Paris. 1815.

greater evil. Hatred and fear, mingled with a portion of national shame, form the scourge with which slavery is at this time lashing the Americans. But this is not all. The existence of profitable slavery in the southern states, of unprofitable slavery in the middle states, and of a caste, the offspring of abolished slavery, in the northern and middle states, is the principal origin of the widening breach between the different sections of the Union. It is this circumstance which renders their several interests all but incompatible. The seeds of discord which are now ripening into open conflict, have been sown by Slavery. We consequently find the Slave-states the most tenacious of their sovereignty, while almost all the great slave-holders are anti-federalists. Nine states out of the twenty-four have now no slaves; and four more, in the middle and western sections, comparatively few. But in the remaining eleven, the slaves, who numbered in 1790 less than 700,000 throughout the Union, now amount to 2,010,000, having nearly trebled in forty-two years; and of these, about a million are concentrated in Virginia, the Carolinas, and Georgia, between the Potomac and the Alatamaha. With the growth of the slave population, has grown the anti-federal feeling, in which, Washington foresaw the probable cause of the disruption of the Federacy, and the downfal of the fair fabric he had so greatly contributed to consolidate. Thus is the curse of Slavery preying on the vitals of the constitution. But will it entail no other national punishment upon those who persist in founding their prosperity on the 'misery and degradation of others'? "Shall I not visit for these things? saith the Lord."

From America, we turn to England with feelings of mingled hope and intense anxiety. Upon the English soil, the slave is free. The British Legislature is the arena, in which the monster Slavery must be dragged forth to receive its death-blow. The attention of both hemispheres is fixed upon the approaching contest. It is not Jamaica slavery only, but Carolina slavery, Cuba slavery, Brazilian slavery, that it depends upon the decision of Great Britain to extinguish. Five millions and a half of slaves are awaiting the verdict that shall find and proclaim them-MEN. Evidence enough in all conscience has been heard on both sides. We have now on our table the three immense folio volumes, containing the Reports of the Lords' Committee and the House of Commons' Committee, with the minutes of the evidence respectively laid before them, which, by those who have access to them, and leisure for the perusal, will be found an invaluable mass of information, and altogether decisive of the question. Of the evidence annexed to the Commons' Report, the present Number of the Anti-Slavery Reporter contains a very able analysis, with some pithy notes by the Editor (we believe, Mr. Z. Macaulay). In this condensed form, every one may easily make

himself master of the facts established by the evidence, which amply sustain the following two propositions. 1. That the Slaves, if emancipated, will adequately maintain themselves by their own labour. 2. That the danger of withholding freedom from the slaves, is greater than that of granting it. Upon the present occasion, we cannot attempt to go into the details of the evidence, either in the shape of abstract or of extracts; and indeed, we earnestly hope that the majority of our readers will lose no time in procuring and attentively perusing the whole of this interesting document.

It may not, however, be so obvious at first sight, as it is true in fact, that upon these two propositions hinges the whole question as regards the expediency of early emancipation. 'The im'portant question of what is due to the fair and equitable con'sideration of the interests of private property, as connected with 'emancipation,' was not investigated by the Commons' Committee; and it may be thought by some of our readers, that this enters, even as a preliminary inquiry, into the general question of expediency. Upon this point, we shall content ourselves with transcribing the following remarks, which have appeared in the Patriot newspaper.

This consideration (the interests of private property) ought not to be allowed for one moment to embarrass the settlement of 'the question, for three obvious reasons: First, the negro, at least, owes nothing to the planter, and the victims of our na'tional guilt ought not to continue to suffer, "while we are haggling about the pounds, shillings, and pence." Secondly, when it is finally determined that slavery shall cease, it will be quite time enough to go into the consideration of those special cases of hardship which may possibly require an equitable remedy. The claim to compensation is at present urged only as an argument ad terrorem, as it was during the agitation of the slave-trade question; the justice and the impracticability of compensation being insisted upon in the same breath. But for 'what is the slave-holder to be compensated? For the loss of 6 his power over the person of the negro, or for the loss of his command over the labour of the negro? If for the former, he may just as reasonably claim compensation for every abridgement ' of his arbitrary power by humane enactments. If for the latter, 'he has to prove that his command over that labour will be taken away, or even diminished, by the abolition of slavery. Thirdly, 'let it be but admitted, what the evidence condensed in this pamphlet triumphantly establishes, that the slaves will, if eman'cipated, maintain themselves by their labour, and that no danger would result from granting them freedom; it follows that the abolition of slavery would be in two respects a boon to the planter: first, by cheapening labour; (free labour being always