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complete the purposes, or promote the prosperity of their employers, under a divine administration of the universe. The fire of tyranny may purify, but will never consume the unalloyed gold of resolute and disinterested virtue. One race may be ex*tinguished, but another of congenial principles will be raised from their ashes to confront their adversaries, “Genus immortale manet; multosque per annos,

"Stat Fortuna domus, et avi numerantur avorum."

Truth and benevolence are the essential components of genuine felicity: but the antipathy between truth and force, between persecution and benevolence is fundamental, irreconcileable and eternal. Impregnated by these persuasions, prompted by these motives, and cheered by these prospects, I acknowledge no offence; I have committed none. I deprecate no punishment; I have deserved none. An absolution from all suffering and censure would excite in my breast not so much a selfish joy from mere escape from danger, as a generous gratulation on the exhibition in you of that sensibility and benevolence, which exalts the human nature to a resemblance with the divine. Not that I am so estranged from the satisfaction of personal security, from the luxuries of literary leisure, and the comforts of domestic peace, as to view with indifference or complacency, much less to solicit, penalties and imprisonment: nor again so uninfluenced by true dignity of character, and the exhortations of unimpeached integrity, as to into any commutation with a timid and temporising selfishness; as to surrender for mere animal existence all that renders life itself either valuable or supportable. I am equally provided for each alternative; for ease and freedom with contentment and equanimity; for restraint and punishment with fortitude and exultation. I have lived too long, and

to enter

have endured too many conflicts; my consciousness of desert is too well corroborated by the consenting regards of estimable men, to enable such persecutions on such principles, even to pollute the current, much less to extinguish the source of my consolations.-In the mean time I look forward with enraptured antici pation to a removal of these uncu lightened operations, these vexatious encroachments of a mistaken policy, by those gentle triumphs of religiou and philosophy, which will here. after bind the whole creation in one indissoluble tie of benevolence and peace: when all attempts to eradicate opinions and produce convic tion by oppressive force will be re garded as the very excess, not of injustice only, but of puerile delusion; as an extravagance no less disgraceful to humanity, than contradictory to common sense: and I now appeal, with entire confidence, in the purity of my intentions,-and the intrinsic meritoriousness of my conduct, front rash and inapprehensive ignorance to the sober votaries of philosophy and letters, from the perturbed spirits of my delirious contemporaries to the unalarmed judgments of future generations; from the reversible formularies of transient judicatures to the unswerving tribunal of changeless truth; from the perishable dispensations of worldly politics to the constitutions of the everlasting Gospel; from the condemning sentence of frail

and mistaken men to the irrevocable

decision of an absolving and applauding God!

[The admirable address from which the above is extracted did not prevent Mr. Wakefield from receiving sentence, to be imprisoned for TWO YEARS in Dorchester goal! His long confinement, had so weakened and enervated his frame as to render him incapable of those exer tions before common with him--long fever of which he died. History will rewalks; in one of these he caught the cord him as a martyr to the cause of TRUTH, PEACE and PHILANTHROPY.]

REVIEW OF BOOKS.

Clarkson's History of the Rise, Progress, and Accomplishment of the abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament.

[Continued from page 43.1 Mr. Clarkson having briefly considered the EVILS of the slave trade, proceeds to trace its history from its commencement; respecting which we have the following account.

"It is rather remarkable, that the first forerunners and coadjutors should have been men in power.

"So early as in the year 1503 a few slaves had been sent from the Portuguese settlements in Africa into the Spanish colonies in America, In 1511, Ferdinand the fifth, king of Spain permitted them to be carried in great numbers. Ferdinand, however, must have been ignorant in these early times of the piratical manner in which the Portugese bad procured them. He could have known nothing of their treatment when in bondage, nor could be have viewed the few uncertain adventurous transportations of them into his dominions in the western world, in the light of a regular trade. After his death, however, a proposal was made by Bartholomew de las Casas, the bishop of Chiapa, to Cardinal Ximenes, ho held the reins of the government of Spain till Charles the Fifth came to the throne, for the establishment of a regular system of commerce in the persons of the native Africans. The object of Bartho lomew de las Casas was undoubtedly to save the American Indians, whose cruel treatment and almost extirpation he had witnessed during his residence among them, and in whose behalf he had undertaken a voyage to the court of Spain. It is difficult to reconcile this proposal with the humane and charitable spirit of the bishop of Chiapa. But it is probable he believed that a code of laws would soon be established in favour both of Africans and of the natives in the Spanish settlements, and that he flattered himself that, being about to return and to live in the country of their slavery, he could look to the execution of it. The cardinal, however, with a foresight, a benevolence, and a justice, which will always do honour to his me

mory, refused the proposal, not only judging it to be unlawful to consign innocent people to slavery at all, but to be very inconsistent to deliver the inha bitants of one country from a state of misery by consigning to it those of another. Ximenes therefore may be con sidered as one of the first great friends of the Africans after the partial begiuning of the trade.

"This answer of the cardinal, as it showed his virtue as an individual, se it was peculiarly honourable to him as a public man, and ought to operate as a lesson to other statesmen, how they ad mit any thing new among political regu lutions and establishments, which is connected in the smallest degree with injus

tice.

For evil, when once sanctioned by governments, spreads in a tenfold degree, and may, unless seasonably checked, become so ramified, as to affect the reputation of a country, and to render its own removal scarcely possible without detriment to the political concerus of the state. In no instance has this been verified more than in the case of the slave trade. Never was our na

tional character more tarnished, and our
prosperity more clouded by guilt. Never
was there a monster more difficult to

subdue. Even they, who heard as it
were the shrieks of oppression, and
wished to assist the sufferers, were fear-
ful of joining in their behalf. While
they acknowledged the necessity of re-
moving one evil, they were terrified by
the prospect
of introducing another; and
were therefore only able to relieve their
feelings, by lamenting in the bitterness
of their hearts, that this traffic had ever
been begun at all.

"After the death of cardinal Ximenes, the emperor Charles the Fifth, who hap trade. In 1517 he granted a patent to come into power, encouraged the slave one of his Flemish favourites, containing an exclusive right of importing four thousand Africans into America. But he lived long enough to repent of what he had thus inconsiderately done. For in the year 1542 he made a code of laws for the better protection of the unfortunate Indians in his foreign domi nions; and he stopped the progress of African slavery by an order, that all

slaves in his American islands should be

made free. This order was executed by Pedro de la Gasca. Manumission took place as well in Hispaniola as on the Continent. But on the return of Gasca to Spain, and the retirement of Charles into a monastery, slavery was revived,

It is impossible to pass over this instance of the abolition of slavery by Charles in all his foreign dominions, without some cominents. It shows him, first, to have been a friend both to the Indians and the Africans, as a part of the human race. It shows he was ignorant of what he was doing when he gave his sanction to this cruel trade. It shows when legislators give one set of men an undue power over another, how quickly they abuse it, or he never would have found himself obliged in the short space of twenty-five years to undo that which he had countenanced as a great statemeasure. And while it confirms the former lesson to statesmen, of watching the beginnings or principles of things in their political movements, it should teach them never to persist in the support of evils, through the false shame of being obliged to confess that they had once given them their sanction, nor to delay the cure of them because, politically speaking, neither this nor that is the proper season; but to do them away instantly, as there can only be one fit or proper time in the eye of religion, namely, on the conviction of their existence.

"From the opinions of cardinal Ximenes and of the Emperor Charles the Fifth, I hasten to that which was expressed much about the same time, in a public capacity, by pope Leo the Tenth. The Dominicans in Spanish America, witnessing the cruel treatment which the slaves underwent there, considered slavery as utterly repugnant to the principles of the gospel, and recommended the abolition of it. The Franciscans did not favour the former in this their scheme of benevolence; and the consequence was, that a controversy on this subject sprung up between them, which was carried to this pope for his decision. Leo exerted himself, much to his honour, in behalf of the poor sufferers, and declared, That not only the christian religion, but that nature herself cried out against a state of slavery. This answer was certainly worthy of one, who was deemed the head of the christian church. It must, however, be

VOL. IX.

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confessed that it would have been strange if Leo, in his situation as pontiff, had made a different reply. He could never have denied that God was no respecter of persons. He must have acknowledged that men were bound to love each other as brethren. And, if he admitted the doctrine, that all men were accountable for their actions hereafter, he could never have prevented the deduction, that it was necessary they should be free. Nor could he, as a man of high attainments, living early in the sixteenth century, have been ignorant of what had taken place in the twelfth; or that, by the latter end of this latter century, christianity had obtained the undispu ted honourof having extirpated slavery from the western part of the European world.

"From Spain and Italy I come to England. The first importation of slaves from Africa by our countrymen was in the reign of Elizabeth, in the year 1562. This great princess seems on the very commencement of the trade to have questioned its lawfulness. She seems to have entertained a religious scruple concerning it, and, indeed, to have revolted at the very thought of it. She seems to have been aware of the evils to which its continuance might lead, or that, if it were sanctioned, the most unjustifiable means might be made use of

to

procure the persons of the natives of Africa. And in what light she would have viewed any acts of this kind, had they taken place, we may conjecture from this fact, that when captain (afterwards Sir John) Hawkins returned from his first voyage to Africa and Hispaniola, whither he had carried slaves, she sent for him, and, as we learn from Hill's Naval History, expressed her concern lest any of the Africans should be carried off without their free consent, declaring that It would be detestable, and call down the vengeance of Heaven upon the undertakers.' Captain Hawkins promised to comply with the injunctions of Elizabeth in this respect. But he did not keep his word; for when he went to Africa again, he seized many of the inhabitants and carried them off as slaves, which occasioned Hill, in the account he gives of his second voyage, to use these remarkable words: Here began the horrid practice of forcing the Africans into slavery, an injustice and barbarity, which, so sure as there is vengeance in heaven for the worst of

erimes, will sometime be the destruction of all who allow or encourage it.' That the trade should have been suffered to

continue under such a princess, and after such solemn expressions as those which she has been described to have uttered, can be only attributed to the pains taken by those concerned in it to keep her ignorant of the truth.

"From England I now pass over to France. Labat, a Roman missionary, in his account of the isles of America, mentions, that Louis the Thirteenth was very uneasy when he was about to issue the edict, by which all Africans coming into his colonies were to be made. slaves, and that this uneasiness continued, till he was assured, that the introduction of them in this capacity into his foreign dominions was the readiest way of converting them to the principles of the christian religion,

These, then, were the first forerunners in the great cause of the abolition of the slave trade. Nor have their services towards it been of small moment. For, in the first place, they have enabled those, who came after them, and who took an active interest in the same cause, to state the great authority of their opinions and of their example. They have enabled them, again, to detail the history connected with these, in consequence of which circumstances have been laid open, which it is of great importance to know. For have they not enabled them to state, that the African slave trade never would have been permitted to exist but for the gHorance of those in authority concerning it-That at its commencement there was a revolting of nature against it—a sus, picion a caution-a fear--both as to its unlawfulness and its effects? Have they not enabled them to state, that falsehoods were advanced, and these concealed under the mask of religion, to deceive those who had the power to suppress it? Have they not enabled them to state that this trade began in piracy, and that it was continued upon the principles of force? And, finally, have not they, who have been enabled to make these statements; knowing all the circumstances connected with them, found their own zeal increased and their own courage and perseverance strengthened; and have they not, by the communication of them to others, produced many friends and even labourers in the Cause ?"

The author in chapter III. gives an account of the principal writers who have noticed and reprobated slavery and the slave trade, in which honourable list we perceive the names of those eminent nonconformist divines, Mr. Richard Baxter, and Dr. James Foster: Pope's beautiful lines respecting

"The poor dark Indian whose untu[tored mind

"Sees God in clouds, or hears him in [the wind;" and quotations from Thomson, Savage, Cowper, &c. are introduced as evidence that our first rate poets, as well as our first rate divines, have not been backward in enlisting under the banners of justice and humanity. One of the most energetic sermons preached on the subject, appears to be that of Bishop Warburton's preached in 1786, before the society for the propagation of the gospel in foreign parts, of which the following is an extract.

"From the free savages, I now come to the savages in bonds. By these I mean the vast multitudes yearly stolen from the opposite continent, and sacrificed by the colonists to their great idol the god of gain. But what then, say these sincere worshippers of mammon? They are our own property which we offer up-Gracious God! to talk, as of herds of cattle, of property in rational creatures, creatures endued with all our faculties, possessing all our qualities but that of colour, our brethren both by nature and grace, shocks all the feelings. of humanity, and the dictates of common sense! But, alas! what is there, in the infinite abuses of society, which does not shock them? Yet nothing is more certain in itself and apparent to all, than that the infamous traffic for slaves directly infringes both divine and human law, NATURE CREATED MAN FREE, AND GRACE INVITES HIM TO AS

SERT HIS FREEDOM.

"In excuse of this violation it hath been pretended, that though indeed these miserable outcasts of humanity be torn from their homes and native country by fraud and violence, yet they thereby become the happier, and their condition the more eligible. But who are you, who pretend to judge of ano

ther man's happiness; that state, which each man under the guidance of his Maker forms for himself, and not one tman for another ? To know what constitutes mine or your happiness is the sole prerogative of him who created us, and cast us in so various and different moulds. Did your slaves ever complain to you of their unhappiness amidst their natives woods and deserts? or rather let me ask, did they ever cease complaining of their condition under you their lordly masters, where they see indeed the accomodations of civil life, but see them all pass to others, them selves unbenefited by them? gracious then, ye petty tyrants over human freedom, to let your slaves judge for themselves, what it is which makes their own happiness, and then see whether they do not place it in the return to their own country, rather than in the contemplation of your grandeur, of which their misery makes so large a part; a return so passionately longed for, that, despairing of happiness here, that is, of escaping the chains of their cruel taskmasters, they console themselves with feigning it to be the gracious reward of heaven in their future state."

Be so

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to this most interesting subject. His first publication was an Essay on the slavery and commerce of the human species, particularly the African, translated from a latin dissertation, which was honoured with the first prize in the University of Cambridge, for the year 1785. This essay was followed by tracts on the injustice trade, all of which do equal honour and impolicy of the African slave

to the head and the heart of the author; whose strenuous exertions in this glorious cause were, after much opposition from certain statesmen, and from the generality of slave-traders, and slave-holders, the disgrace of their species, at length crowned with success.

In May 1787, our author had the happiness of uniting various persons in a committee for the abolition of the accursed traffic; and a body of evidence was by him collected and drawn up to be laid before parliament. Of the horrible effects of this trade in turning the hearts of those engaged in it, to stone, and rendering them deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked, may be aduced amongst other numerous instances, the following.

"In the year 1767, the ships Indian Concord, of Bristol, the Edgar, of LiQueen, Duke of York, Nancy, and verpool, and the Canterbury, of London, lay in old Calabar river.

"It happened at this time, that a quarrel subsisted between the principal inhabitants of Old Town and those of New Town, Old Calabar, which had originated in a jealousy respecting slaves.

The captains of the vessels now mentioned joined in sending several letters to the inhabitants of Old Town, but particularly to Ephraim Robin John, who was at that time a grandee or principal inhabitant of the place. The te nor of these letters was, that they were sorry that any jealousy or quarrel should subsist between the two parties; that if the inhabitants of Old Town would come on board, they would afford them security and protection; adding at the same time, that their intention in in

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