Faints, if not screen'd from sultry suns, and pines Wrongs of Africa. HANNAH MORE. See the dire victim torn from social life, By felon hands, by one relentless stroke, JAMES MONTGOMERY. Lives there a reptile baser than the slave? Mark, as he passes, every head declined; Whose heart, 'midst scenes of suffering, senseless grown, A stranger to the tenderness of love; The spectre Conscience! shrieking through the gloom, "Man, we shall meet again beyond the tomb!" THOMAS CAMPBELL. And say, supernal Powers! who deeply scan That embryo spirit, yet without a name, That friend of Nature, whose avenging hands The blood, the tears, the anguish, and the toil, Yet, yet, degraded man! th' expected day Eternal Nature! when thy giant hand Had heav'd the floods, and fix'd the trembling land, Pleasures of Hope. ERASMUS DARWIN. Wrench'd the red scourge from proud Oppression's hands, E'en now, e'en now, on yonder western shores "Botanic Garden." JOHN STEWART. It is from the fatal preponderance of passion over reason, that the atrocious and damnable TRADE in HUMAN FLESH is sanctified; an act so infamous, that could all the crimes which history records be collected and consolidated into one, it would lose its nature of atrocity and become a virtue, when placed in comparison with the slave-trade, considered in its double flagitiousness of first buying the human species and then destroying them. It is inconceivable, that an assembly of a nation can be guilty of an act, that no individual who has not degraded himself below his species, and familiarized his ear to the association of his name with that of villain and scoundrel but would feel a horror of committing. Though legislative accomplices may cover his shame, and screen him from public censure, yet how, in the name of truth, if he possesses a well-organized mind and body, and but a common share of reflection, (or rather the pre-eminent and characteristic share of an Englishman,) how can he esteem himself, when conscience will ever upbraid him with the participation in an act whose flagitiousness is so great, that unless he renounces the character of man, his very share would be sufficient to sink him into the most ignominious contempt, and draw upon him more remorse than would the catalogue of all the acted and imagined crimes in nature.-The Moral State of Nations. SIR WILLIAM JONES. I pass with haste by the coast of Africa, whence my mind turns with indignation at the abominable traffic in the human species, from which a part of our countrymen dare to derive their inauspicious wealth. Sugar, it has been said, would be dear if it were not worked by blacks; as if the most laborious, the most dangerous works were not carried on in every country by freemen; in fact, they are so carried on with infinitely more advantage, for there is alacrity in a consciousness of freedom, and a gloomy, sullen indolence in a consciousness of slavery. But let sugar be as dear as it may, it is better to eat none, to eat honey, if sweetness only be palatable; better to eat aloes or coloquintida, than violate a primary law of nature, impressed on every heart not imbruted by avarice; than rob one human creature of those eternal rights of which no law upon earth can justly deprive him. What constitutes a State? Not high raised monuments or labor'd mound, Not cities proud, with spires and turrets crown'd; Where, laughing at the storm, rich navies ride. Where low brow'd baseness wafts perfume to pride. With powers as far above dull brutes endued As beasts excel cold rocks and brambles rude; But know their rights, and knowing, dare maintain, And crush the tyrant while they rend the chain! True Politics. EDWARD LYTTON BULWER. It is in vain that they oppose OPINION; any thing else they may subdue. They may conquer wind, water, nature itself; but to the progress of that secret, subtile, pervading spirit, their imagination can devise, their strength can accomplish, no bar; its votaries they may seize, they may destroy; itself, they cannot touch. If they check it in one place, it invades them in another. They cannot build - a wall across the whole earth; and even if they could, it would pass over its summit! Chains cannot bind it, for it is immaterial-nor dungeons enclose it, for it is universal. Over the faggot and the scaffold-over the bending bodies which they pile against its path, it sweeps on with a noiseless, but unceasing march. Do they bring armies against it, it presents to them no palpable object to oppose. Its camp is the universe; its asylum the bosoms of their own soldiers. Let them depopulate, destroy as they please, to each extremity of the earth; but as long as they have a single supporter themselvesas long as they leave a single individual into whom that spirit can enter, so long they will have the same labors to encounter, and the same enemy to subdue.-The Spanish Patriot Riego's Reflections on Tyrants. HENRY BROUGHAM. Tell me not of rights-talk not of the property of the planter in his slaves. I deny the right-I acknowledge not the property. The principles, the feelings, of our common nature, rise in rebellion against it. Be the appeal made to the understanding or to the heart, the sentence is the same that rejects it. In vain you tell me of laws that sanction such a claim! There is a law above all the enactments of human codes-the same throughout the world, the same in all times such as it was before the daring genius of Columbus pierced the night of ages, and opened to one world the sources of power, wealth, and knowledge; to another, all unutterable woes; such it is at this day it is the law written by the finger of God on the heart of man; and by that law, unchangeable and eternal, while men despise fraud, and loathe rapine, and abhor blood, they shall reject with indignation the wild and guilty fantasy, that man can hold property in man! In vain you appeal to treaties, to covenants between nations. The covenants of the Almighty, whether the old or the new, denounce such unholy pretensions. To those laws did they of old refer, who maintained the African trade. Such treaties did they cite, and not untruly; for by one shameful compact, you bartered the glories of Blenheim for the traffic in blood! Yet, in despite of law and of treaties, that infernal traffic is now destroyed, and its votaries put to death like other pirates. How came this change to pass? Not assuredly by parliament leading the way; but the country at length awoke; the indignation of the people was kindled; it descended in thunder, and smote the traffic, and scattered its guilty profits to the winds. . . . . One word before I sit down, and that shall be in reference to those other countries which, by a singular coincidence, obtained their freedom about the same period when we began our effective struggle -the Americans having obtained their political freedom about the time when Thomas Clarkson began to agitate the question of the slave-trade, and the French having obtained their restoration to freedom in the very same month when Yorkshire enabled us, by the spirit which it then exhibited, to accomplish the great object of emancipation, for which we had previously so long struggled in vain. That being the case, is it not melancholy as it regards France-is it not unspeakably mournful-nay, is it not absolutely monstrous (I use the term |