broad daylight the dead men's bones and unclean things of the whitened sepulchre.

Now there is no nation on the face of the earth which claims so high a place in the admiration, yea, we may say, the adoration of all people, tongues, and languages, as the North American Union. The vain and vaunting people of this noble portion of the globe are cursed with an insatiable thirst for adulation; they never can praise themselves too much, and never think that others have praised them half enough. They extol their constitution, their laws, their customs, their manners, their principles, their learning, their science, their commercial speculations, their fleets, and their armies with unceasing praise. It seems to be inscribed on the bold front of every Yankee, "Let every thing that hath breath praise the United States of North America.' They compare themselves with their own rivers and forests, their mountains, their lakes, and their plains; and thus come to think their moral excellencies as stupendous as the physical excellencies of their soil, and requiring a vast and hyperbolical language duly to set them forth. The very reverse, however, is the process in the minds of those who approach as calm spectators to discover the truth and to detect the lie; for if our enthusiasm kindles amongst the multiplying images of greatness and beauty, if the mind expands with exulting thoughts on beholding the vast proportions and gigantic splendors of that gorgeous land, we do but sink into a deeper melancholy when we come to study the baseness and grovelling iniquity of the human creatures that defile it; and the magnificence of the country only makes its inhabitants the more contemptible. A view of the national sin of America, after admiring the natural grandeur of their country, is like discovering the object of worship in the old temples of Egypt; where, after the stranger had walked bewildered through vistas of superb architecture, he came at last to the filthy idol, a mouthing and obscene Ape, playing its pranks on a throne of gold! And this is the thing to be worshipped in America—a mockery and disgrace of the human character "enthroned in the West"- -a nation of slave-drivers masquerading it with the cap of liberty, a Christian people excelling all the heathen tribes of the world in systematic wickedness,—a free republic exercising greater oppression than was ever heard of in the old king-scourged and priest-ridden despotisms of Europe.

To talk of a slave's labor being due to his master, is to insult common sense and common decency. While the latter can coin dollars out of the sweat and tears of his victim he will do so. "The law allows it, and the court awards it." It is this clause, however, in the constitution, which renders the free states tributary to the ambition of the slave states, and accessories to all their guilt;-makes the boasted asylum of the persecuted, the prison-house of the unfortunate; and converts the guardians of liberty, into the turnkeys of its assassins.

I can truly and honestly declare, that the orderly and obliging behaviour I observed among them, the decent and comfortable arrangements I witnessed in their houses-the anxiety they expressed for the education of their children, and their own improvement-the industry which was apparent in all about them, and the intelligence which marked their conversation-their sympathy for one another, and the respect they maintained for themselves the absence of vindictive feeling against the whites, and the gratitude they evinced towards every one who treats them with common civility and regard,-far surpassed the expectation I had formed, of finding among them something more elevated than the instinct of monkeys united to the passions of men. They are "not only almost, but altogether such as" the white man-except the bonds he has fastened on their bodies or their minds.-Residence and Tour in the United States, 18331835.

WESTMINSTER REVIEW.

If the reader rises from the perusal of these volumes of E. S. Abdy with a highly reduced opinion of American intellect and morals, and a strong sense of the insult put upon the liberals of Europe by the affectation of fraternity with which they have been honored, it will be accompanied with an increased hatred of oppression, and increased love of liberty as a principle. With a form of government vastly more favorable for human improvement than that of their English progenitors, the Americans, probably from the effect of climate, which has produced so many other variations in the animal kingdom, have gone backward and not forward, and present a caricature of all the worst qualities of the worst Englishmen of the worst times. Slavery is so utterly abhorrent to every respectable individual in this country, that it would be a waste of argument to reason against its continuance; while those who have profited by it, like others who have been guilty of nefarious practices, are beyond the pale of reason on the subject.

"The best of men have ever loved repose." And the slave is no exception to the general rule, that some stimulus is necessary to induce mankind to labor. When no pecuniary bribe is offered him, he can by no skill in reasoning be shown the moral obligation under which he lies, to exert himself in behalf of his master. And therefore, the ultima ratio of the whip is called in requisition. This is used with less or more discretion, according to the temper, the judgment, the taste, and sometimes perhaps the conscience, of the master or mistress.

The tearing asunder family ties, the banishment, the mart, the jealous confinement and surveillance of new masters, the whole horrors of the slave-trade, are brought into active operation in the heart of the United States, whose citizens the while, expect to sit at

table with civilized men, and be treated with more reverence than the kindred barbarians of Ashantee

Bad as is the state of the slaves in the more northern states, they uniformly regard the South with more horror than our thieves at home do the hulks. The loss by death alone to the Louisiana planters, in bringing slaves from the North, is estimated at twenty-five per cent. The sugar factories and rice swamps, the slaves know to be rapid and rough highroads to the grave. And they are well acquainted with the stories of the greater rigor of the southern drivers. It is true that the more respectable Virginian proprietors decline selling their negroes so long as they conduct themselves to their satisfaction, and even make this rule in some degree a point of honor.

So extensive is the brown population, and so varied are tints of complexion, that not only are there many slaves who are not distinguishable from whites, for the children of slave mothers are slaves to all generations, though the father at every step may have been white, but there are actually many instances of slaves being liberated, on their proving that they were full-bred white persons, and had been kidnapped in their youth and sold. The fairest complexioned slaves often bring the highest price, being preferred as body servants.

Mr. Abdy's book reads a moral lesson to the American people which cannot be too much insisted on. It is the right of the civilized world to combine in placing them in quarantine till they are less discreditable to their ancestors. Will any Englishmen sit at meat with a nation that sell one another by weight?

It is by no means certain, that civilization did not come to Egypt out of Ethiopia; and it is quite certain that the Indians, who pass for "black fellows" in the vocabulary of these white philosophers, were a civilized and learned race, when our progenitors were painting their skins and roasting one another alive.

The Americans cannot all have got the iron into their souls, the sore remembrance, like what in some families is understood to produce the aversion to a rope; what, for instance, has the blood of the puritans, or of the men of the civil wars, (of which Europe was not worthy,) to do with the scoundrelism of slave-making? They will find out in time, that mankind despise them for it; and that the true mark of the beast, far beyond all hawking and spitting, and even picking of teeth with a fork, is believing in the superiority of the hickory-faced animal. In Europe, a stronger feeling is fast gaining ground. The liberals there have an arrear to settle, for the disgrace unwittingly brought upon them by American association. A quarter of a century may be allowed for the check of European freedom, arising out of the misfortune of having connected its cause with these habitual abrogators of the principles of public and private morality, the hostes humani generis who by their own acts place themselves at war with all that bears the human form. People may be stouthearted; but it is a fearful thing to fall into the detestation of the human race. No. XLVII. for Jan. 1836.

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EDINBURGH REVIEW-FOREIGN QUARTERLY REVIEW.

EDINBURGH REVIEW.

Every American who loves his country, should dedicate his whole life, and every faculty of his soul, to efface the foul blot of slavery from its character. If nations rank according to their wisdom and their virtue, what right has the American, a scourger and murderer of slaves, to compare himself with the least and lowest of the European nations, much more with this great and humane country, where the greatest lord dare not lay a finger on the meanest peasant? What is freedom where all are not free? where the greatest of God's blessings is limited, with impious caprice, to the color of the body? And these are the men who taunt the English with their corrupt parliament, with their buying and selling votes. Let the world judge which is the most liable to censure—we, who in the midst of rottenness, have torn the manacles off slaves all over the world; or they who, with their idle purity and useless perfection, have remained mute and careless while groans echoed and whips cracked round the very walls of their spotless congress. We wish well to Americawe rejoice in her prosperity-and are delighted to resist the absurd impertinence with which the character of her people is often treated in this country. But the existence of slavery in America is an atrocious crime, with which no measures can be kept-for which her situation affords no sort of apology-which makes liberty itself distrusted, and the boast of it disgusting.-No. LXI. Art. Travellers in America.

THE FOREIGN QUARTERLY REVIEW.

It is notorious, that, notwithstanding all the treaties which have been concluded between England and other countries for the abolition of the slave-trade, it is still carried on to an enormous extent, because, even if the governments were really sincere in their wishes to suppress this trade, their subjects were wholly averse to a step which they denounced as utter ruin to all interested in the colonies. They have therefore persisted in spite of, perhaps with the connivance of their governments; and in Brazil in particular, it has been officially declared to be out of the power of the legislature to put an end to the traffic. Slaves imported by ships under Portuguese colors are indeed sometimes seized, but we fear that they are employed by the government nearly in the same manner as they would have been if sold to private individuals. But the difficulty of convicting and punishing these violators of the laws is nearly insurmountable.

It is affirmed, that the escape of one slave-ship out of three affords the dealer sufficient profit. What, then, can England do? There is one thing which we think might be tried, and which would probably have a considerable effect in attaining the object desired. It is well

known that it was unanimously resolved by the sovereigns at the Congress of Vienna, that the slave-trade should be abolished all over the world. The Portuguese transmarine possessions were not then separated from the mother country, which it might be hoped would be able to exercise some control over them. They are now independent. Let England call on the governments of Europe not to allow the importation of colonial produce from any country where it can be proved that the slave-trade is still carried on, either with the sanction or connivance of the government, or in spite of it; such a measure would surely act as a check on the importation of slaves. Could that point be effectually attained, it might be hoped that the extinction of slavery itself would in due time succeed, as it has done in the British colonies.

LONDON EVANGELICAL MAGAZINE.

The United States of America present to the world one of the most extraordinary spectacles that can be conceived of by the mind of man. They are a huge moral and political enigma. We behold part of the population priding themselves on the peculiar freedom of their institutions, and holding the other part in the shackles of slavery. They are a people who boast that they are possessed of an "admirable system of public schools, continually spreading into new states; hundreds of academies; 70 or 80 colleges; numerous theological and medical schools; 1,200 newspapers; 8,000 or 10,000 temperance societies, with a million and a half of members; 15,000 or 20,000 Sunday schools, with their libraries and a million of scholars, and taught by 120,000 of the best men and wo n among them; an evangelical ministry of not less than 11,000 min rs of the gospel," and, which the writer omits to add, nearly three millions of slaves! Alas, that a figure with so goodly a bust should terminate in the slimy folds of the serpent!

It is melancholy to behold such a monstrosity; a people judging their own rights with the incontrovertible declaration, "that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness ;" and at the same instant depriving their fellowmen perpetually of two of these "inalienable rights," and often directly or indirectly of the third. Most heartily do we concur with our American brethren in the sentiment we here quote. We concur with them when they claim to be free from oppression, but we dissent from them when they claim also to be free to oppress. The national emblem of the American states requires alteration to make it truly emblematical of their present and past condition. The eagle, with liberty on his wings, should, to complete the resemblance, clutch in his talons the manacled and writhing form of the colored man.

Political arrangements! Is he a man, and does he call buying, selling, and lacerating his fellow-men, political arrangements? Is