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'Thus much I have written medically, to show that he who can fast long must have lived plentifully.

'Saturday, March 29, 1766.-I was yesterday very heavy. I do not feel myself to-day so much impressed with awe of the approaching mystery. I had this day a doubt, like Baxter, of my state, and found that my faith, though weak, was yet faith. O God! strengthen it.

'Since the last reception of the sacrament I hope I have no otherwise grown worse than as continuance in sin makes the sinner's condition more dangerous.

'Since last New Year's Eve I have risen every morning by eight, at least not after nine, which is more superiority over my habits than I have ever before been able to obtain. Scruples still distress me. My resolution, with the blessing of God, is to contend with them, and, if I can, to conquer them.

'To conquer scruples.

'My resolutions are

'To read the Bible this year.

'To try to rise more early.

'To study Divinity.

'To live methodically.

'To oppose idleness.

'To frequent Divine worship.

'Almighty and most merciful Father! before whom I now appear laden with the sins of another year, suffer me yet again to call upon Thee for pardon and peace.

'O God! grant me repentance, grant me reformation. Grant that I may be no longer distracted with doubts, and harassed with vain terrors. Grant that I may no longer linger in perplexity, nor waste in idleness that life which Thou hast given and preserved. Grant that I may serve Thee in firm faith and diligent endeavour, and that I may discharge the duties of my calling with tranquillity and constancy. Take not, O God, Thy holy Spirit from me : but grant that I may so direct my life by Thy holy laws, as that, when Thou shalt call me hence, I may pass by a holy and happy death to a life of everlasting and unchangeable joy, for the sake of Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. 'I went to bed (at) one or later; but did not sleep, tho' I knew not why. 'Easter Day, March 30, 1766.-I rose in the morning. Prayed. Took my prayer book to tea; drank tea; planned my devotion for the church. I think prayed again. Went to church, was early. Went through the prayers with fixed attention. Could not hear the sermon. After sermon, applied myself to devotion. Troubled with Baxter's scruple, which was quieted as I returned home. It occurred to me that the scruple itself was its own confutation.

'I used the prayer against scruples in the foregoing page in the pew, and commended (so far as it was lawful) Tetty, dear Tetty, in a prayer by herself, then my other friends. What collects I do not exactly remember. I gave a shilling. I then went towards the altar that I might hear the service. The communicants were more than I ever saw. I kept back; used again the foregoing prayer; again commended Tetty, and lifted up my heart for the rest. I prayed in the collect for the fourteen S. after Trinity for encrease of Faith, Hope, and Charity, and deliverance from scruples; this deliverance was the chief subject of my prayers. O God, hear me. I am now to try to conquer them. After reception I repeated my petition, and again when I came home. My dinner made me a little peevish; not much. After dinner I retired

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I retired, and read in an hour and a half the seven first chapters of St. Matthew in Greek. Glory be to God. God grant me to proceed and improve, for Jesus Christ's sake. Amen.

'I went to Evening Prayers, and was undisturbed. At church in the morning it occurred to me to consider about example of good any of my friends had set me. This is proper, in order to the thanks returned for their good examples.

'My attainment of rising gives me comfort and hope. O God, for Jesus Christ's sake, bless me. Amen.

'After church, before and after dinner, I read Rotheram on Faith. 'After evening prayer I retired, and wrote this account.

'I then repeated the prayer of the day, with collects, and my prayer for night, and went down to supper at near ten.

'May 4, -66. I have read since the noon of Easter day the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark in Greek.

'I have read Xenophon's Cyropædia.'

BODLEIAN LIBRARY. SELECT AUTOGRAPHS. (MONTAGU.)

APPENDIX B.
(Page 312.)

JOHNSON'S sentiments towards his fellow-subjects in America have never, so far as I know, been rightly stated. It was not because they fought for liberty that he had come to dislike them. A man who, 'bursting forth with a generous indignation, had said: "The Irish are in a most unnatural state; for we see there the minority prevailing over the majority" (ante, ii. 255), was not likely to wish that our plantations should be tyrannically governed. The man who, 'in company with some very grave men at Oxford, gave as his toast, "Here's to the next insurrection of the negroes in the West Indies"" (post, iii. 200), was not likely to condemn insurrections in general. The key to his feelings is found in his indignant cry, 'How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?' (Ib.) He hated slavery as perhaps no man of his time hated it. While the Quakers, who were almost the pioneers in the Anti-slavery cause, were still slaveholders and slave-dealers, he lifted up his voice against it. So early as 1740, when Washington was but a child of eight, he had maintained 'the natural right of the negroes to liberty and independence.' (Works, vi. 313.) In 1756 he described Jamaica as 'a place of great wealth and dreadful wickedness, a den of tyrants and a dungeon of slaves.' (Ib. vi. 130.) In 1759 he wrote:-' Of black men the numbers are too great who

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who are now repining under English cruelty.' (Ib. iv. 407.) In the same year, in describing the cruelty of the Portuguese discoverers, he said: 'We are openly told that they had the less scruple concerning their treatment of the savage people, because they scarcely considered them as distinct from beasts; and indeed, the practice of all the European nations, and among others of the English barbarians that cultivate the southern islands of America, proves that this opinion, however absurd and foolish, however wicked and injurious, still continues to prevail. Interest and pride harden the heart, and it is in vain to dispute against avarice and power.' (Ib. v. 218.) No miserable sophistry could convince him, with his clear mind and his ardour for liberty, that slavery can be right. 'An individual,' he wrote (post, iii. 202), 'may, indeed, forfeit his liberty by a crime; but he cannot by that crime forfeit the liberty of his children.' How deeply he felt for the wrongs done to helpless races is shown in his dread of discoverers. No man had a more eager curiosity, or more longed that the bounds of knowledge should be enlarged. Yet he wrote:-'I do not much wish well to discoveries, for I am always afraid they will end in conquest and robbery.' (Croker's Boswell, p. 248.) In his Life of Savage, written in 1744, he said (Works, viii. 156) :- 'Savage has not forgotten... to censure those crimes which have been generally committed by the discoverers of new regions, and to expose the enormous wickedness of making war upon barbarous nations because they cannot resist, and of invading countries because they are fruitful.... He has asserted the natural equality of mankind, and endeavoured to suppress that pride which inclines men to imagine that right is the consequence of power.' He loved the University of Salamanca, because it gave it as its opinion that the conquest of America by the Spaniards was not lawful (ante, i. 455). When, in 1756, the English and French were at war in America, he said that 'such was the contest that no honest man could heartily wish success to either party.... It was only the quarrel of two robbers for the spoils of a passenger' (ante, i. 308, note 2). When, from political considerations, opposition was raised in 1766 to the scheme of translating the Bible into Erse, he wrote:-'To omit for a year, or for a day, the most efficacious method of advancing Christianity, in compliance with any purposes that terminate on this side of the grave, is a crime of which I know not that the world has yet had an example, except in the practice of the planters of America-a race of mortals whom, I suppose, no other man wishes to resemble' (ante, ii. 27). Englishmen, as a nation, had no right to reproach their fellow-subjects in America with being drivers of negroes; for England shared in the guilt and the gain of that infamous traffic. Nay, even as the Virginian delegates to Congress in 1774 complained :-' Our repeated attempts to exclude all further importations

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of slaves from Africa by prohibition, and by imposing duties which might amount to prohibition, have hitherto been defeated by his Majesty's negative-thus preferring the immediate advantages of a few British corsairs to the lasting interests of the American States, and to the rights of human nature, deeply wounded by this infamous practice.' Bright's Speeches, ed. 1869, 1. 171. Franklin (Memoirs, ed. 1818, iii. 17), writing from London in 1772, speaks of 'the hypocrisy of this country, which encourages such a detestable commerce by laws for promoting the Guinea trade; while it piqued itself on its virtue, love of liberty, and the equity of its courts in setting free a single negro.' From the slightest stain of this hypocrisy Johnson was free. He, at all events, had a right to protest against 'the yelps' of those who, while they solemnly asserted that among the unalienable rights of all men are liberty and the pursuit of happiness, yet themselves were drivers of negroes.

THE END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.

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