First. Remarks on the publications and conduct of the colonists and the abolitionists.

Secondly. A dissection of the most tangible plan which has yet been offered for the complete and eventual emancipation of the negroes.

Thirdly. A few hints of our own upon the

matter.

In speaking of Mr. Wilberforce, Mr. Stephen, or any other gentlemen advocating the cause of the negroes, of course we name them only as public men, who have voluntarily taken upon themselves the discussion of an important public question. Their measures and their language therefore being public, and intended to create a public feeling, cannot be considered, therefore, in a personal light. Knowing too, that there are often created a prejudice and a party feeling, which induce many to look only at one side of the question, and reject all argument, and every publication which does not take their side of the question; we do not hesitate to assert, " "that the emancipation of the negro must ultimately take place;" nay, we will go farther, and state, "that the colonists themselves look forward to the measure as one of important benefit to themselves, and are, in fact, the best friends to the cause of abolition;" but they deprecate haste; not with a view to impede or avert the measure, but to allow time for every link of the chain to be unrivetted, to re-fasten to sound, lasting, and

practicable principles." The colonists wish, not that the door shall be thrown open wide to all indiscriminate comers, but that each shall obtain an entrance through the narrow passage of probation and eligibility.

Worldly prudence is by no means unconnected with a true religious feeling. The latter may give a sound direction to the former; language of sacred writ it is asserted,

and in the

"that we

The gift

should not cast pearls before swine." of liberty is the pearl to be bestowed upon the negroes; and if it can be proved that they are at this moment prepared to receive and appreciate its value, now is the moment-now the day of the gift; a gift, the bestowing of which depends not upon any precise number of years, but upon circumstances. And we should say, if at this moment the negro of the West Indian colonist is in a fit state to receive and appreciate the gift of liberty, then such fitness places him upon a par with ourselves. Are the zealous abolitionists prepared to say, that the negro has attained to that power of intellectual and moral discrimination which an Englishman possesses? or that an Englishman has degenerated to the negro scale? The approximation can only take place in these two modes. If it exist in neither case, then is there a wide difference;-it is that difference which time alone can fill up. There is an old and a true adage,-" that which is bred in the

bone will out in the flesh;" and until the heart is corrected, and the mental faculty awakened, so precious a gift as liberty, in being undervalued, will only be abused.

In the official letter from the Commissioners of Correspondence of the Bahama Islands, are the following just and correct observations upon this point:

"But it is asked, is the negro slavery in the West Indies to be interminable, while in other portions of the globe, the condition of the slaves has long been ameliorating, and in many of them, slavery itself has for a considerable time ceased to exist, shall the negro race of the West Indies alone be shut out from the hope of freedom for ever? To this we answer, that reflecting on the very tardy progress of the peasantry from slavery to freedom, in all other countries where the peasantry once were slaves, and now are free, we contemplate in that change rather the work of a gracious Providence, than of presumptuous man. As the general condition of a community improves, every class of that community naturally benefits by the improvement; and in due season, should the tide of prosperity not be checked by some of the many wayward visitations of calamity to which every portion of mankind is equally exposed, all social distinctions, in point of social rights at least, have generally been observed to subside. But the immense change for which in all other places, the revolutions of ages have frequently been required, ought, in the opinion of Mr. Wilberforce, to have been effected by him for the West India negroes, in little more than the quarter of one century, and he laments that he has so long delayed the attempt.

"To await the maturity of time and circumstance absolutely necessary to convert slavery into freedom, and by the only means which can effect that change with safety to the public weal, and justice to the owners, or real benefit to the slaves, but ill suits the

impatience of our abolitionists, now for the first time openly avowed."

It is a most invidious and painful task for a British writer to appear to be the advocate for the longer continuance of slavery, but that painful feeling is greatly relieved by the reflection, that every day shortens its duration, and that in the interval of regulation, a permanent gift, and not a doubtful experiment, is maturing; and we are rather disposed to think, that the measures of the Colonists, and not the appeals of the abolitionists, will ultimately bring about this most desirable mea

sure.

It is a very just observation, "that truth withheld, is falsehood made current"—when, therefore, we took up "An Appeal in behalf of the Negro Slaves in the West Indies," with that previous feeling of respect which is due to its author, we did expect to have found arguments advanced founded upon recent facts, which would have concluded us as one of the Gentleman's converts; but having found no facts whereon to raise any mode by which we could estimate the publication, or any occurrences of recent date, by which the Colonists might be charged with crimes of commission or of omission, we became a friend to the Colonist upon the writer's own shewing— and upon these grounds.

It is of course admitted, that the unhappy condition of the slave, places in the hands of the

master, a power over his person which does not exist between freeman and freeman. In the absence, therefore, of any proofs on behalf of men so entrusted with an arbitrary power, of wanton abuse of such power-two positions become evident. First, that the power was accompanied by forbearance, and that such forbearance formed the principal feature in the conduct of the colonist. By endeavouring, therefore, to raise prejudices against the West Indians, upon abstract reasoning, in a case where, if abuses did really exist, they were capable of being brought forward as facts; Mr. Wilberforce has done the colonists an essential service, for though he may have proved that the principle of slavery is bad (which the colonists do not deny), he has tacitly admitted that their conduct, under such a system, is free from the stain of aggravation or cruelty.

The West Indians are not generally considered as dull of apprehension; on the contrary a warm climate produces precocious talent. Surely, therefore, there is, in the interval of thirty years, some possibility of admission to improvement; and, therefore, when Mr. Wilberforce, in speaking of the licentious intercourse existing in the West Indies, quotes from a book published so recently as 1793 (only thirty-one years ago), as proof of its existence; it is possible, it is probable, and it may be true, that West Indian society is not now what it was in 1793. Indeed, we know it