307 The Injustice of Slavery reprehended. 308 noo, and Mahesa. Thou art Lord of the souls of the dead; and that, in the case universe! Thou art under the form of all before us, an evil spirit appeared before things, moveable and immoveable, the pos- Saul in the likeness of Samuel. (See Pasessor of the whole! and thus I adore thee. trick on 1 Sam, xxviii. 12.) But this opiReverence be unto the BESTOWER OF SAL- nion gives an unwarrantable advantage VATION, and Ruler of the faculties! Re- for the support of idolatry, to those imverence be unto thee, the DESTROYER of postures that were practised by heathen the EVIL SPIRIT! O Damordada,† shew sorcerers and diviners. Besides, the very me favour! I adore thee, who art cele- apparition of a spiritual and incorporeal brated by a thousand names, and under being, and the gift of prophecy, are real various forms, in the shape of Bood-dha, miracles, and cannot take place but by the God of MERCY! Be propitious, divine appointment; and lastly, the hisMost High God !"— Asiatic Researches, torian calls the appearance to Saul, vol. 1. p. 284, 285. Samuel, which he could not do with truth, if it were no other than the devil, who here appears, not as a tempter, but as a very severe reprover of impiety and wickedness. THE WITCH OF ENDOR. WITCH of Endor, in Biblical History, is a woman who had a familiar spirit, and who was employed by Saul to consult the deceased Samuel concerning the issue of his contest with the Philistines. See 1 Sam. xxviii. The explication of this part of sacred history has greatly perplexed commentators and critics. Some, in deference to the authority of the ancient fathers of the Christian church, who ascribed to magicians and necromancers the power of calling up the souls of the dead, have given a literal interpretation of this history, and supposed that Samuel actually appeared to Saul. But to this opinion it has been justly objected, that it is repugnant to the order of the natural world, and to the doctrines of revelation respecting the state of the dead. It cannot be supposed consistent with a just reverence of God, to believe that he has subjected the souls of the departed, not excepting those of the most eminent saints and prophets, to be remanded back from their distinct abodes, by the practice of the most execrable rites; and at the call of some of the vilest of mortals, and compelled to reveal what he has seen fit to conceal. Natural reason confirms the suffrage of scripture, when it brands the whole magic art, to which evocations of the dead, and all necromantic divinations, appertain, as founded in imposture. Others, who cannot admit that witches are able to disturb the souls of good men, much less of prophets, are nevertheless of opinion, that these wretched women cause the devil to counterfeit the can Brahma, the Deity in his creative quality. Veeshnoo, he who filleth all space, the Deity in his preserving quality. Mahesa, the Deity in his destroying quality. This is properly the Hindoo Trinity for these three names belong to the same Being. See the notes to the Bhagval Geeta. 4. Damordada, or Darmadevi, the Indian god of virtue. Many learned men have, therefore, maintained, that it was neither Samuel, nor an evil spirit, who here appeared to Saul; but that the whole was the work of human imposture. In support of this opinion, it may be pleaded, that the woman to whom Saul applied to call up Samuel, was merely a ventriloquist, poswho Counterfeited the answers of the dead. sessing an art very serviceable to those This opinion, however, like the foregoing one, contradicts the sacred historian, who not only represents the pythoness as affirming, but himself affirms, that she Saul: nor has he dropped the least hint saw Samuel, and that Samuel spoke to that it was not the real Samuel of whom he was speaking. Others have supposed, that the appearance of Samuel to Saul was a divine miracle: though whether the miracle consisted in raising Samuel, or in presenting an image or representation of him before Saul, it is not necessary to determine. Accordingly, the apparition must be ascribed, not to the power of enchantment, but to the immediate appointment of God, as a rebuke and punishment to Saul. This opinion is maintained by Dr. Waterland, in his Sermons, vol. ii. P. 267, and defended by Dr. Delany in his life of David; but combated by Dr. Chandler, with objections which, as far as they affect the scripture history of the matter, are answered or obviated by Mr. Farmer, in his Dissertation on Miracles, p. 486. THE INJUSTICE OF SLAVERY REPREHENDED. SLAVERY was, slavery is, and slavery ever will be, a curse to every slave-holding nation. The capturer of Africans is a robber, 309 The Injustice of Slavery reprehended. and the purchaser of Africans, is a buyer of stolen property. 7. The might, and not the right, of European governments, only, can legalize this traffic. Civilization was designed to moralize, and not to brutalize mankind. Horse-stealing, sheep-stealing, and housebreaking, are all of anterior date to negro stealing, and yet, notwithstanding their antiquity, each is accounted a capital offence, and subjects the perpetrator to death. The slaves in the West Indies are condemned to perpetual servitude, for the crime of having been taken in Africa; or, for having been born in West India; and the European who steals or murders the African escapes with impunity. Can Europeans look at the true portraiture of this exhibition without a blush. It is beyond the reach of exaggeration to overcolour this picture. It would not be unjust to take from a plunderer that for which he has hazarded his life. European robberies are heroic, when contrasted with the robberies perpetrated in Africa. To rob a man of his property, is a minor offence, when compared with the taking away his liberty or his life. Are Africans human beings? or does their sable skin exclude them from the rank of civil society? This is a question of the highest importance. That any one European nation should delay the administration of justice to the imprisoned and enslaved "African, until all are agreed, is truly paradoxical. Injustice and cruelty admit not of an apology. Gradual emancipation of the enslaved African, is as defensible as would be the gradual restoration of stolen property to its rightful owner. If Africans, taken by force from Africa, or born in a state of slavery in West India, are to suffer procrastinated imprisonment, as a punishment for such offence, justice would ask What punishment is due to the perpetrators of such African robbery, or to the holders of the parents and children of West Indian slaves? Policy opposed to right bears a very suspicious character. That the African has an indefeisible right to his liberty, can never be successfully controverted. When and where power usurps the dominion of right, a father may become a slave to his 310 The blood of the slain, and the sighs of the living, record the chains of insulted justice, and withheld humanity. The pause of silence is succeeded by the important inquiry-What is to be done? What atonement is to be made, for the long continuance of so foul a deed? Who shall prefer the best and most worthy claim to remuneration-the planter, or the slave? The most clamorous are generally the least deserving. The planters, to deafen inquiry and investigation, proclaim themselves as the only sufferers. A perpetuity of right is claimed by them to the African race; they have interwoven the slave with common chattels, and they brand him or her with the initials of their own name. Justice is inverted in slave-holding colonies: colonial laws are made to give the lie both to humanity and truth. Slaves bear the names of their different masters, as a bill of exchange its different endorsements. The branded slave exhibits the cruelty and injustice of his pretended owner. To the yet unborn European, the yet unborn African is doomed to be a slave. Disembowelled Africa laments the loss of her legitimate offspring. That the abolition of slavery should have ever needed advocacy, and that this advocacy should plead in vain, is most unaccountable. Should slavery cease, will it not astonish future generations, to think how an evil of such magnitude could have continued so long?-that an evil must exist before a remedy can be applied, is granted; but, after all the means hitherto applied, that it should yet remain in its full vigour, will half imply that European governments have not a legislative control over European colonies. That British America should justify her rebellion against Great Britain, and continue to hold the Africans in chains, demonstrates a genuine spirit of selfishness, which will entail a blot upon that people, never to be obliterated. "He, who alone, for his own freedom craves, Some European governments seem not to be aware of the sad consequences of slave-holding; nay, there are, in some of the legislative bodies, individuals, who are themselves holders of slaves. Is it to be expected, that such men will promote justice to the oppressed African ? To the British House of Commons, the slave question has been more like a trial of skill in debate, than a question of life and death to the slave. Eight hundred thousand human 311 Description of the Leprosy, und Elephantiasis. 19 312 beings, groaning beneath accumulated op-dered her of millions of her natural-born pression, hardly excites so much animation, subjects. Europeans to havebodemoralized as whether there should be two or three Africans in Africa, and brutalized Africans commissioners of excise; or whether the in West India. The only charger that can lord chancellor shall have assistance, or be brought against Africa is, that she has work himself into the grave.rpo been guilty of the crime of not being able to repel European invaders. tik, ་་་ TO Were the sufferings of West India seen, instead of only being heard, there is scarcely a senator, save and except a proprietor of slaves, who would not come forward to advocate the abolition of slavery. The whole population of slaves in West India are linked together in one common political chain; they are placed as sentinels over each other; it is at their peril to quit their station; and at the peril of all the rest, to connive at such escape. The slaves are imprisoned, and bound with every tie, save and except that which would prevent their labour. To allow the slave a right to purchase his own freedom, or that of his wife or children, is such a right as a pauper in Britain has, to purchase an estate, or to commence a stock-jobber. The only charge which can be laid against the African is, the want of a capability of self-defence. And the glory of the European is, that he has taken the advantage of his superior knowledge, to make the African his slave. Power is the fundamental law of nature; it is the universal law of the whole animal creation; the only authority amongst beasts ism superior strength and superior instinct. Man is the only animal which appears to have arisen above natural instinct; he alone -possesses the prerogative of reason; he is the only creature which is elevated above the law of nature. Nations are a part of mankind, governed by laws, and by a concentrated power. Laws are the development of nature, founded upon revelation, reason, and justice. Civilization has abrogated the government of barbarism, and substituted in its place the law of revelation and reason. European nations are strong, by the concentration of power; Africa is weak, from the want of it. If Africa had possessed the advantage of a concentrated power, and a disposition to act as European nations have done, the latter might now have been in the very state in which the former actually is. I appeal to all slaveholding nations in Europe, whether their conduct towards Africa has been that of civilized justice, or of barbarized power? However civilization may have operated internally in European nations, European nations have acted barbarously towards Africa. They have availed themselves of the unprotected state of Africa, and have plun Every other kind of robbery falls infinitely short of African robbery. Africa has been robbed of the very vitals of existence; the very beings to whom she gave birth, and whom she was destined to support. An excuse for slavery is only to be found in animal human nature; its perpetuity is only to be justified by the ancient law of unabrogated human power. All the lions, tigers, elephants, wolves, and other beasts of prey, with all the wars in Africa, not occasioned by European interference, have not produced so much waste of men, and shedding of human blood, to Africa, as has European plunderers. European plunderers in Africa are a disgrace to human nature; and the more so, under the character of civilized human beings. With no better grace, or stronger claims on justice, can the dealers in slaves justify that merchandise, than can the màn, who possesses stolen property, urge his claim to what he knows had been stolen. Never was a slave exhibited for sale in West India, without both buyer and seller knowing that such slave was the bona fide property of himself. Never was a cargo of Africans landed in West India, without the colonists knowing that such Africans had been brought to West India by force. Not any expedience can apologize for slavery. Since the laws of civilization, slavery is an outlaw; slavery belongeth not to the code of civilization. Municipal rights belong to the great family of civilized mankind. The slave may be deprived of the phy. sical power of escape; but never can be deprived of his moral right to liberty. That the African has a black skin, that he is lazy and refractory, is but a mere European libel upon the African, and an insult to Deity. So far as he is what the Almighty made him, he stands upon an equality with the European. DESCRIPTION OF THE LEPROSY, AND ELEPHANTIASIS. THE LEPROSY derives its name from the Greek term λerpa (lepra) from Au (lepis) a scale, the body, in this dreadful disease, being covered with thin white scales, or smooth shining patches, so as to give it, in some instances, the appearance of snow. Nosologists class some species of this ma 313 Description of the Leprosy and Elephantiasis. lady under the order Squamæ, or scaly diseases, and other species of it under the order/Tuberculæ, or tubercular affections. That kind of leprosy which is described by Moses in Leviticus xiii. appears to have been what was termed by the Greeks, Leuce, (λeven,) and by the Arabians Al baras, or more correctly Baras. In some instances it has been considered as assuming the form of Elephantiasis; and in others, not appearing very dissimilar from the Frambasia, or Yaws, of the West Indies.* The Leuce, or White Leprosy, is thus described by Mr. Robinson, a medical practitioner of India:-"One or two circumscribed patches appear upon the skin, (generally the feet or hands, but sometimes the trunk or face,) rather lighter-coloured than the neighbouring skin, neither raised nor depressed, shining and wrinkled, the furrows not coinciding with the lines of the contiguous sound cuticle. The skin thus circumscribed is so entirely insensible, that you may with hot irons burn to the muscle, before the patient feels any pain. These patches spread slowly until the skin of the whole of the legs, arms, and gradually often of the whole body, becomes alike devoid of sense: wherever it is so affected, there is no perspiration; no itching, no pain, and very seldom any swelling. Until this singular apathy has occupied the greater part of the skin, it may rather be considered a blemish than a disease; nevertheless, it is most important to mark well these appearances, for they are the invariable commencement of the most gigantic and incurable diseases that have succeeded the fall of man; and it is in this state chiefly (though not exclusively) that we are most able to be the means of cure. 314 - cracked and rough. Contemporary with the last symptoms, or very soon afterwards, ulcers appear at the inside of the joints of the toes and fingers, directly under the last joint of the metatarsal or metacarpal bones, or they corrode the thick sole under the joint of the os calcis, or os cuboides. There is no previous tumour, suppuration, or pain, but apparently a simple absorption of the integuments, which slough off in successive layers of half an inch in diameter. A sani. ous discharge comes on; the muscle, pale and flabby, is in turn destroyed; and the joint being penetrated as by an auger, the extremity droops, and at length falls a victim to the cruel, tardy, but certain poison. The wounds then heal, and other joints are attacked in succession, whilst every revolving year bears with it a trophy of this slow march of death. Thus are the limbs deprived one by one of their extremities, till at last they become altogether useless. Even now, death comes not to the relief of, nor is desired by, the patient, who dying by inches, and a spectacle of horror to all besides, still cherishes fondly the spark of life remaining, and eats voraciously all he can procure; he will often crawl about with little but his trunk remaining, until old age comes on, and at last he is carried off by diarrhoea or dysentery, which the enfeebled constitution has no stamina to resist." In the Elephantiasis, to which the Leuce or Baras may be considered as having an affinity, and probably sometimes terminating in it, the tubercles, when the malady has for some time proceeded, begin to crack, and at length to ulcerate: ulcerations also appear in the throat, and in the nose, which sometimes destroy the palate and the cartilaginous septum; the nose falls, "The next symptoms are the first which and the breath is intolerably offensive: the denote internal disease, or derangement of thickened and tuberculated skin of the exany functions. The pulse becomes very tremities becomes divided by fissures, and slow, not small, but heavy, as if moving ulcerates, or is corroded under dry sordid through mud:-the toes and fingers numb- scales, so that the fingers and toes gangrene ed, as with frost, glazed and rather swelled, and separate, joint after joint. Aretaus, and nearly inflexible. The mind is at this and the ancients in general, consider Eletime sluggish and slow in apprehension, phantiasis as an universal cancer of the and the patient appears always half asleep. body, and speak of it with terror. AccordThe soles of the feet and the palms of the ing to Dr. John Mason Good, this disease hands then crack into fissures, dry, and hard is called by the Arabians juzam and juzamas the parched soil of the country; and the lyk, though more generally judam and extremities of the toes and fingers under the judamlyk, from an Arabian root which imnails are incrusted with a furfuraceous sub-ports erosion, truncation, excision. From stance, and the nails are gradually lifted up, (until absorption and ulceration occur. Still there is little or no pain; the legs and forearms swell, and the skin is every where See Dr. T. Bateman's Practical Synopsis of Cutaneous Diseases: Order it. p. 25, and Order vii. p. 273. London, 1819, 8vo. fifth edition. Arabia the term juzam has passed into India, and is the common name for the same disease among the Cabirujas, Lor Hindoo physicians, who accordinglydenominate it fisadi khun, from its being supposed to infect the entire mass of blood; but more generally, khora. 315 Description of the Leprosy and Elephantiasis. ~‹“ Maundrell, in a letter appended to his Travels, tells us, that at Sichem, (now Naplosa,) he saw several Lepers, who came begging to him all at the same time: The distempers,' says he, as I saw it on them, was quite different from what I have seen in England; for it not only defiles the whole surface of the body with a foul scurf, but also deforms the joints of the body, particularly those of the wrists and ankles, making them swell with a gouty scrofulous substance, very loathsome to look upon. I thought their legs like those of old battered horses, such as are often seen in drays in England. The whole distemper indeed, as it there appeared, was so noisome, that it might well pass for the utmost corruption of the human body on this side the grave; and, certainly, the inspired penmen could not have found out a fitter emblem whereby to express the uncleanness and odiousness of vice." "Michaelis, in his Commentaries on the Laws of Moses, (C. iv. Part. ii. Art. 207, 208, 209, 210, 211.) has entered at large into a discussion of the nature of the Jewish leprosy, and also shewn with much force of reasoning the wisdom of the Mosaic regulations for the prevention of contagion, and reducing the virulence of the disease itself. He states that M. Peysonnel, a physician, was sent to Guadaloupe to inquire into the nature of the leprosy that broke out in that island about 1730; and details from him an account of the disease, very similar to what has been already given; to which M. Peysonnel adds-" It has been remarked, that this horrible disorder has, besides, some very lamentable properties; as, in the first place, that it is hereditary; and hence some families are more affected with it than others: secondly, that it is infectious: thirdly, that it is incurable, or at least no means of cure have hitherto been discovered."+ In After the lapse of several thousand years, leprosy is still a common disease throughout all Syria: it was, of course, endemic in Palestine, the country into which Moses conducted the Israelites. Egypt, where they had previously dwelt, it is said to be still more frequent and virulent. To this the climate, no doubt, contributed in some degree. But other causes beside this may have tended to increase its influence among the Israelites. They were poor, and had been oppressed; and cutaneous diseases, and indeed almost all kinds of infectious disorders, prevail most Dr. A. Clarke's Comment on Levit. xiii. 2. Michaelis's Commentaries on the Laws of Moses, Vol. ili Art. 208. p. 258–260. 316 among the poor, because they cannot keep themselves cleanly, and at a distance from infected persons. They had also partly dwelt in the damp and marshy parts of Egypt, and facts have proved that a very damp situation will produce, if not leprosy itself, at least a disease very similar to it. It is likewise material to notice, that their residence along the Nile and the marshy districts, rendered it easy for them to procure different kinds of fish, than which nothing, it is said, more effectually spreads and aggravates cutaneous disorders, if constantly or even frequently used as the entire or principal diet; thus we find at this day, in Norway and Iceland, a disorder, which, if not leprosy, comes very near it in similarity of symptoms, and which is ascribed to their eating great quantities of fish.‡ "During the Crusades, numbers of the pilgrims and soldiers who visited the East, were affected with severe cutaneous diseases; by whom the leprosy is said to have been imported into Europe, and to have become extensively prevalent. It is certain that every country abounded with hospitals, established for the exclusive relief of that disease, from the tenth to the sixteenth century; and that an order of knighthood, dedicated to St. Lazarus, was instituted, the members of which had the care of lepers, and the control of the lazarettoes assigned to them, and ultimately accumulated immense wealth. In 1179, the general council of Lateran condemned certain of the clergy for preventing lepers erecting churches for themselves, notwithstanding they were prohibited from entering all other churches; and a decree was passed, ordaining, that wherever a sufficient number of lepers were living together, they should be allowed a church, a cemetery, and a priest, and should be exempted from paying tithes of the fruits of their gardens, or of the cattle which they fed. But we must not suppose that the immense numbers who were admitted into the lazarettoes during the latter ages, were all afflicted with real leprosy, since almost every person affected with any severe eruption, or ulceration of the skin, was deemed leprous, and received into those institutions. Indeed, there is little doubt,' says Dr. Bateman, • that every species of cachectic disease, accompanied with ulceration, gangrene, or any superficial derangement, was deemed teprous; and hence that, in the dark ages, when the |