tionists of all schools affirm that the relation of master and slave, or of master and bond-servant, recognizing property in that bondservant, is a sin, naturally, necessarily, and perpetually. I deny this position. I make the sin, wherever there is any, not in the relation, but in the treatment of the servant on the part of the master, or of the master on the part of the servant. In one sentence, when brought into the Inquisition at Edinburgh, I took the ground that the relation of master and bond-servant was recognized and regulated, but no where abolished in the Bible. Even this much I would not have asserted, had I not been compelled to it by the impetuosity of some ultraists, who would make the mere relation of a master, in its Virginia or Kentucky acceptation, without any regard to the discharge of relative duties, a sin to be punished by excommunication.

As to any sarcasm, or "tone of sarcasm," indulged by me, "which could not be palliated but by the bitterness of provocation," in any thing written by me in Scotland; (and, of course, it is something in point that is alluded to,) I confess myself wholly inconscious, and will, therefore, have to request the favor of a specification of it, that I may acknowledge my error. "The expression," adds my friend Dr. Bailey, "in the reply to the challenge of an assailant on which the libel suit was founded, was, in our estimation, most unfortunate and hasty, but not just ground for an action at law." I am pleased with this specification, because I can at once respond to it as specifically as it is made. I must, however, candidly say, that I cannot make out a single sarcasm in the whole of my written or printed correspondence-not even in the words on which the suit was founded. These are "I say to the Anti-Slavery Society, that I will meet in publie debate, oral or written, any man in Great Britain, whom they may appoint, either on my position to American slavery, or on the negative of the proposition submitted by Mr. RobertTo this I only added, "I will meet any gentleman whom they may select—even Mr. Robertson himself; provided only, that he be not that Rev. James Robertson who was publicly censured and excluded from the Baptist church for violating the fifth commandment in reference to his mother, of whom I have heard something in Dundee." Is there any impropriety in excepting such a gentleman when there were three Rev. James Robertsons in the Register of the city of Edinburgh, and I had the assurance that one of them was excluded for the reasons assigned-that one of the three was that same James Robertson I was assured, but I did not know whether the Anti-Slavery Secretary was he? Was there any "sarcasm" in put. SERIES III.-VOL. v.

son."

5

ting the proof upon himself? This was "the head and front of my offending." I am yet to convince that in this there was any sarcasm, or that it was either 'hasty or unfortunate.' Self-respect, as well as the great cause I plead, required that I should have a respectable antagonist.

As to the kind wishes expressed by my highly respected and respectable friend of the "NATIONAL ERA," as to my course in a supposed attempt to new-model the Constitution of this Commonwealth, I can only say that I am unchanged in my views of the real interest of all Virginia-especially of Western Virginia-and indeed, of all grain-growing states; viz. that slave labor, as it is now, and has long since been managed, apart from all that is affirmed of its demoralizing tendencies, is the dearest and most unprofitable labor that can be applied to our agriculture; and, therefore, it has been for almost a century an incubus on the prosperity and political growth of our ancient dominion. Then all that is necessary to secure its abolition here is to convince slave owners. that they are annually waxing poorer and poorer in the aggregate by that species of labor. This done, and they will soon project ways and means for its abandonment. An appeal to the purse rather than to the conscience, will be much better logic and more puissant rhetoric with the great majority of that class, than all the tracts, and pamphlets, and speeches made by all the professed abolitionists from Georgia to Maine, since the era of the first antislavery organization down to the present time.

But having received a few specimens of the manner in which I was treated by the Scotch Anti-Slavery Society all over the kingdom, I must occasionally report a few of their placards, newspaper notices, and general movements in their late crusade.

The following is from the Renfrewshire Advertiser, August 28th, 1847. It was an editorial, issued on my first arrival in Paisley, in one of its most influential journals, a town of some seventy thousand inhabitants. I met, notwithstanding, a very respectable Christian assembly on the Lord's day after its publication; but how much larger it might have been but for this superlatively libellous annunciation no one knows. It was the first editorial in the weekly sheet, and in the following words:

"BEWARE OF THE MAN-STEALER.

"We beg to warn our readers against countenancing a Rev. or Mr. A. Campbell, of Virginia, U. S., who has announced a course of lectures in the Baptist chapel here. He is the apologist of manstealing in its worst forms-the advocate of all that is monstrous in

that most monstrous of all systems-American slavery! He blasphemously labors to prove that it is in accordance with the Word of the beneficent Deity. Can Christians lend their countenance to such a man? Can those who profess to follow our Divine Redeemer venture to league themselves with any such as would pervert its plainest dictates, and make of none avail its highest precepts? Let those who feel an interest in the cause of the down-trodden African refuse their countenance to the man who would not only keep them in chains, but who audaciously seeks to pollute the Christian church with the horrible crime of man-stealing, and impiously endeavors to find an apology for it in the blessed word of immaculate Deity.

"Let the liberty-loving, slavery-despising people of Paisley, repel from their precincts with the scowl of their worst displeasure, the apologist of American murderers, and let them show that they despise the advocate of man-stealing all the more, because he comes clothed in the garb of sanctity. Let them imitate the spirit of the glorious American Anti-Slavery poet, Longfellow, who, in words of encouragement to the abolitionist, says

I have no comment to make on this: it speaks for itself. I was, informed by a very well read Attorney, that it was, in the manner and purport of it, in the first degree actionable in law; but I had no idea of taking vengeance into my own hands.

But many anti-slavery men of high standing sympathized with

me,

and of them I may speak hereafter. The following communication is from a free State, and from very noble freemen in the Lord, and I believe all of them anti-slavery. I, therefore, esteem it due to them, myself, and the Anti-Slavery Society in Scotland, to lay it before my readers. It also speaks for itself:

WARREN, OHIO, November 24, 1847. Dearly beloved brother Campbell-Being assembled here from various parts of the State of Ohio, to consult on the interests of the kingdom of Messiah, a matter came before us for consideration, which, though not directly connected with the objects of our meeting, still it weighed heavily upon our spirits, and it has resulted in this communication to you.

We are all engaged, in our humble spheres of labor, in the same cause to which you have devoted your life-the glory of God, in the triumphs of the gospel of his grace. Some of us have been with you in this blessed enterprize for more than twenty years; and all of us have looked with deep interest upon your course, and have rejoiced before God in your abundant, and arduous, and successful labors.

We have sympathized with you for many years in the unjust and frequently violent persecutions of which you have been the object, in consequence of your firm and fearless advocacy of divine truth;

and also in your domestic afflictions, as, one by one, the members of your family have been numbered with the dead. Though acknowledging a master in no man-though looking up to the great Head of the Church, who possesses "all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge," as our only Lord-yet as a brother in the Lord, to whose talents, and learning, and Christian attainments we owed much, we have felt deeply both joy and sorrow, as we have looked alternately upon your success in your labors, and the adversities which, in the providence of God, you have been called to meet.

Recent events have, however, produced more than a common interest in our minds, and have led to the present address. We allude to the persecution which you were called to suffer during your visit to Scotland, and the severe affliction which visited your family in your absence.

In regard to the latter, we need only to express the deep sympathy which we feel in view of a bereavement so unexpected and so bitter as the death of your beloved and promising son. Within thirteen years five of your children have been laid in the grave.— As parents, and some of us your companions in tribulation, we feel for you, and bear you with us to our merciful High Priest, when we go to the throne of grace. We doubt not that your lively faith has already laid hold of the consolations of the gospel, and appropriated them to the bleeding heart; and while you must necessarily feel bitterly your loss, we trust that these afflictions will enable you still more thoroughly to appreciate the value of that blessed hope, for whose defence against the attacks of Infidelity you have so long and manfully stood forth. We pray also that in your case, as in that of the afflicted Patriarch-when the "end of the Lord" is seen, it will be found that "he is very pitiful and of tender mercy."

In respect to the former, we feel called upon to declare, in view of all the circumstances with which we have been made acquainted relative to the course of Mr. Robertson and his coadjutors in their opposition to you, and persecution of you; and especially in view of the unfair use made of these circumstances, by some of the AntiSlavery papers in this country;—that after a candid inquiry into the whole matter, we give the most cordial approval to your firm and unyielding stedfastness to principle and resistance of unrighteous opposition. Without regard to the correctness or incorrectness of your positions on the subject of slavery, we do most unhesitatingly avow our admiration of your honest and dignified stand against the ungentlemanly and unchristian attempt to involve you in difficulty and bring you into disgrace in a strange community, because of a difference of opinion on a subject not at all agitated by you, nor in any way connected with your mission. In this, as in your whole course, we rejoice to see a meek and patient, but steady and earnest opposition to unrighteousness: and a faithful attachment to those great principles of truth and righteousness on which the world's salvation depends-and which give not less lustre to the character of their advocate, nor less comfort to his heart, when for their sake he is confined in a prison, than when pleading for them before admiring multitudes, amidst the smiles and cheers of popular applause. We regret the course of Mr. Robertson. We regret the endorse

ment of his conduct in the affair, by the Scotch Anti-Slavery Society. We regret that in such an age as this, in such a land as Scotland, in such cities as Edinburgh and Glasgow, men making such high pretensions to philanthropy, and standing forth as advocates of righteousness, should be induced to furnish so severe a satire upon all their professions as is afforded in the impartial history of their course towards you-beginning with a disguised hostility under the mask of friendship, and ending in the illegal imprisonment of an unoffending man. We reprobate their whole course. We look with indignation upon their entire proceedings, as discreditable and disgraceful to the age, to the country, and to the cause to which they are professedly devoted. We approve and admire your patient and firm endurance of wrong; and offer you now, most cheerfully and heartily, this public expression of our sympathy with you and yours, and our full confidence in your manly devotion to truth.

So far as known to us, we but express the unanimous feeling and sentiment of the brotherhood in the State of Ohio. Accept, then, dearly beloved brother, from your stedfast friends and brethren, this imperfect expression of their feelings. May the Lord sanctify to you and yours your afflictions-overrule the designs of evil doers for good-and so direct you in all your movements, that "the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God, and the Lord Jesus Christ." Amen!

WILLIAM HAYDEN,

JOHN T. SMITH,

J. J. Moss,

HARVEY BROCKETT,

A. S. HAYDEN,

ISAAC ERRETT,

B. F. PERKY,
WILLIAM POWers,
JAS. E. GASTON,
CYRUS BOSWORTH.

We have sundry other such documents, but none more copious none more happily expressed, none more acceptable in all respects and none more gratefully and thankfully received than this kind letter, from a region of country in which I have labored almost annually for twenty-six years, and from brethren some of whom have been my-fellow-laborers for a great portion of that time in the cause of Christian reformation. May the Lord multiply to them all grace, mercy, and peace, more and more abundantly!

A. C.

ASIATIC CHOLERA.

THE distresses of Europe are causing us to forget the scourge of Asia. The famine in Ireland and Scotland seems to be at our very elbows. Men, women, and children, speaking the same language with ourselves, are dying by thousands for lack of bread. And the end is not yet. Without the merciful interposition of Providence, his work of death may go on for many months. Let there be anoSERIES III-VOL. V.