only, the unsuspecting multitude, but | tasted by him who has endured all the wise and the good, by the plausi- the curses of slavery, but be reserved bility, the apparent force, the justice, for his posterity alone? There is and, above all, by the humanity of the something unnatural, something rearguments propounded for gradual volting to the common sense of jusemancipation. He is the subtilest of tice, in reserving all the sweets of all reasoners, the most ingenious of freedom for those who have never all sophists, the most eloquent of all tasted the bitter cup of bondage,—in declaimers. He above all others "can dooming those who have once been make the worse appear the better rea- compelled to drink it, to drain it to son;" can most effectually pervert the the very dregs. Common equity dejudgment and blind the understand- mands, that relief should be adminising, whilst they seem to be most en- tered first to those who have suffered lightened and rectified. Thus, by a most; that the healing balm of mercy train of most exquisite reasoning, has should be imparted first to those who he brought the abolitionists to the have smarted most under the rod of conclusion, that the interest of the oppression; that those who have borne poor, degraded, and oppressed slave, the galling yoke of slavery should first as well as that of his master, will be experience the blessings of liberty. best secured by his remaining in The cause of emancipation loses more slavery. than half its interest, when the public sympathy is diverted from its natural channel-turned from the living victims of colonial bondage, to their unborn progeny. "It has indeed been proposed to mitigate in some degree the miseries of his interminable bondage; but the blessings of emancipation, according to the proposition of the abolitionists in 1823, were to be reserved for his posterity alone; and every idea of immediate emancipation is still represented, not only as impolitic, enthusiastic, and visionary, but as highly injurious to the slave himself; and a train of supposed apt illustrations is continually at hand, to expose the absurdity of such a project. "Who (it is asked) would place a sumptuous banquet before a halffamished wretch, whilst his powers of digestion were so feeble that it would be dangerous to partake of it? Who would bring a body, benumbed and half frozen with cold, into sudden contact with fervid heat? Who would take a poor captive from his dungeon, where he had been immersed whole years in total darkness, and bring him at once into the dazzling light of a meridian sun? No one in his senses, certainly. All these transitions from famine to plenty, from cold to heat, from darkness to light, must be gradual in order to be salutary. "But must it therefore follow, by any inductions of common sense, that emancipation out of the gripe of a robber or an assassin, out of the jaws of a shark or a tiger, must be gradual? Must it therefore follow, that the wretched victim of slavery must always remain in slavery ?—that emancipation must be gradual?-that the blessings of freedom shall never be "Under the contemplation of individual suffering, comparatively trifling both in nature and duration, our compassion is prompt and quick in its movements, our exertions spontaneous and instinctive; we go the shortest way to work in effecting the relief of the sufferer. But in emancipating eight hundred thousand of our fellowcreatures and fellow-subjects from a worse than Egyptian bondage, we advance towards the object by a route the most indirect and circuitous. We petition parliament, year after year, for gradual emancipation to what purpose? Are we gaining or losing ground by these delays? Are we approaching nearer, or receding farther from, the attainment of our object? The latter, it is too evident, is and must be the case. The evil principle is more subtile and active in its operations than the good principle. The advocates of slavery are more alert and successful in insinuating into the public mind doubts and fears, coldness and apathy, on the subject of emancipation, than the abolitionists are in counteracting such hostile influence; and the desertions from the anti-slavery standard, (in point of zeal and activity, if not in numbers,) since the agitation of the question in parliament in 1823, are doubtless very considerable. should the prayer for gradual emanci- | guished, the same laws which restrain pation be granted; still, how vague and punish crime in the white populaand indefinite would be the benefit tion, would still restrain and punish resulting from such success! Should crime in the black population. The some specific time be appointed by danger arising from inequality of numgovernment for the final extinction of bers would be more than counteracted colonial slavery, that period, we have by the wealth, influence, and the armed been informed from high authority, force possessed by the former. But, will not be an early one. And who independent of such considerations, can calculate the tears and groans, the oppressed and miserable, corrupt the anguish and despair, the tortures as is human nature, do not naturally and outrages, which may be added, become savage and revengeful when during the term of that protracted in- their oppressions and miseries are reterval, to the enormous mass of inju- moved. Oppression (it is said) will ries already sustained by the victims make (even) a wise man mad.' But of West Indian bondage? It is no will the liberated, when the iron yoke marvel that slave-holders should cry of slavery is broken,-when his heavy out against immediate emancipation, burdens are unbound, his bleeding as they have done against all propo- wounds healed,-his broken heart sitions for softening the rigours of co- bound up,-will he then scatter venlonial slavery. geance and destruction around him? The history of negro emancipation abundantly proves, that no such consequences are to be apprehended from the poor, uncultivated, and despised African. 666 Insurrections of all the blacks, massacre of all the whites,' are the bugbears which have been constantly conjured up to deter the British parliament from all interference between the master and his slave. The panic was the same, the outcry just as violent, when an attempt was made, about forty years ago, to abate the horrors of the middle passage, by admitting a little more air into the suffocating and pestilential holds of slaveships; and a noble duke besought parliament not to meddle with the alarming question. "That slave-holders should say and really believe all this, is perfectly natural; for tyrants are the greatest of all cowards. The wicked fleeth when no man pursueth;' he is terrified at shadows, and shudders at the spectres of his own guilty imagination. But that the abolitionists should have caught the infection, should be panicstruck; that they should fear, where no fear is should swallow the bait so manifestly laid to draw them aside from their great object,-is marvellous. "The simple inquiry, What is meant by emancipation? might have dissipated at once all these terrible spectres of rapine and murder. Does emancipation from slavery imply emancipation from law?--does emancipation from lawless tyranny, from compulsory, unremunerated labour, under the lash of the cart-whip, imply emancipation from all responsibility and moral restraint? Were slavery in the British colonies extin 666 'But, to demand immediate emancipation, however safe, however just and desirable in itself, would (we are told) be most impolitic, for it would never be granted: by striving to obtain too much, you would lose all.' Experience has already sufficiently evinced the fallacy of the notion of the superior policy of aiming at gradual instead of immediate emancipation, on the ground of its meeting with less opposition; for the planters have shewn themselves just as much enraged at the idea of gradual as of immediate emancipation. Surely the eyes of the abolitionists must at length be opened; they must perceive that they have not gone the right way to work; that the apprehension of losing all, by asking too much, has driven them into the danger of losing all, by having asked too little; that the spirit of compromise and accommodation has placed them nearly in the situation of the unfortunate man in the fable, who, by trying to please everybody, pleased nobody, and lost the object of his solicitude into the bargain. "As immediate emancipation, then, is the object to be aimed at, it is more wise and rational,-more politic and safe, as well as more just and humane, than gradual emancipation. The interest, moral and political, temporal and eternal, of all parties concerned, will be best promoted by immediate emancipation. The sooner the planter | suredly end in no emancipation. Unis obliged to abandon a system which successful opposition to crimes of torments him with perpetual alarms every description invariably increases of insurrection and massacre,-which their power and malignity,-and the subjects him to the tyranny of sordid emancipation of eight hundred thouand vindictive passions; the sooner he sand British slaves may be effected is obliged to adopt a more humane through other agency, which, once and more lucrative policy in the culti-roused into action, may realize all vation of his plantations; the sooner those terrific scenes of insurrection the overlaboured, crouching slave, is and carnage which the imagination converted into a free labourer; the of the planter has so often contemsooner the government and people of plated." this country purify themselves from the guilt of supporting or tolerating a system of such monstrous injustice; the sooner all this mass of impolicy, crime, and suffering, is got rid of, the better. "It behoves the advocates of this great cause, then, to take the most direct, the most speedy and effectual means of accomplishing their object. If any can be devised more direct, more speedy and effectual, or less exceptionable in its operation, than that which has been suggested, [i. e. abstinence from the use of West India produce,] let it be immediately adopted; but let us no longer compromise the requisitions of humanity and justice for those of an artful and sordid policy. Delay is always dangerous: on this momentous question (humanly speaking) it will be fatal, if much longer protracted. The time is critical. The general interest in this great subject is evidently on the wane; people tell you they wish to hear no more of it, their minds are made up,-no advantage can be gained by further discussion, the subject must now be left to parliament.' Alas! and how has parliament disposed of it? How has it realized the very modest hopes indulged by the abolitionists, in consequence of its declarations in favour of gradual abolition in 1823 ? "By its recent decisions, the great work of emancipation appears to retrograde instead of advance. The bullying of the slave-holders is said to have proved completely triumphant. Well may the abolitionists express their disappointment on finding the present measures of government fall so far short of the expectations which the promises of 1823 had excited. But cheerless and melancholy as are these results, they are such as might reasonably have been expected from the proposition for gradual emancipation; and, if persisted in, it will as ON CONTENTMENT. THERE is scarcely a situation in life totally exempt from occasional recurrences of uneasiness and discontent. Equanimity of temper, and health of body, wait upon eventful circumstances and pleasing sensations, with the same certainty that misfortunes and disappointments ruffle our humours and agitate our frames. The naturally gay must sometimes feel sad, and the grave man will often smile under the sunshine of life: thus he who acts from the most correct principle would require more fortitude than humanity can boast, and more firmness of resolve than has ordinarily fallen to man's lot, to maintain undeviatingly the same strictness or austerity in practice of which he approves in theory. Give me that man Who is not passion's slave, and I will wear him Perverted indeed must his judgment I apprehend it will be too often found, that the discontented man is a prey to physical evils or constitutional disorders, and that mental and bodily afflictions generally beget and nourish each other; while on the other hand a proper control over the inclinations will in most cases master the diseased action of the one, and chase away spleen and dissatisfaction from the action with an honourable and happy other. Not even the severest afflic- effect, transmit a share of its benign tion or greatest disappointments and and godlike nature and strength to crosses in life, can give a splenetic or the other faculties, and communicate discontented sensation to minds duly a cheerful and animating sensation to skilled in the school of self-examina- all the powers of the understandtion. And an uniform complacency ing. Thus I maintain, that however will beget that strength of intellect pleasurable the indulgence of our feelessential to the task of obliging our-ings and inclinations, reason ought selves to be contented, while every moment of our lives will thus become a happy and blessed portion of our existence. Indeed, the prospect of long life will be rendered more certain by the absence of those conflicting events and feelings, which, when yielded to, but shorten our days, and deprive us of every real enjoyment. We insensibly become, by such habits, industrious, economical, and happy; our associates will respect us for the virtues we thus display; and the felicity which our example consequently disseminates around us, will afford to us pleasing retrospections and delightful anticipations. Wo to the man, who, borne down by the neglect of himself, views the conduct of others with whom he is connected through a discoloured medium! His thoughts must be to the happiness of his mind, as daggers to his body; and the discontent to which he voluntarily condemns himself, is like a hell to his heart, and is the bane of his existence. Reflection will hardly allow us to deny, that, to order our lives and conversations aright, constitutes the wisdom of our being; and the same train of thought will convince us, that health of body and soundness of mind attend upon the exercise of a wise control over our passions and inclinations. In one word, the slightest deviation from the paths of virtue and honour, is attended with as serious consequences to the mind and happiness of an individual, as a hazardous exposure of the body is with danger or destruction to it; and where nothing important or laudable can be obtained or achieved, the greatest judgment will ever be evinced in abstaining from | indulgences, how harmless soever they appear in themselves. Moreover, the exercise of discretion will strengthen, quicken, and correct the operations of reason. That distinguishing faculty of man, viz. the power of reasoning, will again, in its turn, from being repeatedly called into | never for a moment to be allowed to sleep; for, if it be once lulled, and the impetus of our constitution obtain the government of our actions, though our enjoyment may be delicious, it is bewitching, and our cheerfulness, if it should at all arrive at the point of satisfying us, will be but transient and deceitful. The mind may for a while bear with such artificial nourishment, but time, which trieth all things, will break up the delusion like the bursting from a volcano, or the gloomy prognostics of a dreadful storm. Our intellects will then be left a prey to the desolation and discontent incident to a neglect of the proper cultivation of reason, and we shall learn, perhaps when too late to amend, the wisdom of a due admixture of that noble faculty in the minutest affairs of life. I apprehend it will appear from the foregoing remarks, that reason begets cheerfulness, and cheerfulnes is evidently akin to contentment. To arrive at that happy temper of mind which characterizes man as his Maker intends him to be existent on earth, little else is necessary than the proper cultivation of reason. Yet some men, from a too long neglect of this, beget habits, energies, and sentiments, at variance with its judicious exercise, and consequently prophylactic of its heaven-born effects. Before such men, then, can hope to attain this glorious summit of existence, they must divest themselves of such previous acquirements and standing prejudices as hinder the establishment of fresh principles, for first impressions are the liveliest and most lasting, and ought therefore to be the wisest and best selected. I would thence infer, that, of all studies, that of reasoning closely and clearly should primarily be made an attractive object to the mind of youth; and, although at first its difficulties may make it to most men not a little disagreeable, it will ultimately become the most engaging, and produce the most permanent and ON THE USE OF GENERAL PRINCIPLES. THERE are few things more calculated to procure humiliation of mind than a survey of the progress of literature and science. When it is considered how constantly the abilities of mankind in the successive ages of the world have been employed in investigating the hidden mysteries of things, and how often they have been baffled in their attempts, there is really enough to abase the pride of human nature. From the time when men first busied themselves in the pursuits of philosophy, in attempting to break through the obscurity in which many of the operations of nature are enveloped, and in trying to unravel the secrets of Deity, with respect to that portion of his works which they have it in their power to examine, until this present period, their inventive faculties have been racked, and their capacities put to the test in producing, comparatively speaking, but a small portion of that information, which, prospectively considered, might have been expected to follow such immense labours as those which have been employed. selves and amused the world with speculations which have had no other charm than novelty;-whose imaginations have dwelt so long upon the contemplation of fictions, that they have at length brought themselves to regard them as truths;-and whose fancies have been so much at play in attempting to reduce what necessarily could be but conjecture, to certainty, that they have been at length beguiled by their own subtilties, and cheated by their own sophistry. It would be an interesting, and at the same time an instructive engagement, were we able to discover the causes which have so many times led mankind astray, and to dive into those mysteries and unaccountable prejudices which have, no doubt, usually given as strong colouring to their systems, and produced that biassed method of exercising their judgments, which is for the most part visible. How often indeed would it then be found, that for want of throwing off particular associations, and divesting the mind of improper prejudices-that for failing to think that truth is holy, and capable of manifesting itself by its own lustrethat the laws of justice and of virtue are in their own nature still immutable, whatever construction may be put upon them to answer a particular purpose, much labour has been experienced in dressing fiction in the garb of truth, and in attempting to render that feasible which should appear so by its own intrinsic evidence. Without, however, attempting to account for all the particular circumstances which have bewildered men in the pursuit of truth, and led them into confused and inexplicable labyrinths, where they have been impelled by fancy, and driven about by conjecture, there is abundant reason to be The apparent knowledge acquired by one generation, has frequently been dissipated by the one immediately succeeding it. One set of philosophers have perhaps presented to the world a particular theory, the result of much ingenuity and labour, beauti-lieve that not a few of their errors are ful as a whole, and regularly constructed in all its parts; but scarcely have they been conducted to "the undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns," ere their works have been consigned to the land of forgetfulness, or have been remembered only as exhibiting the extreme short-sightedness of humanity, and the futility of their efforts. It would be no difficult task to run through a whole list of the names of men, all eminent in their day, who have successively deceived them attributable to a want of attention to general principles. If it be considered how many cases there are with which casual circumstances are associated, and how strongly they operate oftentimes to change the aspect of those cases-when it is remembered how much false colouring is frequently given to certain questions by their connection with certain facts which take their rise from a peculiar situation of things-if it be recollected indeed how often abstract subjects are placed in a wrong light, owing to their |