BLACK AND WHITE.

DEDICATED TO THE WEST INDIAN INTEREST.

"No, sir ;-in truth you are wrong-fill again, sir, but, believe me, you are very wrong! There is, you see, a divine Providence in these matters-a sort of-the bottle stands with you-will of heaven, you understand me!"

This interpreter of the mysteries of divine Providence, was the owner of several slave plantations in the island of Jamaica. He had not long returned from a sale at Garraway's, where he had purchased an estate adjoining his own West Indian possessions, with all the stock, oxen, pigs, black men, women, and children included. I felt no disposition to continue the argument with the slave-dealer; and, as I was afterwards informed, I so far transgressed the rules of etiquette as to sink into a profound sleep,-to the loss, as it was significantly urged upon me, of a most profound and conclusive argument, drawn from the text of Holy Writ, conclusive of the lawfulness, and even necessity of negro bondage.

I thought I had outlived all my relatives and acquaintance. The very buildings, once familiar to me, had vanished. A change seemed to have fallen on all things. The sober trading of the city had given place to a chattering flippancy; the shops were gaudily painted, and at every other window was seen a parrot, a monkey, or a cockatoo. Every one who encountered me, surveyed me with an air of indifference or contempt; and this usage was the more irritating, as endured from negroes-vile black men. I scarcely met one of my own complexion who was not occupied in the most servile and degrading employment. I entered St. James's Park; the soldiers were drawn out; the whole corps was black, if I except two or three whites who played the drum, tambourine, and cymbals. "It is plain," thought I-"here has been some grievous revolution." All things conspired to assure me of this. The heads in hair-dressers' windows were drest à la negre, and advertisements in the papers set forth some rare cosmetic, as "giving an incomparable jet lustre to the skin." Here jolted by a squab Hottentot personage, arm-in-arm with a tall, sooty gentleman of the Fantee or Ashantee race; here promenaded half-a-dozen black young ladies, with a white footman in the rear; and here a woolly-headed philanthropist threw a piece of coin to a milk-faced sweeper of the crossing. The court was, of course," deeply, darkly, beautifully black;" and his majesty, if his laureate was to be believed, was the blackest of the jetty. He had come from the Guinea coast, and was now in treaty with the Emperor of Morocco for his only daughter, to elevate her to the throne and sovereignty of England. He was a great king-that is, he was very black.

Our ama

I found that dreadful havoc had been made with our literature. tory poetry, in particular, had suffered,―its violet-coloured eyes, rosy cheeks, and coral lips, had been exchanged for more suitable similitudes. Shakspeare's Othello and Aaron were made white men. As it may well be supposed, I was quite bewildered. I could not endure the scorn of the multitude; and, one day, my rage surmounting my discretion, I knocked down a respectable stockbroker, when in an instant I was seized by a couple of his white footmen, hurried away before a justice, and packed off to gaol, where I had sufficient time to ponder on the haplessness of my lot, and the miserable condition of the world, that a white man could not, even for exercise, beat, kick, or knock down a negro,-made, as we all know, for the white's especial sport.

One day, ruminating in my cell, a stone at my foot began to move, it was lifted up, and a creature, scarcely two spans high, stood before me. It was the strangest little monster! One half of it, from head to foot, was that of a fair European; the other moiety shewed the feature and complexion of the black.

On the dark side were scars, indeous thongì, headied; on the white, the wounds yet rau will 1000.

What are you?" said 1- and whence came you ?”

- 1 an the image of the past and the present replied the imp.

Strange things have happened"

-Ay. But a short time ago, and tins black side was torn with suffering; it was one foul wound. Then my wine side was baded and anointed, and covered with silk, and studded with gems: my hair was wreathed with choicest flowers, meeting the thorn and nette in my black wood. Perfumes were ever steaming to my wine nostril-wile the fumes of stagnant biood chocked the black. My white palate was served with the rarest work of epicurean cunning; my black with oñal rejected by beasts. But a change is come; now, the white hand tends upon the dusky-and the fair eye watches whilst the dark one slumbers.

And can the world be duly governed by the blacks "

The motley imp stretched forth his hand, and instantly two skuils rolled to my feet. I took them up.

"Which," said he, of these two skulls possesses the greater state-apartment for wisdom, true nobility, freedom, accomplishment? Examine them: look at these empty halls, and see if you can discover where guilt and foily's train had most room to gambol and brood in; which of these two, think you, was the abode of worth-the casket of immortal wealth-the palace of angels? Which has shaken its lightness at frivolity, and which has given the ponderous nod of high assent? Nay, man, cannot you say? There must be some private mark some stamp some scratch to judge by. No? You see none? Well, then, I will tell you. These are the skulls of two men, born in a rude, uncivilized land: education never filled these empty cavities with golden precepts; they passed from the breast to the tomb, creatures of nature. These skulls belonged to a negro and a white man-you see no difference in their structurewhich is the fitter to govern?" and casting them from him, they again crumbled into dust.

Starting on the sudden motion of my visitor, I awoke; when, for the twentieth time, I heard the slave-dealer repeat—

"There is a divine Providence in these matters--a will of heaven ; you understand me."

J.

THE SCHOOL OF SAINT SIMON.

WITHIN these very few years past, an entirely new system of political doctrines, embodied in the form of a religious creed, has been gaining ground so rapidly on the continent, especially in France, where it first had its birth, and has taken firm hold of the minds of so many reflecting men, that there can be little doubt it is destined to occupy a very conspicuous place in the intellectual, if not in the political, history of the nineteenth century. It is a remarkable circumstance that the proselytes of this doctrine belong almost exclusively to the best educated classes; and in particular, that a considerable portion of them are men devoted to the study of the abstract sciences-a pursuit one would think little calculated to fit them for being easily led into the adoption of wild or fantastical opinions of any kind. Indeed the character of the system is such, that its partizans must necessarily be looked for in the intelligent and the reasoning portion of the community. To be adopted it must be understood,

The imp is not talking to a phrenologist.

and to be understood it requires to be patiently and strictly investigated. Unlike other religious creeds, it makes no demands upon the credulity of mankind, no appeals to the senses, none to the passions. It does not base itself upon the fundamental petitio principii that it is a crime to refuse implicit credence to any of its articles of faith: it addresses itself merely to the reason, employs no other weapon than argument, and seeks no other triumph than conviction.

The founder of this religion, or rather of this school of political philosophy, the Count de Saint Simon, was born on the 17th of April, 1760. In conformity with the custom generally prevalent among the French nobility previous to the revolution, he was sent into the army at the age of seventeen, and the following year embarked with the French troops for America, where he served during the greater part of the war, under Bouillé and Washington. He returned to France in time to witness the first out-break of the revolution, but took no active part in the great struggle that ensued. In 1790, he had entered into a commercial partnership with another nobleman; and notwithstanding the circumstances of the times, or perhaps on account of them, the affairs of the firm went on so prosperously, that, at the end of seven years, when a separation took place, Saint Simon's share of the profits amounted to a tolerably large fortune. This he resolved to devote to the fulfilment of the plans he had even at that early period conceived, for the amelioration of the condition and prospects of his fellow beings. In pursuance of his benevolent object, he began in the first place by applying himself assiduously to the acquisition of the knowledge he considered necessary for its full and satisfactory accomplishment. For this purpose he took up his residence opposite the Ecole Polytechnique at Paris, and regulated his hospitality on such a scale, that during the three years he remained there, he never lacked the society of some of his neighbours, the professors over the way. From their conversation he gathered valuable assistance in the course of his studies in mathematics and natural philosophy, with which, inasmuch as a part of his early education had been conducted under the superintendence of D'Alembert, it is to be supposed he was in some degree familiar beforehand. This achieved, his next step was to initiate himself into the mysteries of physiological science; and accordingly, shifting his quarters to the immediate neighbourhood of the school of medicine, he made companions of several of the most eminent of the professors in that institution. Soon afterwards, the peace of Amiens gave him an opportunity of paying a short visit to England, and he subsequently travelled in Switzerland and Germany. It was not till he had thus devoted nearly ten years to the acquirement of a fund of scientific and practical knowledge, that he appeared before the world in the character of an author. His first publication was a work in two quarto volumes, bearing the title of an introduction to the scientific labours of the nineteenth century, which was printed at Paris, in 1807. From this period up to the time of his death, which occurred on the 19th of May, 1825, he was constantly employed, either in maturing his ideas into a system, or in communicating them to the public. The catalogue alone of his works would go near to fill a page. But numerous as they are, and various as are the subjects of which they profess to treat, they are all conceived in the same spirit; all have equally in view the object to which every thought and every wish of this enthusiastic philanthropist were directed the amelioration of the condition of the human race. His last and most celebrated work, Le Nouveau Christianisme, was published but a very short time before his death.

The laborious duties of the great task Saint Simon had imposed on himself, were performed for the most part in the midst of poverty and distress. His fortune had been entirely exhausted in the course of his search after knowledge; and before he began to make a direct application of the mental stores he had laid up, his pecuniary means were reduced to a slender allowance made him by his relations. Even this he rarely appropriated to his own personal use. He would

often deprive himself of all but the bare necessaries of life, take no other food than a scanty pittance of bread and water, consume no fuel, nay sell his very clothes, to provide for the expense of printing and distributing his works. He even went farther than this. He laid aside the pride of rank, of station, of former independence. The coldness, the insolence, the rebuffs that await a man who makes frequent demands upon the purses of his acquaintance,—all this he consented to endure, rather than want the means of propagating opinions which he felt convinced were calculated to further the best interests of the human species. Once only his spirit rebelled against the indignities he was thus called on to put up with. Oppressed and worn down as he was with long privation and with physical suffering, the insults of the wealthy and the proud man's contumely added so keen a sting to the consciousness of his misery, that existence became insupportable to him, and in a moment of despair he raised his hand against his life. The ball, however, did not take mortal effect; and he afterwards found resources in his own mind to bear him up against the spurns and the contempt of the world. He died at length in poverty and in obscurity; his genius unappreciated, his motives mistaken or misrepresented, and his enthusiastic devotion to the principles he had discovered, ridiculed as the obstinacy of a crazy dreamer.

But, though such was the general impression as to the character of Saint Simon and his opinions, yet among the few disciples whom he had attached to his person and his doctrines, he had left as much enthusiasm for the common cause, as had animated himself. He had no sooner departed from among them, than their zeal made itself manifest in strenuous efforts to propagate, as widely as possible, the doctrines of their master, whom they now represented as the founder of a religion, rather than of a system of political philosophy; claiming for him, however, no other divinity than that of superior wisdom and benevolence, which had been manifested in him, they said, to so great a degree, as to leave no doubt that he was an instrument chosen by God for the especial purpose of enlightening the understandings and improving the condition of mankind. In short they regarded him much after the same manner that the disciples of Socrates and Plato looked up to their masters,-venerating him as superior to the rest of men, rather than worshipping him as raised altogether above the standard of humanity.

The first direct attempt made by the Saint-Simonists, after the death of their master, to disseminate his doctrines, was the publication of a weekly periodical, under the title of Le Producteur. The projectors of this work were too fully sensible of the obstacles they would have to contend against at the outset of their task, to suppose that it would be likely to prove a lucrative speculation. Foreseeing, on the contrary, that there was little chance of its obtaining for some time, such a sale as would suffice to cover even the expense of printing, they prevailed on some persons, who had more money at command than themselves, to enter into a joint association, and contribute such a fund as might defray the outlay necessary for the support of the paper. It was not at first wholly confined to an exposition of the doctrine of Saint Simon. Articles on other subjects were introduced, with the view of procuring it a wider circulation, and thus bringing the main topic under the notice of those who otherwise would have given themselves no concern about it. This plan, however, was shortly abandoned; and the Producteur thenceforward became a monthly publication, devoted exclusively to the diffusion of the principles of the SaintSimonian system. In this new form it was supported wholly by the gratuitous contributions of six of the most active disciples of the school; and so earnestly did they labour in furtherance of the object they had at heart, giving to it every moment they could snatch from their usual avocations, that, according to their own account, by the time their pecuniary fund was exhausted, and the refusal of their monied acquaintances to furnish a fresh one had reduced them

to the necessity of discontinuing the publication, they had all injured their health by over-exertion, in a degree that would have rendered a similar termination of their work in any case inevitable. Four volumes of it in all had been published.

The few persons who, up to that time, had taken any public notice of the doctrines thus developed, who had combated them with serious argument, or turned against them the weapons most commonly employed against novel opinions of every sort, namely, sarcasm and ridicule, hailed the death of Le Producteur as a signal either that the disciples of the school had seen the error of their ways, or at all events had become convinced of the hopelessness of endeavouring to impress others with the notions they themselves might still continue to entertain. Both these suppositions were far from being correct. The devotees of the new faith had lost nothing of their original enthusiasm, and they soon found that they had succeeded in communicating a considerable portion of it to the readers of Le Producteur. They had now no longer any periodical organ for the explanation and dissemination of their principles; but they were unremitting in their readiness to supply, both by personal conversation and by letter, every information on the subject to the many who now began to ask for it. Several pamphlets were also published about this time, and distributed among those who had testified any curiosity with respect to the tenets of the school. The result was, that its disciples gradually increased in number; and as the latest proselytes were, like all new converts, extremely zealous in the cause they had espoused, they in their turn succeeded in gaining over others to the adoption of their opinions. Of course, as the number of disciples increased, the means of propagating its doctrines increased also. Regular meetings were instituted, lectures were publicly delivered, and fresh partizans were almost daily enlisted under the banner of Saint Simon. At length, in 1829, the leaders of the school found it necessary to appeal once more to the press for correct explanation of their system; both because their followers had then become too numerous, and were scattered in too many places, to be in the way of oral instruction, and because, the system having taken too firm root to be shaken by mere sarcasm, their opponents had had recourse to misrepresentation, and had accused them of professing opinions which, it was important to shew, formed no part of their creed. A weekly paper, called L'Organisateur, was therefore established, and it continues in circulation at the present moment. An exposition of the leading points of their doctrine, which had before been orally communicated to a congregation of the school, was also published during the same year. This work, an octavo volume of more than four hundred pages, speedily arrived at a second edition, and has since been followed by another,t containing some of the lectures delivered in 1830, and the latter part of 1829. Besides all these efforts for the propagation of the Saint Simonian doctrine, several literary and political journals have also contributed more or less to the same object by occasional notices; and there is one daily paper of considerable repute, le Globe, which professes to be the direct organ of the school, bearing emblazoned on it in large characters the title of Journal de la doctrine de Saint Simon. The doctrine is also regularly preached and explained twice a week in Paris, and some of the principal towns of France. The number of the disciples may be said to increase almost daily; and they include among them many of the foreigners always to be found in Paris, who spare no pains to propagate their creed throughout Europe, by the profuse distribution of the works already written on the subject. England is not omitted in this zealous search after proselytes. We could name at least a dozen persons among our

* Doctrine de Saint Simon.-Exposition.-Prémière année. 1829. Seconde edition. Paris: au bureau de l'Organisateur, et chez A. Mesnier. 1830.

+ Idem. Deuxième année. 1829-1830. Paris: au bureau de l'Organisateur et du Globe, Rue Monsigny, no. 5. 1830.

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