philanthropists after all! We may believe this when the emancipated slaves propose to raise a monument to their memory. We take exceptions next to Mr. Wesley's broad and sweeping declaration against slaveholders. We mark the emphatic words, to show at once the strength of the passage. He says: "1 absolutely deny all slaveholding to be consistent with any degree of natural justice." Again: "All slaveholders, of whatever rank or degree, are exactly on a level with men-stealers." Now in strict fairness these unqualified maxims cannot be maintained. Mr. Wesley himself overthrows their absoluteness, and weakens their force in the very pamphlet from which these quotations are made. Reasoning with the planters, he says: "Have you ever tried what mildness and gentleness would do" (with the slaves, in overcoming) "their stubbornness and wickedness? I know one that did; that had prudence and patience to make the experiment; Mr. Hugh Bryan, who then lived on the borders of South Carolina. And what was the effect? Why, that all his negroes, and he had no small number of them, loved and reverenced him as a father, and cheerfully obeyed him out of love." Now surely such a man was not "exactly on a level with men-stealers," or to be designated as "a wolf, a devourer of the human species." Nor Mr. Belinger, and those other serious planters of whom Mr. Wesley speaks in the journal of his visit to their plantations. Moreover, not his words only, but his practice contradicts the absoluteness of his theory, or rather assertions, when writing under the influence of strong impressions, after reading a true statement of the abominations of the infamous slave-trade. For if the extreme and universal condemnation of every slaveholder, "of whatever rank or degree," be correct, reason would have required that the missionaries he sent to the West Indies should have shut the door of admission into his society against the slaveholder, as such; and that he should have apologized for his intimacy and correspondence with Gilbert and others, on the ground of his unacquaintedness in those days with the evils which now so strongly affected his mind. Such reflections should induce a modification of certain phrases in the "Thoughts on Slavery;" and we may then acknowledge, concerning all the rest, that it is worthy of the highest commendation for the truth, benevolence, and energy it contains. But these observations go to show how difficult it is to deal with an enormous evil with due discrimination; and how insensibly the human mind may be impelled, by the best feelings of an honest heart, to views and assertions which, in their unqualified sense, cannot with truth be sustained. A calmer, and, as we take it, a perfectly correct and unobjection able statement of the whole subject, and one that is at once practicable, is comprised in the following extract from Watson's Institutes. It is too important to be abridged. Every sentence comes with the demonstration of truth to "every man's conscience in the sight of God." "As to the existence of slavery in Christian states, every government, as soon as it professes to be Christian, binds itself to be regulated by the principles of the New Testament; and though a part of its subjects should at that time be in a state of servitude, and their sudden emancipation might be obviously an injury to society at large, it is bound to show that its spirit and tendency are as inimical to slavery as is the Christianity which it professes. All the injustice and oppression against which it can guard that condition, and all the mitigating regulations it can adopt, are obligatory upon it; and since also every Christian slave is enjoined by apostolic authority to choose freedom, when it is possible to attain it, as being a better state and more befitting a Christian man, so is every Christian master bound, by the principle of loving his neighbor, and more especially his brother in Christ,' as himself, to promote his passing into that better and more Christian state. To the instruction of the slaves in religion would every such Christian government also be bound, and still further to adopt measures for the final extinction of slavery; the rule of its proceeding in this case being the accomplishment of this object as soon as is compatible with the real welfare of the enslaved portion of its subjects themselves, and not the consideration of the losses which might be sustained by their proprietors, which, however, ought to be compensated by other means, as far as they are just and equitably estimated. "If this be the mode of proceeding clearly pointed out by Christianity to a state on its first becoming Christian, when previously and for ages the prac tice of slavery had grown up with it, how much more forcibly does it impose its obligation upon nations involved in the guilt of the modern African slavery. They professed Christianity when they commenced the practice. They entered upon a traffic which ab initio was, upon their own principles, unjust and cruel. They had no rights of war to plead against the natural rights of the first captives, who were in fact stolen, or purchased from the stealers, knowing them to be so. The governments themselves never acquired any right of property in the parents; they have none in their descendants, and can acquire none; as the thief who steals cattle cannot, should he feed and defend them, acquire any right of property, either in them or the stock they may produce, although he may be at the charge of rearing them. These governments, not having a right of property in their colonial slaves, could not transfer any right of property in them to their present masters, for they could not give what they never had; nor, by their connivance at the robberies and purchases of stolen human beings, alter the essential injustice of the transaction. All such governments are therefore clearly bound, as they fear God and dread his displeasure, to restore all their slaves to the condition of freemen. Restoration to their friends and country is now out of the question; they are bound to protect them where they are, and have the right to exact their obedience to good laws in return; but property in them they cannot obtain; their natural right to liberty is untouched and inviolable. The manner in which this right is to be restored, we grant, it is in the power of such governments to determine, provided that proceeding be regulated by the principles above laid down. First, That the emancipation be sincerely determined upon, at some time future; Secondly, That it be not delayed beyond the period which the general interests of the slaves themselves prescribe, and which is to be judged of benevolently, and without any bias of judgment, giving the advantage of FOURTH SERIES, VOL. X.-4 philanthropists after all! We may believe this wher it 18 d in h none lutions: at once to in practice patible with were their ultiafter the slavemust first glance le, which we pro ON. d. By GILBERT BURious Index. Revised culated to remove cert History. By the Rev. in the University of OxCompany, 1843. By J. H. MERLE D'Aubigné, va, etc. Translated by H. ers, 1857. ages of these great hiseview or criticism, but as art of the facts referred to ng the basis of an important p Burnet's history has long wed upon it now would appear f D'Aubigné as an historian is How to be argued. The question thors are to be regarded as high us in relation to the great change the Church of England effected by ON? ortance of the Reformation in England versy for three centuries, and yet the are maintained, without the concession und on either side. Roman Catholics e political revolution, achieved by Henry because the pope refused to grant him a of Aragon; while, upon the other hand, hat it was a great work of God, consisting the consciences of the people, through the the Holy Scriptures and the preaching of pose in this paper a brief examination of this venth century, the Church of Rome established the British Isles. This was a step toward the e Bishop of Rome over the whole Church, which Hildebrand in the eleventh century. Collisions be ts and the civil authorities, from time to time, oc e trouble to the ruling sovereigns; but the wily en every doubt to the injured party; Thirdly, That all possible means be adopted to render freedom a good to them. It is only under such circumstances that the continuance of slavery among us can cease to be a national sin, calling down, as it has done, and must do until a process of emancipation be honestly commenced, the just displeasure of God. What compensation may be claimed from the governments, that is, the public, of those countries who have entangled themselves in this species of unjust dealing, by those who have purchased men and women whom no one had the right to sell, and no one had the right to buy, is a perfectly distinct question, and ought not to turn repentance and justice out of their course, or delay their operations for a moment. Perhaps, such is the unfruitful nature of all wrong, it may be found that, as free laborers, the slaves would be of equal or more value to those who employ them, than at present. If otherwise, as in some degree 'all have sinned,' the real loss ought to be borne by all, when that loss is fairly and impartially ascertained; but of which loss the slave-interest, if we may so call it, ought in justice to bear more than an equal share, as having had the greatest gain."-Watson's Works, vol. xii, pp. 112–114. Such calm and forcible reasoning thoroughly convinced the Methodists that the whole of the transactions connected with slavery were based on injustice; and that the original injustice of the slaye-trade could never wear itself out, nor any legislation convert a wrong into a right. But yet they conceived that a long-continued and widelyextended course of injustice might have such complicated ramifications, that benevolence, and even justice itself, would require caution with activity in producing a legal rectification, and demand a prudent regard to the present actual position of the sufferers. Recompense could never be made; for, besides the injustice of having caused them to be born in a state of slavery through the enslaving of their ancestors, when emancipated they would have to begin life in a new condition, under circumstances greatly to their disadvantage, and below the ordinary level of society; for the effects of the servile state and spirit would continue for many years, it may be generations. Freedom would be simply a negation of injustice, the restoration of a theft without restitution. Convinced in their impartial judgment by such sober truths as these, which none can deny, the Methodists agreed as one man to two resolutions: First, That it became the Christian duty of the nation at once to renounce the principle of slavery; and, Secondly, That in practice the system itself should cease at the earliest time compatible with the interests of all parties concerned in it. Those were their ultimate resolutions, to which they gradually came, after the slavetrade itself had been brought to an end. But we must first glance at their further efforts in the abolition of the trade, which we propose to do in a second article. |