Virginia Legislature, twenty-five years since. "We have," says he, "as far as possible, closed every avenue by which light might enter their minds. If we could extinguish the capacity to see the light, our work would be completed. They would then be on a level with the beasts of the field, and we should be safe."

Weld (Slavery as it is, p. 51) assures us, that in North Carolina the patrols were ordered to search negro houses for books and pamphlets of any kind; Bibles and Hymn Books were particularly specified. (Chap. 7.)

From Brenard's Digest, (261,) Stroud's Sketch, (pp. 93, 94,) it appears that in South Carolina the obstacles to a slave's worship are nearly insuperable. He must previously know that a majority will be white persons; that no person will be there having a warrant to apprehend him; that a justice will not be within three miles of the place. A mistake in either of these contingences would expose the slave to twenty-five lashes.

In Virginia all evening meetings of slaves are unequivocally forbidden. (Jay's Inquiry, p. 137.) The same state fixed a penalty of thirty-nine lashes on a free black for conducting religious meetings by night or day; that any one without a warrant could apprehend him; nor was there one attendant without the same liabilities. (Child's Appeal, p. 67.) This harmonizes with the slave law of Mississippi, excepting the master may allow the slave to attend the white teacher's ministry.

The Presbyterian synod of Kentucky (1834) adopts in its address this expressive language: "The law does not permit free access to the Scriptures; but their ignorance, the natural result of their condition, makes the Bible to them a sealed book. The community will never sustain a missionary among them until they are ripe for emancipation." The synods of the same Church in South Carolina and Georgia (1833) say "there are over two millions in a worse condition than heathen." 'The negroes are destitute of the Gospel and ever will be under the present state of things." "Out of the State of Georgia we know of no church built for them. They have no Bible read by their own firesides, no family altars, and when in affliction, sickness, and death, they have none to administer to them the consolations of the Gospel." In harmony with these official reports is the statement of a distinguished Georgian, (Rev. C. C. Jones :) "We cannot cry out against the papists for withholding the Scriptures from the common people, for we withhold the Bible from our servants, and keep them in ignorance of them."

It is not twenty years since, that a Methodist missionary in

South Carolina was induced, by an address from more than four hundred persons, to abandon his mission. They urged the danger of mental improvement and religious instruction; "that oral instruction would lead to a desire to read, and will ultimately revolutionize our civil institutions. . . . . . Intelligence and slavery have no affinity." Thus must slavery keep its finger on the mental pulse, to watch against the too exciting elements of even religious truth. This is but a single instance among many in which the slave code has a legitimate application, showing that this code must be a vigilant guardian of the principle, or both perish together. This fact, that ignorance and slavery are in eternal wedlock, is the fittest eulogy of the institution. This reveals the inherent unutterable wickedness of the system. If slavery has its only safety in crushing out the image of God, who but a tyrant can advocate it? But while the necessity of these prohibitions is a valid plea, it is also an overwhelming argument for the overthrow of the institution.

Finally, the glance we have taken at the slave code of the South will enable the reader to contrast it with the slave codes of Moses and the patriarchs. The Mosaic servitude was founded on conversion to the true religion; the slavery of the South on violence against all religion. The Jewish usages were subversive of the principle; those of the South corroborative of it. Under the Mosaic system the slave was bought by his master, but never sold by him; the South often buys the slave merely to sell him. Those were reduced to servitude; these are transformed to property. Those had all the rights of the marriage state; these no more than the cattle of the field. The children of the Jewish servant were born free as the air they breathed; those of a Southern slave are loaded with the chains of bondage the moment they open their eyes on the light. To find a prototype of Southern slavery, we must go far beyond the range of Patriarchal and Jewish servitude. We must find such a victim of cruelty as Joseph, seized by violence, sold for money, dragged to a distant land, and doomed to perpetual slavery. It is such bondage from whose depth of wrong come up groans that sound to heaven, and requisitions for blood to which God's ear

listens.

Where does the Bible make the slightest reference to this outrage but with the deepest reprobation? Yet the plea of Bible slavcry has been urged to enlist God's authority for the most heartless despotism that ever crushed the human form.

To silence forever the plea of Mosaic slavery, let us view it still more narrowly. The lowest class of servants under this system either sold themselves, or consented to their sale. Nor was there a

slave under the theocracy, for whose ultimate freedom its workings did not provide. Its septennial institution liberated two thirds of those in servitude, and its jubilee was proclaimed by trumpets which sundered the bonds of every servant of the nation. What mind ever comprehended the general design of the theocracy, and suspected it could favor all chattel slavery; that it could raise one class to be despots, and sink another class into property. Does not every social provision of this Divine economy preclude the possibility of such an institution? So utterly alien was it to this, that the "national language was without a word exactly expressive of either slave, slavery, or slaveholder." How many ages would slavery survive in the South, should two thirds of all in bondage be septennially set free? How many would now be under the lash, had every fiftieth year since our national existence sounded the trumpet of universal release? Let such, then, as find a vindication of slavery in the Mosaic code, ask themselves this short question: Could slavery subsist in the South under the Hebrew institutions? If not, how can they reason from the one for the other? How can they sustain chattel slavery by Hebrew servitude, when they know that would perish under the economy which sustained this?

The entire unlikeness of the two is made unmistakable by the Hebrew treatment of the foreign slave. He no sooner stepped on the promised land than his fetters dropped from his limbs, never again to bind him.

We beg that it may not escape our readers that the contrasts are at vital points. That these points are in fierce and everlasting collision. The one originated in compassion for the poor; the other in an avarice which would swallow up the poor. The one was temporary, terminated by the workings of the theocracy; the other was perpetual, stretching through generations. That was voluntary; this compulsory. That left the servant with his manhood; this makes the slave a thing. That possessed him with civil rights; this leaves him no rights to protect. The one guaranteed his married relations; the other ignores them as without obligation. That provided for his education; this prohibits education on the severest penalty. That secured freedom to a fugitive from another land; this drags him back to the direst bondage. That recognized the sanctities of domestic relations; this treads them to the earth with ineffable

scorn.

These concluding remarks are no attempt at the Bible argument against slavery, but aim simply at suggesting the inevitable conflict between the slave code of Palestine and the slave laws of the South.

ART. IV.-AARON BURR.

1. Memoirs of Aaron Burr, by Matthew L. DavIS. Harper & Brothers. NewYork: 1837.

2. Life and Times of Aaron Burr, by J. PARTON. Mason & Brothers. NewYork: 1858.

A GREAT number of circumstances combine to attach to the subject of this sketch a peculiar and deep interest. His immediate antecedents were men pre-eminently distinguished, not less for their moral than their intellectual greatness. His own career as a brave and dashing military genius early distinguished him as a man of no ordinary promise. His career at the bar was scarcely less brilliant, taking his position at a single bound, as it were, in the very foremost rank of his profession. His rise to eminence in the political world was as unprecedentedly rapid as his subsequent downfall was sudden and complete. Singular and marked as was the vicissitude of fortune which attended him in later life, it was no less so than the fortitude and heroic courage with which he bore up under it. Possessing intellectual qualities which might have immortalized him among the benefactors of the race, he made himself forever infamous by prostituting them to uses totally inconsistent with an elevated and towering mind. Called into public life in an era remarkable for self-denial and patriotic self-sacrifice, he beheld in the appliances which public favor had placed within his reach only the most available means for gratifying a selfish ambition. Among a phalanx of statesmen illustrious for directness, integrity, fair and open dealing, he preferred ever to gain his object by the tortuous path of stratagem and intrigue. Ostensibly to take satisfaction for a personal offense, but really to silence the tongue of a formidable adversary, he imbrued his hands in the blood of the country's idol. In a community where the sanctities of domestic life were usually revered, he bore the stigma of unscrupulous libertinism; circumstances indeed combining at one time to render him an object of admiration, at another of pity, and finally of ineffable contempt.

The biographers of Mr. Burr, Mr. Davis, editor of his Memoirs, and Mr. Parton, author of the Life and Times of Aaron Burr, both of whose works we have taken as our text, are each of the opinion that, on the whole, their subject has been by far too severely condemned. That he has been grossly belied, and that by men far beneath him in moral quality, as well as by those in high places, is

doubtless true; but, while the honest attempt on the part of Mr. Parton, in his singularly interesting volume, to show this up, may, to some extent, modify his reputation, as colored by the popular traditions concerning his character, yet so deeply settled have become the convictions of the people in relation to his fatal defects of character, and evidently utter want of high principle, that but little or no permanent change in the public sentiment in this respect can ever be reasonably expected.

Perhaps we may as well add here what more we have to say with regard to the manner in which Mr. Parton has discharged his duties as biographer; and we unhesitatingly pronounce it such as to demand a cordial and emphatic recognition. Contrary to the usual custom, Mr. Parton has not become the advocate or apologist of his subject. Foul and spotted as is the reputation which has clung to him so pertinaciously and so long, he evinces no anxiety to whitewash him from it, nor to lose sight of the facts upon which the prevailing opinion is founded. He is by no means blind himself, nor would he, by throwing a shining vail over Burr's natural deformities, attempt to blind others to his radical defects of character. Far from setting him up as a model for good behavior, or becoming, in his zeal for what he deems historical justice, an apologist for base and malignant conduct, he aims only to present some of the most favorable aspects and extenuating circumstances of Burr's career. In a word, we believe he has aimed to treat his subject with strict impartiality, influenced in his judgments by neither favor nor prejudice. He seems, in every case, to have spared no pains to ascertain the unrelenting truth. Every page bears mark of indefatigable labor. The irksome details of political strife had to be carefully sifted; a no small chaos of materials to be reduced to historic order. But he has performed his task with the most evident honesty of purpose; "with the zeal," indeed, "of an antiquary, and the taste of an artist." His style is vigorous and flowing, and marked by originality of expression and illustration. Besides giving us the Life of Burr, Mr. Parton has also given us a very graphic transcript of his times, sketching at length the rise and progress of those political movements in which he acted so conspicuous a part, particularly of that which resulted in the overthrow of the Federal power, or influence of the Federal party, in the United States, in 1800; truly one of the most important passages in our political history. But let us proceed with our inquest upon Colonel Aaron Burr.

This notable character was born February 6th, 1756, in Newark, New-Jersey. His father, Rev. Aaron Burr, then president of