are half wild, and half barbarous; and their walk and their manner seem to tell us that they are of an inferior—a degraded race. But they are human beings still;-yes, fellow-men, made by the same God, children of the same Father, however different in appearance from ourselves. And yet there they are, chained together, driven along like cattle, by fierce men, armed with those terrible whips; and these men, (and this is the strangest thing of all) these men who are thus driving on the poor captured negroes, are white men,-Britons, natives of our own country,-sons of free and happy England! Oh, how, how can this be?

But look again; that company has reached the ship. You will see now what the cargo of the vessel is to be. It is a human cargo;— a cargo of slaves; poor black men, women, and children who have been cruelly torn from their native homes; and now they are forced into that vessel, packed in it like bales of merchandize, without room to stand, or even to sit upright, and with scarcely any air, or food, or water. Their tears and entreaties are of no avail; they cannot move those cruel men to pity. Complaints only add to their sufferings, for they make the hard-hearted oppressors more savage still; and so the poor slaves are compelled to submit sadly and silently to their lot; and the cargo is completed, and the

vessel leaves the shore, and the voyage of the Middle Passage, as it is called, begins. Ah, you may suppose what the agonies of the poor blacks will be during that dreadful voyage! The heat, and the want of air, and of food, and of water, the cruelties inflicted on them whenever they dare to cry or to murmur,—you can imagine better than I can describe. Many sink and die under the sufferings of the Middle Passage; and, ere the vessel can reach the spot to which it is bound, a large portion of the cargo will have perished!

And now let us suppose the ship to have arrived at the shore of some West Indian island, far distant from the coast of Africa. The poor slaves,-those of them that have survived the passage,—are taken out of their miserable prison, but only to go through new sufferings. Worn and ill as they are, they are dragged forth, and driven along like beasts, to be exposed for sale in the public market! And now other white men flock around them, to see, and to examine, and perhaps to purchase them. These are the rich planters, who have come there to buy slaves to work on their estates; and they select the best,-the strongest, and the healthiest, and the most active, and then these poor creatures are torn again from their companions and friends, and sent by their new masters to different

places of labour, there to toil, and to suffer, and at last to lie down and die, thankful that their life of suffering here is ended, but ignorant of another and better life beyond the grave.

Now I do not mean to say that there are no exceptions to all this;-no kind masters, and no, comparatively, happy slaves. Yes; among those white men, those West India planters, there are some tender hearts;—some who would gladly have no slaves at all; who hate this dreadful trade and merchandize of their fellow men, and who only take part in it from long habit and custom, and because they do not well know how to prevent it, or to stop it altogether. And they will be kind to their poor slaves. They will consider them as their children, or their servants, not as mere property to be bought and sold at pleasure. They will give them the food and the clothing they need; and be careful not to overwork them; they will never allow them to be punished,barbarously and unjustly punished,-as too many of those hard-hearted and thoughtless masters will do. And above all, they will remember, that negroes have souls as well as white men; and they will provide means of Christian instruction for them.-In such cases, even slavery itself may be made a blessing;

and the poor negro, though in bondage, may yet enjoy liberty of a higher kind, for

Grace makes the slave a freeman;

and that grace is freely given to all who seek it, be they Africans or Europeans, white men or black. It may be said of the Christian slave, that

His freedom is the same in every state,
And no condition of this changeful life,
So manifold in cares, whose every day
Brings its own evil with it, makes it less:
For he has wings, that neither sickness, pain,
Nor penury, can cripple or confine.

No nook so narrow but he spreads them there
With ease, and is at large. The oppressor holds
His body bound, but knows not what a range
His spirit takes, unconscious of a chain.-COWPER.

I have been talking to you about the state of slaves under kind masters. We must remember, however, that these individual cases do not prevent the evils of the system,-the Slave Trade itself. That goes on notwithstanding. Ship after ship comes to the African coast, and cargo after cargo is carried away, and multitudes of poor slaves are sold, and bought, and suffer, and perish, and die; and many a heartless white man grows rich by the very blood of his oppressed fellowcreatures. So it was, and such were the scenes witnessed, as I said, some sixty years ago on

VOL. II.

2 L

the coast of Africa, and in the West Indies.— But we have stayed long enough gazing on these sad scenes. Let us now turn from them, and go back to England, and ask what is thought of such matters there. Do the people of Britain know what has been done? Are they aware of all the cruelties practised by their fellow country-men in these distant Colonies abroad? Yes, they do know, they are aware; and yet, strange to say, no effort has been made to suppress the system, and so it has gone on, even to the close of the eighteenth century !

You may well wonder, and ask, How could this be? Many of the people in England perhaps did not think of the evils of slavery at all. Free and happy themselves, they bestowed no reflection upon their poor fellowcreatures who were not free, and not happy. They did not see their sufferings; and if now and then they heard about them, it was easy to turn their thoughts to something else, less painful to dwell upon. Ah, how much evil often goes on unchecked, just because people are thoughtless; because they do not consider the sufferings of their fellow creatures.-And then others probably did not, or would not, believe the truth of the reports of the cruelties practised upon the poor slaves. It is often possible to disbelieve what we do not wish to find