and military stores, to procure slaves, thus making the strife more extensive and profitable for their object. The European traders themselves would embrace opportunities to kidnap persons and make them slaves, and sometimes would entice free natives on board their ships, and then set sail before they could get upon land, and carrying the deceived and entrapped people to foreign ports, sell them into slavery. Such attempts to kidnap free persons sometimes led to resentment on the part of the natives, which the traders punished by adding the cruelties of bloodshed to all the rest.

Another view of these iniquities is obtained by considering the sufferings to which the slave traffic subjected its victims. It was in testimony by Dr. Trotter, before the British parliament, as follows: "On being brought on board, they show some signs of extreme distress or despair, from a feeling of their situation, and regret at being torn from their friends and connections; many retain those impressions for a long time; in proof of which, the slaves on board his ship being often heard in the night making a howling, melancholy noise, expressive of extreme anguish, he repeatedly ordered the woman who had been his interpreter, to inquire into the cause. She discovered it to be owing to their having dreamed they were in their own country again, and finding themselves, when awake, in the hold of a slave ship. This exquisite sensibility was particularly observable among the women, many of whom, on such occasions, he found in hysteric fits." This evidence was confirmed by other commanders of slave ships. Instances were known where, in their anguish, they even committed suicide.

On board the ships the men were linked two and two together, by the hands and feet, and thus kept until they arrived at the port of destination. During the day, from about nine A. M. to four P. M., they were usually allowed to be on deck, and for their further security, the shackles of each pair were fastened to a ring-bolt attached to the deck. The remaining part of the time they were kept in narrow, filthy, and illventilated apartments below, where they were obliged to lie down nearly as closely as possible, and where numbers of them

died. They were fed two coarse and scanty meals a day, and allowed each one pint of water to drink. While on deck for exercise they were obliged to jump or dance. If unwilling, they were whipped until they would. They were also compelled to sing. But their songs were those of sorrow, bemoaning their wretched condition, and wailing that they should never return to their homes. Some of them, in good health on going to the hold of the ship at night, were found dead in the morning. Sometimes of two chained together, one would be found in the morning dead, while the other was living. Some of them would refuse food, with the design of starving themselves to death. Dr. Trotter testifies of one man, who, out of revenge, had been charged with witchcraft, and sold with his family, that he attempted to cut his throat. The Doctor sewed up the wounds. At night the man pulled out the threads, and made further attempts to tear open the wound with his finger-nails. He died in a few days, of starvation. Some slaves would throw themselves overboard, with the idea that they should be able to get back to their native country, or intending to perish. A missionary informs us of a recent case of this kind, on the African coast, where numbers were drowned. Some. times insurrections arose among them, and on being inquired of as to the reason, they would reply, "What business have you to carry us from our country? We have wives and children, with whom we want to be." The number of deaths of slaves on board the ships was sometimes one fifth the whole number, sometimes one half. "Their sickness was caused in part by their crowded condition, but mostly by grief for being carried away from their country and friends." It has been contended that this mortality might be avoided, by more commodious apartments on the voyage, but all that can never heal the broken heart of its sorrow, which often of itself produces disease. The slave trade must of necessity, by its nature, be a deadly business.

We might consider the cruelties of the slave trade, in its effects upon the slaves, after they are bought and sold in a slave land. Seldom having been born and bred slaves, the spirit of freedom in them is not broken. They have a deep

sense of the injustice they bear. They are not accustomed to slave labor. They are in a strange land. Compulsion is the great resort of the slave driver. Slavery knows no persuasion. Accordingly, the testimony before the British Parliament showed that the sufferings of such slaves are very great.

We might profitably consider the sad effects of the slave traffic on the seamen, and all engaged in it. It is an attested fact, that it is a very unhealthy and fatal employment for seamen; that large numbers of them soon perish. The diseases of the slaves carry diseases to them.

But its effects upon the morals of the seamen are far more deplorable. First, it makes cruel tyrants in general of the officers of the ships, and this results in great cruelties to the seamen. Then the seamen themselves grow vicious, stone-hearted, barbarous, and cruel, excepting in some cases where they have been forced into the service,-being first made drunk, then brought into debt, and then obliged to sail in a slaver, or suffer imprisonment for the debt. Whoever reads the life of the Rev. John Newton, once a sailor, and in the slave trade, cannot fail to be impressed with the callousing, barbarous effects of the slave traffic upon him. No instrumentality, it would seem, could have saved him, but the covenant prayers and instructions of his godly mother, who died before he was four years of age.

But it is time to inquire after the "sublime missionary movement" of the slave trade. In Dr. Stiles's "Modern Reform Examined," we have the following: "The obligation of fraternal coöperation on the part of the North, is suggested by the very nature of that grand missionary plan inaugurated by an overruling Providence in connection with the introduction of Africans into the South."-p. S. The italicising is his; he therefore means something emphatic. "Make the most natural record of this transaction from the beginning, and the simple history is neither more nor less than a lucid plan, a statement of the successive steps, peradventure of the most philosophical and sublime missionary movement under heaven."-p. 185. "The second historical fact records their trans

portation from Africa. What does this accomplish? A most important and primary part of the work of their evangelization."-pp. 185, 186. "The fourth historical fact incorporates them into our population in the relation of slaves to masters. And what a speaking movement is this?"—p. 186. Dr. Stiles also quotes, p. 310, from a letter of Rev. E. J. Pierce, of the Gaboon Mission, published in the New York Observer, February, 1856, as follows:

"I think at times, my companion [Rev. J. Best] and myself are ready to exclaim: Would that all Africa were at the South. Would that villages and tribes of these poor people could be induced to emigrate to our Southern country, and be placed under the influences which the slaves enjoy. My brother thinks that he would rather run the risk of a good or bad master, and be a slave at the South, than to be as one of these heathen people. He refers, when he thus speaks, both to his temporal and eternal welfare.”

This letter was written as a congratulation and help for the book entitled "The South-side View of Slavery."

It should be noticed that Dr. Stiles and Missionary Pierce do not exactly agree. The Missionary does not quite go in for the slave trade as one step in the "grand missionary plan." Not he! He has seen too much of it! He only wishes that "these poor people could be induced to emigrate to our Southern country, and be placed under the influences which the slaves enjoy." He is, alas, so recreant to the "divine institution" that he does not even wish that "these poor people might be slaves. He only wants them to be under the (good?) "influences which the slaves enjoy." This Missionary's testimony can hardly be adduced in favor of the slave trade as one "fact" of the "sublime missionary movement." But his "companion," it may be, goes a little further. He "thinks that he would sooner run the risk of a good or bad master, and be a slave at the South, than to be as one of these heathen people." Yet he, too, keeps clear of the slave trade as a "fact" of the "sublime missionary movement." He only "thinks" that he might prefer to be a slave and run his risk as to the kind of a master, rather than be one of the lowest, most degraded, most heathenish of all God's rational creatures he has yet become acquainted with. Grave in

sinuations! Heterodoxy on slavery! Missionary Best, if he yet lives, and ever comes to America again, had better keep out of the South, or else expurgate Dr. Stiles's book. He should know that in that part of the country it is deemed highly fanatical and incendiary to insinuate that slavery, even the worst of it, is not infinitely better than African heathenism. Really, we begin to have a brotherly feeling for Missionary Best. He reminds us of Paul, "If thou mayest be free, use it rather." It is well for Dr. Stiles's book that he put that missionary letter at the very end. Few at the South probably have ever read up to it.

But now as to Dr. Stiles's "grand missionary plan," "peradventure the most philosophical and sublime missionary movement under heaven." He either means something by it, or nothing. We assume it is the former. If so, then he means that the African slave trade, by bringing the ancestors of the present four millions of slaves of this country to this continent, was one part of a grand missionary movement for the salvation of themselves and their race. And he also means that their being made and kept slaves here, is another part of that plan. Indeed, he says, "The second historical fact (of the successive steps) records their transportation from Africa." He uses a very unassuming, mild term for the slave trade, "transportation," but we see what he means. And again, he says, "The fourth historical fact incorporates them into our population in the relation of slaves to masters." We wonder he should italicise "slaves," and further, that he did not use the milder and equivocal word "servants," in stead. However, Dr. Stiles means to be honest, though deceived.

The fourth fact, their being made slaves, we cannot directly discuss. We have now to do with the second, their "transportation," the African slave trade. This slave commerce between Africa and the United States and Territories, is one department, we should say the Foreign department, of "the grand missionary plan." We suppose Dr. Stiles means that this was God's "missionary plan," not man's. For he calls it a "stupendous scheme of Providence!" And exclaims concerning it, p, 192,