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deities are still the patrons of rites the most barbarous and obscene. Her annual sacrifice is the blood of thousands crushed beneath the car of Juggernaut, consumed on the funeral pile, or devoured by the monsters of the deep. Such, sir, is the moral history of millions of beings, who were created originally after the image of God, and destined for the most exalted enjoyment in his presence. Beings whom we must soon meet before the bar of God! Wherever you turn, what page soever of man's history you contemplate, from the attenuated refinements of Greece, or the golden days of Rome, to the monstrous barbarism of the Tartar, the Hottentot or the Hindoo; you meet with nothing that sweetens the enjoyments of domestic life, no precept that strengthens the bonds of more extended social intercourse; nothing that exalts, enlightens and refines the institutions of civil life; nothing that can reclaim the abandoned, that can sustain the suffering, or whisper consolation to the dying.

We must pass over the animating description of the rise and progress of Bible institutions in Great Britain and America, and the allusion to the labours of Carey, Ward, Judson, Patterson and Morrison; but, with the Rev. Gentleman, we would urge upon the attention of our countrymen and the world, the ancient adage

"NOTHING IS DONE WHILE any thing REMAINS TO BE DONE."

It is true, sir, (said Mr. S.) that since the formation of the first Bible Society, upwards of four millions of Bibles have been circulated; but we may say of these, what was said with reference to the five barley-loaves and two small fishes-what are they among so many? -Suppose a Bible to afford religious instruction to six persons, then twenty four millions of the human family have participated in your bounty; but these Bibles have been distributed principally in countries where the light of salvation has shined since the reformation. But even in those countries-in our own happy America-and in this city, famous for its prompt, enlightened, and efficient zeal in the cause of Jesus, it must not be concealed, that thousands continue destitute of the Bible. What have we done to redeem the four hundred millions who sit in gross darkness and the shadow of death, ignorant of the precious Saviour driven forward by errors, the most destructive, victims of a sanguinary superstition, which every hour swells the catalogue of the dying and the damned. Have we laboured, have we prayed for those souls with an ardour becoming the disciples of Christ? Should the heathen now perishing for lack of vision, challenge us in eternity and say, these devouring flames which consume us, these ponderous chains with which we are loaded down, this dark and horrible abyss, we might have avoided through a more noble zeal of American Christians-we could not plead guiltless.

When the famishing sons of Egypt cried to Pharaoh for bread, he said, Go to Joseph. Whither shall we direct the millions who are hungering after the bread of life, but to the store house of our spiritual Joseph? Yes, sir, we will send them to the Bible Society, for there is bread enough, and to spare. And thus, when your charities. like Eden's liquid plain. pure as the expanse of heaven, shall have

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amiable. rents.

He was an affectionate husband, and the tenderest of paIn his intercourse with society, he was truly polite, for his actions were regulated by the essence of politeness-true benevolence.

CIVIL RETROSPECT.

FOREIGN.

Russia and Turkey.-The news from Europe since our last article; has been of a more pacific aspect than heretofore. Not only is the additional delay, at this season, in the commencement of hostilities favourable to the belief that war will not take place, but there are reports that the Turkish armies are withdrawing from their positions on the Russian frontier, and the evacuation by the Turkish forces, of Wallachia and Moldavia, is confidently spoken of. We do not, however, lessen our confidence in the importance of the transactions which have taken place in the south-eastern quarter of Europe. We cannot doubt, that if peace be preserved, it will be by the accession of Turkey to terms which shall guarantee some measure of security to the Greeks, and authorize some of the high powers of Europe to assume, more intimately than heretofore, the character of protectors of the Greeks, and of Christians in general. Nor will it be a small consideration, that Europe has been taught, that Turkey, who has so often in former days trampled upon the laws and the rights of nations, and made her sword alone her rule of conduct, is herself the subject of intimidation; and that the mere demonstration of the force of her powerful neighbours is enough to bring her to the terms of civilized negotiation, and to drive her to court the favourable offices even of Christian powers. In short, we deem the events which have taken place, a proof that the Mahommedan power is now inferior to that of Christendom, and that it must listen to the voice which the latter shall raise in favour of justice and civilized humanity.

Spain.--Spain still continues unsettled, having neither force. enough in its government, nor virtue enough in its people, nor a sufficient preponderance of any factions, to give any stability to its institutions or security to the people at large. Every new account from that country informs us of new tumults and disorders. In addition to the remarks which, in a former number, we made on the situation of Spain, it deserves to be noted, that destitute as Spain is of the habits and principles which render a people orderly, and a government strong and stable, she also lies under the positive disadvantage of having had all her institutions disturbed during the French invasion, her population accustomed to scenes of tumult and bloodshed, which took away from such scenes that terror which elsewhere unites a country to suppress them, and no small part of it engaged in a partisan warfare against the French, which fitted them more for the business of robbers than the duties of quiet citizens.

We observe that the news has been received there of the acknow.

Civil Retrospect-Domestic.

185

ledgment by this country of the independence of South-America; but no document from the government has transpired to show its feelings on the occasion. The distance at which we are placed from Spain, and its distracted condition, are sufficient securities to us that we have no cause to fear trouble from that quarter on account of any just and fair measures which we may adopt towards our South American brethren.

Ireland.-Ireland continues in a state of the greatest distress, notwithstanding the liberal endeavours made in England for its relief. A nation in distress, and that from a course of misgovernment or the effects of unnatural institutions, cannot be restored in a day, be the exertions for that purpose what they may. A reformation of abuses, aided by the healing hand of time, can alone furnish any adequate relief.

DOMESTIC.

Negro Plot in Carolina-We have lately had information of a plot formed in Charleston, South Carolina, by the slaves, to rise upon the whites and it is generally reported, that it has been found to have been generated and fostered in some African Society for the ostensible purpose of mental improvement. Many of those who have been found accessary to the plot, have been remarkable for their intelligence and ostensible good qualities. Numbers of them have been tried by a summary process and executed, and the trials and disclosures of the plot continue to progress.

At the escape of our southern brethren, many of whom we prize as among the richest jewels of our country, from a catastrophe so calamitous, so full of every ingredient which can render pillage, murder and pollution dreadful, we feel the deepest gratitude to Almighty God, to whom alone we would ascribe the deliverance. We hope that it will teach lessons, not of cruelty and violence, but of mercy and prudence which shall take effect on the minds of present and of future generations. At least we hope that the moral of this tragedy may not be perverted. In our remarks we take for granted that the information we detail above, as the origin of the plot, is true, having no means of better knowledge: we confess we desire further information as to its truth.

We hope, in the first place, that our southern friends will not, from this occurrence, be led to think that the evil which they would guard against, can be stifled in the torrents of African blood, which it may be in their power, perhaps justly, to shed. If, in punishing the concerned in the present plot, they shall, through carelessness of the lives of their victims, through the excitements of present alarm, or that feeling of retaliating vengeance to which the heart of man is too prone, give an undue weight to imperfect testimony or make the sword of justice the dagger of revenge, they will kindle the flame of unextinguishable hatred and vengeance in their black population, and rather insure than prevent a recurrence of such crimes. Even where the criminals are clearly guilty, it should be remembered that by too frequent executions, men become less terrifed at them, and come to consider death nothing more than what is VOL. IX.

24

termed in military phrase, a casualty. Executions thus frequent, although failing to excite their proper terror, will not the less arouse the hatred and revenge of those on whose minds it is intended to have effect.

We hope, too, that what has happened, will not prejudice our southern friends against the education of their slaves. It may be true, that the plot in question has had its origin in institutions for improvement of the mind. To enlighten the minds of this part of their population, without causing this light to shine in connexion with Christian instruction, and to beam through the openings made by the masters themselves, is but to awaken them to a sense of injury and to rouse them to a thirst of vengeance. The education of slaves should be accomplished by their masters' cares, and united indissolubly with religious instruction: so would habits of discipline, subordination and kindness grow with the dawning of their better knowledge, and be identified with it. We have been personally informed, by one who has practised it, that by pursuing this course, he has found his slaves better men, more faithful, more devoted to him, and elevated in every respect, so that the master fearlessly left them in trust of all he had. To shut out the light from the minds of slaves at the present day is impossible: the only choice is to give that light a true colour. In the present instance, although we know no particular fact on which to ground our confidence, we hesitate not to assert, that religious slaves, educated by their masters and treated by them with humanity, have remained faithful and unconnected with the plot, if indeed they have not been the means of its detection. Slavery, indeed, does exist, and does draw with it its legions of evils : but perhaps the system of slavery may be the only system of discipline which admits of imparting that instruction which shall elevate its subjects to the condition which alone will make liberty a blessing: we speak of a slave population. By its restraints alone can the untutored savage be kept in such subordination as shall afford the opportunity of instruction and allow of training the flexible mind in the way it should go. And the masters must use it for this purpose: the slaves will else be irresistibly led to consider the enlightening of their minds and the means of their forcible emancipation as identical; and, collecting together in associations for this purpose among themselves, they will acquire a unity of design from their associating together, become bound together by that sympathy which the sense of common suffering imparts, and alienated from those who would keep them in darkness, but they should feel their wrongs, until a recurrence of plots like the present, in spite of executions ever so numerous and bloody, shall render it a contest of extermination between those who should, and we hesitate not to say might, possess for each other a generous regard, and a devoted fidelity.

We are constrained by our limits to terminate our remarks, for the length of which our interest for both classes of actors in the present drama, far too powerful for expression, must be our only apology.

July 29th.

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