We have shewn, in a note, (last page,) how incorrect our Critic is in representing the evils which he enumerates as past, and not as now existing; imitating, in this respect, the successive advocates of colonial bondage during half a century, who have never been able to find in their vocabulary any present tense for the atrocities of the system. But we must do our Critic the justice to say, that he himself appears to have some misgivings on the subject; for he seems unwilling to quit it without attempting to obviate the effect of his too flattering delineations of the colonial desire of improvement. He even shakes his mantle in a somewhat menacing attitude while he utters his valedictory warning," that, unless the progress of colonial reform is materially accelerated in the course of the present year, no one will believe that the colonial legis. latures entertain a sincere desire for the religious instruction of the slaves. There are rules and practices, and even laws," he adds, " still existing in almost every colony, which no member of the West Indian body in England would venture to defend either in parliament or in any other public assembly. The Sunday markets, the rejection of slave evidence, and the whipping of women" (Is this all? might he not have greatly swelled the list ?)" are condemned by the unanimous voice of this great empire; and, if the colonial legislatures refuse to purge themselves of these abominations, THEY MUST EVEN TAKE THE CONSEQUENCES." p. 454.

Nor is it only the British Critic who has surprised the world by this threatening language. The Quarterly Review, which, in 1824, was fairly embarked as a partizan in support of the colonial cause, and loaded the abolitionists with heavy censures for the unconciliating tone of their Anti-Slavery proceedings, and was particularly loud in denouncing whatever partook of menace, (see Nos. 58 and 60,) seems now, after a silence of some years, either to have changed its opinions or to have had new opinions dictated to it. In the last number, (No. 78,) its port towards the Colonists is still more unequivocally one of reproach and defiance than even that of the British Critic. Well may they say et tu Brute!" The Quarterly Reviewer seems almost to have had in his eye an article in the 81st number of the Edinburgh Review, which, at the time of its appearance, was denounced as outrageously offensive.

"With regard to Jamaica, and some other of the West India Islands," (says the last Quarterly Review, p. 343,)" which have their houses of assembly; their systematic opposition to every measure proposed by the King's government, considering the precarious situation in which they stand, appears to us to be little short of insanity. They seem not to know that they are tottering on the very brink of a volcano, which the first blast of a trumpet from St. Domingo would cause to explode, and bury in one common ruin, man, woman, and child. As it is, nothing but the King's armed force preserves them from destruction. And yet these silly people have been so unwise as to refuse to continue the supplies which they are bound to furnish to the troops who protect them, nay, even to throw out something of a threat to sever themselves from the mother country, and seek for protection elsewhere. Is it possible that these people can for a moment forget that England protects them and their sugars at the expense of her other colonies? Do they not know that if she were to admit the sugars of the East Indies and the

Mauritius, on the payment of equal duties; or still more effectually if she were to levy a discriminating duty on West India sugar, the sun of their prosperity would immediately set? Let the House of Assembly look at these things, and desist in time from using or abusing its authority, by a vexatious opposition to his Majesty's Government."

Before we close this long article, we feel called upon to acknowledge our obligations to the British Critic for the kind advice he has lavished upon us. He warns us, (p. 418,) that the work of weaning men from their errors, or of reforming such a body as the whites in our slave colonies, "is not to be accomplished by ridicule, misrepresentation, threats, or blows; that the abolitionist should enter upon his work with clean hands and a single eye; that good sense and moderation should be conspicuous in his conduct; that he should bring forward no charges which he cannot substantiate; that he should be ready to soften rather than exaggerate existing abuses; and that if he does not succeed in removing the suspicion, quieting the fears, and doing away the prejudices of the planter, he should, at least, conduct his cause in a manner which, in the estimation of impartial men, ought to produce these effects."

This good counsel our Critic follows up by the rather hazardous observation, that not a single abolitionist will be found to say that his party have adhered to these maxims, and, at least, that no one out of their ranks would venture on such an assertion. We know not what those out of their ranks may say, but we will boldly maintain that we have acted up to, and even beyond, the Critic's beau ideal of an Abolitionist, and of which, we suspect, he must have even borrowed his conception from our pages. He must, moreover, be little acquainted with the feelings of abolitionists, if he does not know that the moderation of the Anti-Slavery Reporter is deemed by some of them one of its great faults. Leaving him and our ultra friends to settle between them their conflicting views of our conduct, we challenge both to quit their vague and general accusations, and to condescend to point out in our pages the particular and specific instances, either of a charge which we have made and not substantiated, or of an existing abuse which we have exaggerated, or of one just and essential principle which we have compromised; and we promise to give them ample satisfaction.

Before we conclude, we take this opportunity of again thanking the British Critic for the opportunity he has given us of so fully vindicating our principles and our conduct, and we shall rejoice if the result shall prove as satisfactory to him, as we have no doubt it will to the public at large.

* Does the Quarterly Reviewer not know that the Mauritius sugars have been admitted for some years to home consumption on equal duties with those of the West Indies. They have obtained this favour for no other reason that we can discover, but, because they are, like the sugars of the West Indies, grown by slaves; while the sugars of Bengal, the growth of free labour, are subjected to heavy duties, for the common benefit of all British slaveholders.

END OF SECOND VOLUME.

London: Bagster and Thoms, Printers, 14, Bartholomew Close

2. SLAVE TRADE AND SLAVERY OF THE MAURITIUS, FOLLOWED BY A DEFENCE OF THE REPORTER FROM THE CHARGES MADE AGAINST IT.

3. EMANCIPATION OF NEGRO CHILDREN.

4. FREEDOM OF TRADE, AND SUGAR DUTIES.

5. CIVIL RIGHTS OF FREE BLACK AND COLOURED INHABITANTS of our coLONIES.

So much space has recently been occupied in discussing the question of a want of a Sunday for the slaves; and in pointing out the miserably defective nature of that education and religious instruction they are said to be receiving that we fear lest our readers should begin to imagine that these constitute the exclusive evils of colonial slavery, and that, if these were but obviated, the work of reformation would be accomplished. This were a fatal misconception. The prevailing want of a Sunday is, indeed, most adverse to the hope of christianizing the slave population, and it reveals, at the same time, the insincerity of those, who, while they either conceal the fact of this compulsory desecration of the Sabbath, or resist or postpone the measures necessary for its prevention, are nevertheless loud, both in the profession of their zeal for the religious instruction of the slaves, and in the boast of the religious improvement that has been effected among them. But, even if a Sabbath were at length given to the slaves, and more efficient plans of instruction were adopted, little benefit would accrue, even from these improvements, under a system so debasing and brutalizing in its character and effects, and so incompatible with the purity and elevation of christianity, as is that species of personal bondage which exists in the slave colonies of Europe. For be it remembered, that even the British Critic has not scrupled to describe that system as one by which "the whole order of nature is reversed; the labourer being excited to labour, not by hope, but by fear; punishments inflicted in England by the magistrate for crimes, being inflicted there by the master for idleness or impertinence; the supply of daily food, and the maintenance of wife and children not being dependent on the exertion, self-denial, skill, or good character of the individual; christian marriage being almost unknown; the human form divine being treated as if it were no better than a brute or a machine; degraded to a chattel, seized by the creditor, sold in the market-place, and exposed to every indignity which tyranny or caprice may dictate."

This and all other publications of the Society, may be had at their office, 18, Aldermanbury; or at Messrs. Hatchard's, 187, Piccadilly, and Arch's, Cornhill. They may also be procured, through any bookseller, or at the devots of the AntiSlavery Society throughout the kingdom.

B

And, when we add to this sad picture, the excess of labour to which men and women are subjected by the most brutal coercion; the scantiness of their food; the frequent and forcible disruption of their dearest domestic ties; the tremendous severity of the punishments which may be inflicted on them, by individual caprice, for any offence or for no offence-we may well abandon the hope of seeing christianity flourish in such a population, continuing bereft, as it is by its present actual circumstances, even of that first principle of moral and spiritual life, the power of voluntary agency. Is it possible to contemplate the whole of this system, in all its length and breadth of oppression and enormity, without coming to the conclusion of the same British Critic, that it MUST BE RADICALLY REFORMED; in other words, it must be extinguished, root and branch.

Having made these general remarks with a view of guarding against misconception, we shall now proceed to notice, as succinctly as we can, what has recently passed in parliament on the subject of slavery.

1. Slave Evidence.

On the 25th of May, Mr. Brougham, who had given notice of his intention to bring forward a Bill for the purpose of making the evidence of slaves admissible in all cases, subject only to those exceptions to which the evidence of all other parties is liable, begged to ask the Secretary of State for the Colonies, whether his Majesty's Government had not a similar plan in contemplation. He felt it to be so important that the measure should originate with them, that, if such was their intention, he would gladly resign it into their hands.-Sir George Murray entirely concurred with Mr. Brougham in his sense of the extreme importance of the subject, and also in his view of the propriety and safety of making the evidence of slaves admissible without any other than the ordinary reserves and exceptions. He did not even see the necessity of those records of baptism, or certificates of character from religious instructors, which it had been thought, by some persons, expedient to require. To require preliminary tests of religious belief and information did not appear to him a course well adapted to advance the ends of justice, or even to promote the interests of religion itself. He had always been of the opinion, that the holding out a temptation of a secular kind to any one, to adopt a particular set of religious sentiments, was injurious and degrading to religion itself. The session was now too far advanced to do any thing in this matter with effect; but, it was his intention, in the next session, to propose a bill for the reform of the Colonial Judicatures, founded on the reports of the Commissioners of Judicial Inquiry in the West Indies; and he purposed to introduce into that Bill a clause for admitting, universally, the evidence of slaves on the same footing as that of other persons. He saw no reason for clogging the measure with distinctions to the slave's disadvantage.

In reply to a question from Mr. Bernal, Sir George Murray observed, that the measure he meant to propose to parliament would apply to the Slave Colonies generally, and not to the Crown Colonies alone. Indeed, one of the chartered colonies, Grenada, had already, he believed, anticipated the measure which the Government contemplated.

The utmost satisfaction was expressed by Mr. Brougham, Mr. Huskisson, Lord Nugent, and Sir James Mackintosh, with the pledge which Sir George Murray had now given on this momentous subject. And, indeed, with reason, for when it shall have been fulfilled by a parliamentary enactment, it may be regarded as the first effective step towards any real reform of our colonial system; in fact, the first practical result of the hitherto fruitless and unproductive resolutions of 1823; not indeed, we lament, to say, as the completion of the work of reform; but as the commencement of that series of measures which, we trust, may lead to its completion, by the entire extinction of that foulest blot on our national character, the negro slavery of our colonies.

2.-The Slave Trade and Slavery of the Mauritius.

An important conversation took place on this subject in the House of Commons on the 3rd of June, to which we are induced to give a larger space than we usually allot to similar occurrences, on account of the prominent manner in which we ourselves were, on that occasion, dragged, before the bar of the house and of the public, by more than one individual, and there, not charged merely, but absolutely condemned, as base and malignant calumniators, without the specification of a single fact to justify the sentence. The conversation arose out of a question which was addressed by Sir Robert Farquhar to Mr. Buxton. Sir Robert asked him whether it was his intention to proceed with the charges preferred on the subject of the Mauritius, which were first brought forward in 1826, and which had been postponed on one plea or another to the present period. Mr. Buxton must ere now have formed a deliberate opinion on the truth or falsehood of those charges. If he had discovered that they were false, and that he had slandered the innocent by accusations which could not be supported, he was bound now to rise in his place and candidly to acknowledge his error. If he believed them to be true, he ought to prosecute the investigation. He was bound either to retract his accusations, or to proceed with the inquiry into their truth.

Mr. Buxton shewed that the delay was in no degree to be attributed to him. The Committee was originally granted to him in 1826, but so near the close of the session that it was found impossible to bring forward more than a very small portion of the evidence which he had collected. The honourable Baronet indeed had chosen to say that the evidence against him had broken down. He was completely at issue with the honourable Baronet on that point. So far from having broken down, it had scarcely been opened. Early in the session of 1827 he had endeavoured to renew the Committee, but was prevented from doing so by the interposition of Mr. W. Horton, at the express and earnest request of Mr. Canning. He was a second time in the same session about to move for the reappointment of the Committee, and had actually fixed a day for the purpose, when he was seized with an illness, which, it was well known, had endangered his life, and from which he was even now, notwithstanding his occasional attendance in that House, but too imperfectly recovered to justify his undertaking the laborious conduct of any great public cause. Here Mr. Buxton read two letters