number of other crimes are specified in the same code, and made punishable with death, when committed by a

ment, not less than two, nor more

than five years. 4th, Feloniously breaking, either during the day or night, into any store or warehouse, and taking thence money, goods, &c. to the value of four dollars, or aiding || therein, with death; but the white man with imprisonment for not less than one, nor more than ten years.* 5th, Stealing hogs, third offence, with death; but the white man with imprisonment not less than five, nor more than ten years.f 6th, Embezzling a record of court, with death; but the white man with imprisonment for not less than one, nor more than ten years.+ 7th, Horse stealing, with death; the white with requisition to restore the property, and imprisonment from five to ten years. § 8th, Harbouring or concealing a horse-thief, with knowledge of the theft, with death; the white man with imprisonment from six months to four years. 9th, Counterfeiting, or assisting to counterfeit any coin, or the note of a chartered bank, punished in slaves and free whites respectively, as number 2.¶ A

* 1 R. C. p. 588.

Ibid, pp. 574, 617-18. + Ibid, p. 572.

§ Ibid, pp. 512, 575.
Ibid, pp. 575—6.

¶ Ibid, pp. 581, 578. It is difficult to percieve upon what principle either of justice or policy, this crime can be punished more severely in a slave than in a freeman. The slave can scarcely under any circumstances, be capable of acting any other than a secondary and subordinate part, in the commission of this crime. The operation of this law, if it ever reaches the slave, must, therefore, be to send VOL. I.-26

labour, for various terms, from one to twenty-one years, when free whites are the offenders.

In the new state of Mississippi, the code of which has also been lately revised, the difference of punishment according to the condition of the criminal, is still more striking and obvious. Several crimes of the highest grades are punished with death, whether the criminals are black or white, free or bond. Of these murder, robbery, arson, burglary, forgery, and being accessary before the fact to these crimes, are the principal. But we have a long catalogue of crimes for which the slave may be condemned to the halter, and the free white man discharged with impunity or subject to penalties of a much lower grade. Of these the following may be noted, in each of which, the slave is punishable with death, but the free white man as below. Wilfully burning a barn or stable, imprisonment not exceeding six months, and paying damages. Attempting to commit murder, robbery or burglary, fine at the discretion of the court, and imprisonment not exceeding one year, and exaction of surety to keep the peace. Attempting to burn a dwelling house or store, or a cotton-house or other building adjoining to a dwelling house or store; attempting to commit forgery, or horse stealing, second offence; being accessary before the fact to forgery; to stealing a freeman or slave, or to the burning of

the principal to the penitentiary and the assistant to the gibbet.

a barn or stable; being accessary after the fact to murder, robbery, burglary, forgery, horse stealing, second offence, to the burning of a dwelling house, store, cotton-house, out-house, barn or stable; not crimes either by the common law or by statute. To this catalogue might have been subjoined several other crimes for which the slave is subjected to the punishment of death, and the white man either wholly exempted or punished much less severely.*

After contemplating these sanguinary provisions, which would appear to have been written with the bloody pen of the Athenian Draco, it is a relief to find the codes of other states marked with milder characters. In Tennessee, only five capital offences are retained in the last revision of their slave codes.† In Missouri, the laws relating to the punishment of slaves, are generally humane. There are six crimes which, when the offenders are slaves, are capital; for some of which white persons are punishable by imprisonment only. An ample discretionary power, with regard to the infliction of stripes upon servile offenders, is granted to the courts, by one of the latest enactments. In Kentucky, the capital crimes of the whites are limited to four, § those of the slaves to eleven. In South Carolina, there are twenty-seven crimes for which whites are liable to suffer death; slaves incur a like punishment for no less than thirty-six. In Georgia, whites are capitally punished for three

different offences; slaves for no less than nine.

These comparisons might easily be extended to other states of the union, but these specimens of relative justice will probably suffice to satisfy, if not to satiate the curiosity of the reader.

SLAVE TRADE.

The following interesting communication is from a Naval Officer of rank, employed on the coast of Africa:

Bight of Biafra, April 10, 1827. Yesterday afternoon, after having sent some of my boats into the Calabar River, where I had reason to believe a slaver was on the point of sailing, with a full cargo, a vessel was seen from the royal yard, standing through between Fernando Po and the Main Land. Aware she could be nothing but a slaver, I made sail in chase, and though then sun set, I shaped a course, so as to cut her off in the night. At one in the morning, we got sight of her, under a press of sale-but to no effect, for Old Nick himself will not escape this darling ship in light winds. It, however, fell calm when we were about four or five miles from her, and I directed the boats well manned and armed, to attack her.-Thank God, no resistance was made, and at two o'clock one of the boats returned, to acquaint me of the capture of the Creola, a Brazilian brig, with a cargo of three hundred and nine slaves!

The purport of this letter, my good friend, is not to take up your time with a perusal of my captures, but to make your feeling heart (if possible) more alive than it is to the miseries I have observed in this slaver, and the torture the unoffending creatures are put to, in cold blood, by these execrable villains, the Portuguese. In the morning I went on board, to see and be a witness to the state the slaves were in. Now, you will bear in mind this vessel is only 85 tons; that near one hundred men were in chains below, and those chains so rivetted as to take my people a whole forenoon to let the poor creatures

breathe the air aloft. The women and girls were (horrid to relate) branded with an iron, at least one inch in length, with the letter B; and several of these marks must have been done even since they were at sea (but two days,) as several of the young females were weeping from the pain they still suffered; and I was a melancholy witness to the marks, all of them being a sore, and most of them festering, and this, too, not one inch above the breast. The men were marked with the same letter B, but on the arm.

As you are ever on the move in the higher circles, do make this cruelty known, that, if possible, these monsters of wanton depravity may be punished. It is too bad, that after the immense sums of money given to that rascally Portuguese Government, to suppress the slave trade, that such enormities should still be suffered. I frightened the beast of a master out of his wits, by getting a red hot iron and putting it close to his cheek; and I verily believe it will have a good effect. I would have given my ears if I could have branded the villain on his forehead or cheek.

Do my good friend, speak of it to all and every body you think proper; for it is heart-rending to see such cruelty so barbarously inflicted, by those dealers in the human flesh.

This last capture makes no less than two thousand four hundred and ninety-seven slaves taken and emancipated by this ship alone. The Calabar, and Cameroens Rivers are now perfectly empty.—In the former there is but one vessel, and she is French; and in the latter, none whatever. I hope, therefore, they have felt the last order of our Government, to sieze those with slave cargoes on board north of the Line; and that the slave trade, if not stopped, has lately received a severe check. I am off Sierra Leone in a day or two, in hopes of meeting- as the thunder and lightning in the vicinity of these rivers, and the immense mountains, has for the last week been terrific. The rainy season is almost beginning, which alone is sufficient to drive one out of these sad Bights. In addition to the Creola, I have sent up for

adjudication this last month no less than seven vessels, all laden with slave cargoes, and it has almost cleared the Bights.

Sierra Leone, May 22, 1827. Here I am again in this pestilential hole, and which is (if possible) worse than ever. By the Orestes transport, which came here on her way to Cape Coast and Ascension, there came out two supernumerary surgeons and two assistants for the squadron; and in the same vessel were two assistant-surgeons for the army. Scarcely had these poor creatures been on shore to see even their quarters, when they were taken ill, and in one short month they were both consigned to the silent tomb. An interesting, amiable and very beautiful young woman, the wife of the Colonial Secretary, and only ten months a wife, was, in the midst of her happiness the other day, seized with a fever, and died in a few days. Afraid of the climate or rather the rainy months of June, July, August, and September, she was to have come home with me, and to have returned again in October. But alas! she is gone for ever, and her husband is almost heart-broken. Sixty of the white troops are in the hospital, with fever and dysentery, and an officer-a young cadet-died a short time since..

To enable the reader to form a faint idea, for alas, description can give nothing but a faint one, of the horrors of the situation in which these miserable victims of cruelty and avarice were placed, a few facts may be submitted to his attention. In the year 1788 the British Parliament passed an act, usually termed Sir. W. Dolbin's bill, for apportioning to the tonnage of the vessels, the number of slaves they should be permitted to

carry.

The act allowed five men for every three tons in every ship under one hundred and fifty tons burthen, having the space of five feet between the decks, and three men to two tons of

every vessel beyond one hundred and fifty tons burthen, which had equal accommodation in point of height || between the decks.*

In the following year, the committee on the slave trade in London publish ed a plate exhibiting a view of the ship Brookes, loaded with slaves, stowed according to the following dimensions: Every man was allowed a space of six feet in length and one foot four inches in breadth; each woman five feet ten inches by one foot four inches; each boy five feet by one foot two inches; and each girl four feet six inches by one foot. The whole number, which the vessel would contain, without encroaching on these limits, was found to be 451; but by computation the number admitted by Sir W. Dolbin's bill was 454. This plate furnishes a picture of human misery seldom to be met with in real life. The bodies are there seen so closely packed as scarcely to leave room for a person to walk among them. In a sultry climate, where, in consequence of rough weather or other causes the slaves are compelled to remain during a large part of the 24 hours in these pestilential holds, disease and death must soon make frightful havock on their crowded ranks. The plate was inserted in the second volume of Clarkson's History of the Abolition of the Slave Trade, in the 'Cries of Africa to the Europeans,' and several other minor productions. Let now any one after contemplating this assemblage of human wretchedness, even under these regulations, imagine if possible the condition of a cargo of human beings

* Clarkson's History of the Abolition of the Slave Trade, Vol. I. page 432.

"A late judicial decision of the Supreme Court of Missouri has offorded me infinite pleasure, the more so as I have long had the object very much at heart, and been exceedingly anxious to see it effected.

"I had always been of opinion that the ordinance of Congress of 1787 had emancipated the slaves in the territory North West of the Ohio. But as the people of this State have acquiesced in a contrary decision of an inferior court near 40 years, I had repeatedly urged on the Legislature to speedy emancipation of this remnant make provision for the gradual but of servitude, and had laboured to convince the masters that it was their interest to have such a law adopted, as it would have the effect of lulling the negroes for a time, and preventing their taking the question to the highest Courts of Justice, which must decide in favour of the negroes, and give them instant freedom. One of these unfortunate negroes* having been removed from this state to Misouri, and there having been treated with cruelty, and finally transported and sold in Louisiana, found his way

Of this description of negroes there are many hundreds in Missouri, and still a greater number in Illinois, and I am sorry to add they are now running them off and selling them in the lower country.

back to St. Louis, and there instituted a suit for his freedom under the ordinance of 1787. The Circuit Court having decided against him, he took his case to the supreme Court, where although two out of the three Judges || were advocates of slavery, the decision was reversed and it was unanimously decided that he was a freeman. This decision has produced considerable excitement in this state, and it is said there have been several suits instituted by the negroes to recover their liberty -and I cannot for a moment doubt but what our Supreme Court will concur in the decision made in Missouri. If so this foul blot will be immediately washed out, and the friends of man will have a new cause to felicitate themselves on the progress of correct principles, and on the restoration of his long lost rights."

SCRIPTURAL RESEARCHES ON SLAVERY.

The subjoined essay was communicated by the author to the editor of this journal. The author is, I believe, a native of Virginia; at least, a large portion of his life was spent in that state. The essay partakes rather more of the theological character, than is quite compatible with the general design of this Journal. The sentiments and modes of expression remind us of their clerical origin. But if the justness of slavery on scripture grounds can be admitted into the debates of Congress, surely the question

may be met on the same grounds in a journal like this.

An opinion prevails, not only with slave holders, but many others, that however inconsistent slavery may be with the principles laid down in the Declaration of Independence, that "liberty is an unalienable right," and however at variance with our free institutions, yet that it is not contrary to scripture, nor inconsistent with the spirit of the gospel. The Patriarchs, say they, had servants; the Mosaic law permitted having servants;

the New Testament speaks of servants, and commands them to be obedient; therefore slavery is not wrong. Some even find its justification in the prophecy of Noah, that Canaan should be servant of servants to his breth

ren.

I once thought and reasoned much in the same way respecting slavery: but a careful examination of the matter, has fully satisfied me of its fallacy, and given me a deep conviction that Scripture fairly interpreted, has nothing that justifies it; that the spirit both of the Old and New Testament, is clearly against it. In proof of this, the following remarks are offered on the Scriptures supposed to justify it, and on the subject generally.

The prediction of Noah (Gen. ix. 25) that Canaan should be a servant of servants to his brethren, is applied by some to African Slavery, and what is more strange, is by some referred to as justifying it. I have more than once heard preachers in their sermons, apply said prophecy to Negro Slavery; and that in a way that seemed to take it for granted, that there was nothing wrong in it inasmuch as it was foretold. The impression made by their manner of treating it agreed with that of a short address to Negroes, with which a preacher of the old school is said to have closed his ser

mon:

"And you black Negers, you dirty, lazy cratures, you wont do your master's work, without the rod. Ye are the cursed race of Ham. The Lord hates you and so do I."

Now we need but look at the prediction, to see that it relates to Canaan only, and not to the rest of the sons of Ham. The criticism that attempts to apply it to Ham's sons generally, for the sake of including the Africans, we think deserves very little credit. It has much the appearance of an attempt to fit a prediction to a particular case. We learn from the next chapter (Gen. x. 15-20) that the sons of Canaan settled, in what from them, was called Canaan. This was the country afterwards promised to the seed of Abraham, (Gen. xv. 7) and these were the people that Israel, just come out of bondage were commanded to destroy (Deut. ix. 4) and whom they did subdue and drive out.