rounded, but upon the texture and polishing of the mirror itself,

These observations are strikingly exemplified by a late publication with the title prefixed to this article, to which the attention of the editor of this journal has been called by a notice of the work in the third number of the American Quarterly Review.

The work of Alexander Barclay consists principally of strictures on the slavery of the British West India colonies delineated, &c. by James Stephen, and on some minor productions of a recent date on similar subjects. Our author presents his readers with a picture of West Indian slavery, very different indeed in most of its lineaments, from that which the authors whose works he criticises had furnished. Though they generally profess to have drawn their information either from personal observation or other unquestionable sources, he gives, professedly on similar testimony, a description of the state of West Indian slavery, so far at least as Jamaica is concerned, almost wholly irreconcileable with that of his respectable precursors. The professed object of Stephen is to prove that the melioration of West Indian slavery in the British colonies, must be effected by the mother country, and that the colonial legislatures have done nothing effective, and from the temper uniformly manifested, must be expected to do nothing effective, towards the promotion of that highly desirable object. The design of Barclay obviously is to make it appear, not only that a very different spirit from that which Stephen describes, pervades the West Indian white population, but that any interference with the colonial legislation, or even the discussion of the subject

by the British parliament, must be injurious if not destructive to the West Indians, both masters and slaves. The hackneyed prediction of insurrection and massacre as the unavoidable result of those impolitic discussions, and the repeated failure of the prediction, must be too familiar to those who are acquainted with the history of the parliamentary efforts for abolishing the slave trade, and meliorating the slavery of the British sugar islands, to excite by its repetition either surprise or alarm. Our author has not overlooked this part of his argument; but the most prominent, as well as the most imposing part of the work, consists of declarations professedly founded on personal observation, which if admitted in their full extent, must make it apparent, that a great part of the evils which have been confidently attributed to the system, or considered as integrant parts of it, have now no existence, except in the brains of visionary enthusiasts, or their deluded and credulous followers. The situation of a great part of the slaves in Jamaica, would appear to be not only comfortable, but when compared with that of the peasantry of England and Ireland, an object of rational desire. He observes, "however unaccountable it may appear to those who have taken their information from Mr. Stephen, however inconsistent with his description of their situation, and of the rapacity of their owners, the truth nevertheless is, that the great body of them are in easy, comfortable circumstances, and not a few in the possession of actual wealth." Page 48.

However mortifying it may be to those who belong to the school of Stephen and Cooper, to discover that they have been fighting a shadow, and

supposing it a giant, I am well assured they would rejoice in the conviction, that this description of the slaves in Jamaica was strictly correct. There certainly are real evils enough in the world to exercise the benevolence of English and American philanthropists, without spending any part of their strength or resources on those which have passed away or never had an existence.

If the West Indian proprietors have already done or are doing all to improve the condition of their labouring classes, which their situation admits, far be it from the friends of the blacks, to arrest their course by any impertinent interference.

The highly improved situation of the slaves in Jamaica being satisfactorily proved, an inference would naturally arise, that those in the neighbouring islands were not far behind. Hence the friends of the blacks may conclude to sit down in patient expectation of the slow but certain progress of colonial reform, upon which one author seems willing to rely.

But before we abandon the cause to those of whose benevolent dispositions we have such pleasing accounts, it may, perhaps, be prudent to inquire, whether prejudice may not have heightened the picture of colonial beneficence, as well as of negro suffering. If our author can be indulged in the strictures which he has made, not only upon the arguments, but upon the veracity of Stephen and others, surely he can hardly complain of injustice if some doubts should be intimated with regard to the correctness of his own statements. To follow him through a volume of four hundred pages, and endeavour to ascertain how far his conclusions or his facts are

consistent with the information derived from other sources, would be a labour of which neither time nor room admits. I shall, however, endeavour in a few instances, to compare his statements with indisputable facts. The following affords no very favourable specimen of his accuracy. "Among, instances which have been brought forward to establish the practicability of an immediate or general emancipation, we have seen reference made to some of the states of North America, Pennsylvania, New York, and New Jersey, where laws were passed by their own respective legislatures, declaring that slavery should cease after a certain subsequent date. But, in the first place, between the states and our colonies there exists no parallel, because the number of slaves in the former was altogether insignificant, compared with the white population, for whose labour the climate is better adapted than for the labour of negroes. Nor is this all: there is another circumstance in the case, which those who bring it forward as a pattern for us, are either ignorant of, or take care never to mention; in point of fact, though there was an abolition of slavery in those states, there was no emancipation, as the slaves were only removed to the more southern states before the date when slavery was to cease. I witnessed myself, a cargo of those unfortunate be

*This discovery was not made on this side of the Atlantic. The negro constitution is believed to be better adapted than that of the whites to the endurance of toil under a tropical sun; but it does not follow as a necessary consequence, that they are less capable of labour in our climate than the descendants of Europeans; nor does the fact appear from experience.

ings shipping off from New Jersey for Louisiana, and the impression on my mind was, that, however good a thing it might be for New Jersey, the law which put an end to slavery in it, had done any thing but benefited the slaves, who were thus torn from their homes, to be employed in what Mr. Stephen calls 'the lethiferous process of opening new lands' in the distant swamps of Louisiana. Suppose a law were passed, by which slavery were to cease in the Bahamas in 1830, and that the whole of the slaves there, were, before that period, removed to Demarara, it would be exactly such a case of emancipation as has been quoted from America." Page 253.

This may, perhaps, do in the West Indies, or for aught I know, even in London; but in Philadelphia it has some prejudices to encounter. In the first place, there never was such a law passed in Pennsylvania or New Jersey as here stated. The laws for the abolition of slavery in those states applied to the children to be born after certain dates,* but did not emancipate those then held in the states. In New York, slaves were not emancipated by law until the present year, and in that state there may have been some temptations, besides high prices, to export the slaves, to the swamps of Louisiana. But even there the slaves emancipated were all necessarily from twenty-eight and upwards; therefore, generally past the age when they would be desirable objects of purchase, especially to engage in the toilsome occupation of opening new lands.

But in the second place, it seems

See pages 173 and 179 of this journal.

to be making the inference much too. broad for the premises, to infer from the fact of seeing one cargo of slaves shipping off from New Jersey, that all the slaves from Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York, (amounting collectively at the times when their laws for the abolition of slavery were respectively passed, to upwards of 26000,) were sent off to the southern states.

But in the last place, the fact itself of the one cargo being shipped off in the presence of our author, requires, for me at least, some explanation. At what time, or at what port, he witnessed the embarkation, we are not told. We may, however, fairly presume, it was after Louisiana was ceded to the United States. Now, that cession was made in 1803; and the legislature of New Jersey prohibited the removal of slaves out of the state, except in case of emigrants who were leaving the state to settle elsewhere, in 1788, fifteen years before the cession of Louisiana was made, and sixteen before the abolition law was passed. He tells us (page 383,) that he was in New York in December, 1821, near which time, of course, we may conclude the shipment was made. It happens that in 1818, a law was enacted by the legislature of New Jersey, and re-enacted with amendments in 1820, affixing a penalty of not less than $1000, or imprisonment of not less than two years, or both, to the act of removing, or attempting to remove a slave out of the state, except in certain specified cases, of which this certainly was not one. And it was well understood here, that there was no disposition in the authorities there to permit this law to lie dormant. We are, therefore, driven to the con

clusion, that such shipments, if made at all, would be anxiously concealed from all but those who were deeply involved in the guilt. The attempt to remove by sea, from New Jersey to any of the southern states, the seven thousand slaves then in the former, would have afforded an ample harvest to the ministers of the law, by the forfeiture of the vessels employed, and have carried on the work of emancipation much more rapidly than was ever designed by the framers of the law. For every slave upon whom the attempt was made, became immediately free.

The exportation of slaves under circumstances such as our author describes, does not appear to have been lawful in Pennsylvania or New York since 1788. Does this fact, witnessed ed by himself, and thus explained, cast any light upon other facts, which, for want of local information, we are unable to explain?

Another instance of our author's want of accuracy, though not of much importance, must be somewhat remarkable in the view of an American reader. "Of the four chief magistrates who have presided over that country of freemen by the choice of the people, three have been selected from the slave tates, where, according to Mr. Stephen, the exercise of despotic power, the long administration of an iron system, and the contagion of local habits and prejudices, extinguish humanity and convert men into brutes. Page 55." Now, his preface is dated December, 1825, when the sixth chief magistrate occupied the the chair, two of whom were from a state in which no slaves are held. The error is trivial, yet it happens to

represent three-fourths instead of twothirds of our presidents as belonging to the south. If political questions came within the perview of this journal, it might, perhaps, be no difficult matter to find, in the commanding character of our first chief magistrate, which for a time cast a halo round the state that gave him birth; the unequal representation which was adopted in the federal compact; and in the general aversion to a northern president which pervades the slave-holding states; more satisfactory reasons, than our author has assigned, why the choice of chief magistrate has so generally fallen upon the natives of the south. But what shall we say of our author's candour in his quotation from Stephen? Are the words which he would appear to have borrowed, to be found in the passage referred to? The expressions are, They are not. "In answer to a thousand proved and indisputable facts, we are desired to rely on the humanity of our countrymen in the colonies,* as if there was nothing in the exercise of despotic power, or in the long administration of such an iron system as prevails there, or in the contagion of local prejudices and habits, that had a tendency to impair that quality; but if we could rely on the incorruptibility of benignant feelings in the whites, we must extend the same prepossessions also to the black delegates of their authority, before we can believe that the driving system is mildly and equitably administered." Did Barclay cite

* The British sugar islands, not the American slave-holding states, to which Barclay had very unceremoniously transported his author without judge or jury.

the page and copy great part of the words, without reading the passage? Or, was not his author, of whose harshness he so freely complains, in this place sufficiently acrimonious to suit his taste?

If our author has not been more candid in regard to facts than he appears to have been in respect to the arguments of his authors, his readers may yet be left under the gloomy persuasion, that the elysium which he has prepared for the sable inhabitants of Jamaica still contains a portion of the misery and degradation which Stephen and others have attributed to it; and that the labours of the British philanthopists are not so nearly closed as his pages would lead us to imagine.

In page 28 our author tells us, "that the twenty-six days allowed by law to the slaves for the cultivation of their lands are sufficient and more than sufficient, we have the testimony of Mr. Stephen himself. Enlarging on a favourite topic, the starvation of the poor oppressed bondmen, he asks, why are those poor beings, who, in a climate and on a soil that would yield them a year's subsistence for the labour of a week, worked hard, not for one week in the year, but for the whole fifty-two, to endure nevertheless the miseries of famine."

Recurring to the work of Stephen, I find the words quoted it is true, but not the assertion attributed to him by our author. He was speaking of the complaints made by the planters of the difficulties with which they had to contend, and of the sufferings to which their dependants were liable, and quoted, in illustration of his subject, the assertion of the planters, not his own, that the labour of a week

will furnish subsistence for a year. The same assertion he afterwards repeats, but plainly without adopting it as his own, to show that upon their own principles, their treatment of the slaves was incapable of defence. If Stephen uses sophistical arguments, or makes incorrect assertions, he is open to exposure; but if his words must be warped from their obvious intent, to suit the views of our author, we may safely conclude he found it difficult to accommodate himself with their proper import, or why resort to a fallacy so easily detected? In page 66 he represents "Mr. Stephen" as asserting that "the oppressed slaves," of the Bahamas, we may suppose from the context, "are driven like beasts, worked beyond their strength, stinted of necessary food, and thus have their days shortened. Page 82." Now, how stands this grave accusation in the page referred to? Stephen, reasoning on the cruelty and injustice of transporting the slaves from the Bahamas, where he represents their situation as one of comparative comfort, to the newly opened lands of Demarara, takes occasion to observe, "there is no moral law, natural or revealed, that says to injustice, thus far shalt thou come, and no further;' injustice in every degree being prohibited by both. If I may warrantably enslave my brother for life, and his posterity for ever, because I deem it expedient, why not drive him for the same reason like a beast, work him beyond his strength, stint him of necessary food, and thus shorten his days? Why not banish him from his home and family, or even put him outright to death?"

On the assertion of Stephen, that the declaration frequently repeated, that negroes and mulattoes are the