"And now, Philanthropy, thy rays divine As the love of home and the care for home is but a part of patriotism, so patriotism itself is but a segment of morals-it is only philanthrophy which embraces them. To care for the neglected, or the oppressed, or the persecuted, to ameliorate suffering and sorrow, to help the helpless, sustain the sinking, strengthen the weak, plead the cause of the down-trodden, without regard to country, or kindred, or colour-this is the holy work of the philanthrophist -a god-like labour-blessed and owned of heaven. The subject of slavery is one which, within the last seventy years, has occupied a large share of attention, and within the last few years has created a very strong feeling, ending in civil war in the United States of America. In one form or another slavery has been practised from an early period in the world's history. How we came to be slave holders-how we came to trade in "God's image cut in ebony," it is our purpose briefly to relate-we look back upon our connexion with this inhuman traffic with regret, but we rejoice that it is an affair of the past, that we have done for ever with slavery and the slave trade. In the fifteenth century, or to speak with greater accuracy in the year 1440, while the Portuguese were on the coast of Africa, a captain named Anthony Garsalez, seized upon the persons of some Moors near the entrance of the great desert. When Prince Henry heard of it, which was not till two years afterwards, he ordered the captain to take back his prisoners to Africa. He did so, and in return received from the Moors a quantity of gold dust, and ten negroes. Such was the beginning of African slavery. When the Spaniards took possession of the West Indies they soon needed help to work the mines, and thought no help could be so cheap or so efficient as slaves from the African coast. About the year 1503, a few slaves were sent by the Portuguese to the Spanish colonies. Although the search for gold was attended with but little success, the Spanish traders found slaves a profitable investment, and so being legalized by government, the trade went on bravely, and ship load after ship load of these unhappy creatures was borne away from Africa. In 1517, the Emperor, Charles V., granted a patent for the exclusive supply of 4,000 negroes every year to Hispaniola, Cuba, Jamaica, and Porto Rico. He was sorry for it afterwards, but his sorrow was too late. It is easier to sow evil seeds than to destroy a harvest of iniquity. Louis XIII. of France, was also induced to sanction slavery, for "the good of the negroes' souls and for the glory of God." In the days of Queen Elizabeth, the English began to trade in slaves. Sir John Hawkins was the first who introduced it. He promised the queen that he would not touch a single negro who objected to being enslaved; but he soon forgot his promises, and carried scores into captivity. Thus with the English began the horrid pratice of forcing the Africans into slavery; that such a trade should be suffered to grow up under Queen Elizabeth is accounted for partly by the fact of the semi-barbarous character of the age, chiefly by her being kept in ignorance of the truth. Under the Stuarts, the slave trade increased rapidly, and the West Indian planters well supplied with the negro" article." From 1700 to 1786, the number of slaves imported by Britain into the island of Jamaica alone was 610,000; the total into all the British colonies, from 1680 to 1786, was about 2,130,000; in one year, (1771, when this abominable traffic was at its height), there sailed from England to Africa 192 ships, provided for the importation of 47,146 negroes. At a later period, (1793) the whole number annually imported by all the European powers amounted to 74,000, of whom 38,000 (or more than half), were imported by the British. These numbers are not overstated, they are given on the testimony of one who had in his possession authorized lists of the entries, and who was himself averse to the abolition of the slave trade. Who that reads this statement, and having human feelings, does not blush and hang his head to think himself a man. Against this execrable traffic, Sharpe, Clarkson, Wilberforce, Brougham, Buxton, and others-fellow-labourers in the great work of abolition their voices. Wilberforce was their avowed leader, and in the work of abolition he spent his life. - lifted up He was born at Hull, in the autumn of 1759, and lost his father before he was ten years old. He was then transferred to the care of a paternal uncle, and dated his religious impressions from his residence in his uncle's home. After leaving college, he entered immediately on public life, and was sent to parliament when only one-andtwenty, as member for his native town. He had formed the friendship of Mr. Pitt, while a student at Cambridge, and renewed the intimacy when brought into association with him again in the parliamentary arena. Wilberforce had great natural ability, heightened by careful culture as a public speaker he enjoyed great and well-merited celebrity, and he consequently soon rose into a permanent position in the house, giving to his old friend Pitt his most efficient support. About the year 1787, the attention of Mr. Wilberforce was especially directed towards the slave trade. He saw in it a foul blot on the English flag-a mocking sneer at English liberty, and to the abolition of slavery he devoted the whole of his life. This was his one uppermost thought, night and day, in public and private, in the house and out of it; the one purpose of his life, steadily, persistently, perseveringly pursued; the patience, the talent, and the courage which he displayed during the lengthened campaign, are above all praise. He introduced his measures in 1789; he toiled at it for twenty years and he saw it triumph, saw the slave trade abolished-the foul stain of man-stealing obliterated-he lived to see the consummation of the long struggle, the absolute and complete abolition, not of the slave trade, but of slave holding, through the British dominions. It was his special work to "proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of the prison to them that were bound." He died July 27, 1833. Among the benevolent exertions put forth by other men for other purposes, the efforts of John Howard in the improvement of our prison discipline, and of Sir Samuel Romilly in the amelioration of our criminals, deserve especial notice. We shall allude first of all to John Howard. Sometimes a place of right, Sometimes a place of rogues and thieves, If stones could cry out of the walls, how many stories of grief and terror might be told by an old prison. Goals, in the time of John Howard, at all events, were no comfortable places of retirement, well ventilated, scrupulously clean, furnished with every convenience and many luxuries, where criminals might lead a sort of "rose-water" existence, undisturbed by the smell of hemp. They were dreadful dens of infamy, where common decency was set at defiance, and the rough jailers, whip in hand, swaggered among the rogues and harlots, and were as paramount as a whipper-in among a pack of hounds. Dread places of confinement, where good and bad were indiscriminately associated, and compelled to pay their footing to prisoners and prison-keepers, and having the wherewithal to pay to hold a carouse, the night before one or other of their number dangled like a tassal outside the prison walls. With our modern prisons, our system of visitation, the publicity given to everything that goes on within the walls the smallest grievances being quickly inquired into -we can form a very inadequate idea of what these prisons were, but which John Howard penetrated-and brought light and hope with him. A man who, in the language of Mr. Burke," visited all Europe (and the East), not to survey the sumptuousness of palaces, or the stateliness of temples, nor to make accurate measurements of the remains of ancient grandeur, nor to form a scale of the curiosities of modern art, nor to collect medals, nor to collect manuscripts; but to dive into the depths of dungeons; to plunge into the infection of hospitals; to survey the mansions of sorrow and of pain; to take the guage and dimensions of misery, depression, and contempt; to remember the forgotten; to visit the forsaken; and to compare and collate the distresses of all men in all countries. His plan was original, and it was as full of genius as it was of humanity-it was a voyage of discovery, a circum |