taken any one, from first to last, without distinction, and even yourself, if you will place your hand on your conscience."

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Reply. Every planter might have assassinated his slaves, yet, unless the public prosecutor proceeded against them, I should not, as a judge, have carried on criminal proceedings against them: fortunately there are not so many" (cases of this kind)" as the prisoner pretends."

The judge then proceeds to vindicate himself such was the convenient principle established- -on the ground that no magistrate could look into a case, except on a charge from the public prosecutornor the public prosecutor, except on a charge from a private informer. And who was the private informer that dared to come forward?

The prisoner's defence, after endeavouring in vain to remove his guilt, concludes thus: "We have seen that, in the colonies generally, magistrates, respectable persons, have felt grieved at the excessive severity of some slave proprietors, but the colonial system has triumphed, and the courts have remained silent on these reports, whether well or ill-founded; the military commandants threatening, in such cases, masters who were too harsh, to send them to France.

"There exists no proof" (continues the defence)" of any offence committed by the appellant; but even if such proof did exist, it would be highly impolitic (we dare to maintain) to condemn him to the slightest afflictive punishment."

Finally, the judgment in the court of the first instance was reversed, and the prisoner acquitted!

Such was the condition of things some twenty-five or thirty years ago. Now, how did they appear on the proceedings of 1827-on a trial for offences all committed subsequently to 1818, and some as recently as 1826; and for offences, too, some of them, of as atrocious a nature as any of the preceding. The witnesses, (amounting to fifty in number,) have also proved enough in some of the charges to produce a thorough personal conviction of their truth. The case is also in writing, and can be referred to; but as this evi dence was principally derived from the informer, and from slaves; and as criminal proceedings were then clogged with many formalities, introduced apparently to render an unfavourable judgment impossible, (as will be hereafter detailed,) the prisoner also escaped punishment.

It appears, on the proceedings, that when one of these imputed murders was committed, the informer, publicly and officially, for he was then LieutenantCommandant of his Quarter, made it known to the Commandant of the Quarter, to the public prosecutor, and to the criminal judge; and they not only refrained from proceeding, but the judge, especially, endeavoured to conceal the offence, and to dissuade him from following it up, 66 as it might cause much mischief in England."

It further appears that the prisoner, not content with escaping punishment, actually made a charge on the public treasury, for the value of one of the slaves he had killed, on the plea that he had been killed by a duly authorized detachment as a run-away; and that this claim had been allowed. When this last fact became known, on inspecting the public accounts, several planters remonstrated with the treasurer, who replied, "It is better to keep those things quiet." Thus they, one and all, public officers included, not only allowed a murderer to escape punishment, and dissuaded from the prosecution of his recent murder; but actually rewarded and indemnified him for committing the crime.-Pp. 7—13.

In short, the principle, which seems to have been universal, was best expressed by a gentleman, on his sons being arrested on a charge of killing one of his negroes. His remark was, "What a noise about a brute !" (Quel bruit pour un animal!)—and, with this, every thing is explained. Once assume that a gang of negroes are nothing more than a drove of cattle, and all these cases will be so many offences under Mr. Martin's Act.

And here, the difference in the physical conformation of the two races, the white and the negro, tended to confirm and strengthen the illusion; and when these principles were inculcated from early life, or adopted from strong personal inducement, however afflicting the result, their prevalence can scarcely be matter of surprise. That they pervaded the highest ranks, and were acted up to without hesitation or compunction, the following instance will prove :

The Court Royal at Martinique is composed avowedly of the most eminent gentlemen, in point of education, birth, and personal character, in the foreign colonies.

In the year 1815, a child, fifteen years of age, and his mother, were brought

before them; the child (a boy) on a charge of attempting to escape from slavery, and his mother for receiving and giving him nourishment.

The following judgment stands in their registers. The island was then, or not more than three months before, in the British occupation. The boy was adjudged to be hanged for attempting to rob the owner of his own value, by endeavouring to escape from servitude; and his mother, for having received and nourished him, "under pretence of pity,"

was condemned to witness her son's execution, and then to be imprisoned for an indefinite term at Fort Royal. An authenticated transcript of this judgment was produced recently in the French Chamber of Deputies, by M. Salverte, the member for Paris. It was again cited and produced in evidence, in certain public proceedings in St. Lucia, where the fact might have been contradicted from Martinique in three days; and it stands unimpeached to this moment.

Thus, to tear a man in chains from his own country was deemed a lawful act; but should he attempt to regain his freedom he was to suffer death-he was stealing himself.

Such are some of the grounds on which I have arrived at the conviction, that slavery, practical slavery,-as it stood up to the moment that the attention of parliament was drawn to the subject, and as it will continue to stand so long as measures, extensive as the evil itself, are not adopted to remedy it,-is open to every objection that has been made to it.-Pp. 16, 17.

Though, according to the slave code of Jamaica, death cannot be inflicted on a slave for running away, and the murder of a slave is made felony, yet to constitute this crime it must be proved to be with malice aforethought; and the law on slave evidence in the chartered colonies, with the exception of Grenada and Tobago, is so completely futile and useless, that crimes may be committed with impunity by the white man, at least, by the master or overseer, if it can be proved only by the evidence of slaves, which is, in effect, giving the white man an unbounded licence for maltreating the slave. The Rev. J. M. Trew, late rector

of St. Thomas in the East, Jamaica, shews in his Letters on Colonial Slavery, that "there has, indeed, been no unwillingness to legislate in a certain sort; but the prevailing sentiment being that the act is passed to please the people of England, the law becomes dead as soon as framed." He illustrates this by the case of Mr. Stewart, a member of the Assembly of Jamaica, who, when jeered at for proposing a law to punish the planters for working their sugar mills on Sunday, candidly replied, Let the bill pass, and I shall be glad to know who shall prevent my doing as I please on my own estate on that day."

This declaration is not less explicit than satisfactory, because it exposes the utter fallacy of expecting any good from a vacillating policy, which, notwithstanding past experience, would endeavour to conciliate the West India party by entrusting to the colonial legislature the proposed moral improvement of the slave, to fit him for freedom; and that the sentiment of Mr. Stewart is acted upon, we have “ confirmations strong as proofs of holy writ," in the cases we have cited as well as others brought forward by Mr. Jeremie, which we have not yet cited. Of the hopelessness of any amelioration of the slave system, by the colonists, we are well assured, by the late destruction of the missionary chapels, and the blood-thirsty attempts to murder the missionaries themselves after their innocence was proved. enmity to all religion is at the bottom of the recent outrages in Jamaica. The Jamaica Courant and Chronicle are the papers which sound the savage war-whoop of the persecuting and proslavery faction. The former paper denounces the Bible as a blasphemous and unchaste book; a paper which can unblushingly make such an avowal, may well be angry with those devoted servants of Christ, the missionaries, and with infuriate rage exclaim, "Shooting is too honourable a death for men whose conduct has occasioned so much

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bloodshed and the loss of so much property. There are fine hanging woods in St. James and Trelawney, and we do sincerely hope that the bodies of all the methodist preachers who may be convicted of sedition, may diversify the scene, After this, our hostility, even to men so reckless of blood, shall cease. Such, gentle reader, is the inflammatory language that was printed and circulated while the trial of the missionaries was pending; but, through the protecting providence of God, it did not effect its sanguinary design : they were tried and found innocent of the crimes which malice had invented against them. The colonist's enmity to religion, to the first principles of morality, and to the instruction of the slaves, are the prejudices which

our government have been endeavouring to conciliate. We are neither surprised at, nor regret, the utter failure of, their attempts. Charity will induce us to endeavour to conciliate the harmless prejudices of men; but when their prejudices would subvert religion, morality, and good government, it is as criminal to attempt to conciliate them, as it would be to attempt to conciliate the thief and the murderer. Recent events have spoken in a language not to be misunderstood, and our government must take early and decisive measures to prove that they will no longer suffer religion and morality to be trampled under foot, and injustice and oppression to triumph in the British colonies.

(To be continued.)

DUELS.-We have only reports of two duels before us, the first between Lord Elibank and Captain Ainslie, in May last, at Wormwood Scrubs, which was interrupted by the police before either party was wounded. The second duel, which was fatal, we shall give in the words of the report before us.

We regret to find, in the Irish papers, an account of a fatal duel between Lieut. Col. M'Donald, of the 92d regt., and Captain R. Markham, of the 58th foot, (son of the late Archbishop of York,) in which the latter fell. The best account we have met with is in the following letter from Fermoy, dated June 1:

"On Wednesday a division of the 58th regiment of foot marched into the barracks of this town from Limerick, the officers of which were invited to dine at the mess of the 92d regiment, who have been quartered here these six weeks. The report here, (for there is no proof of the fact) is, that, after dinner, a dispute arose between Captain Robert Markham, of the 58th, and an officer of rank in the 92d, which was followed up by a hostile meeting of these gentlemen. About four o'clock the following morning, they met on the race ground, a quarter of a mile from the barracks. At the first fire, Captain Markham was shot dead; the ball slightly

wounded the fore-arm of his pistol hand, entered his breast, passed through his body, and lodged in the inside of his left arm, wounding in its way the principal artery of his heart. He died instantly."

"Train up a child," says Solomon, "in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." And St. Paul speaks in commendation of the mother of Timothy, who, it appears, had instilled into his youthful mind that knowledge which makes "wise unto salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus." And can we suppose that a Christian bishop could be either ignorant of this important duty, or less zealous to fulfil it than a Jewish parent? We confess that we have our misgivings on the lamentable case before us: but let us trace the evil to its source-the admission of the lawfulness of war; an admission that opens the flood gates which let in, uncontrolled, false principles of morals, principles which even the mitred prelate will, in vain, endeavour to check by feeble declamations in favour of virtue and religion.

SOCIETY FOR DIFFUSING INFORMATION ON THE SUBJECT OF CAPITAL PUNISHMENTS. -The annual meeting of this society was held on Saturday, June 2, at Exeter Hall, Lord Nugent in the chair,

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Lord Nugent opened the proceedings with an appropriate speech. William Allen, chairman of the committee, then read the report, giving an account of the object and proceedings of the society. The committee had endeavoured to spread information by the publication of tracts, and the subject had arrested the attention of the legislature. The recent bill of Lord Auckland had abolished the punish ment of death in all cases of coining; and the success that had attended Mr. Ewart's bill in the House of Commons, afforded gratifying indications of a growing desire to purge the English statute book from the stain of blood. Basil Montague, Esq. moved the first resolution, and entered into a long and interesting account of the origin of his labours in the great cause which now engaged so many minds, the abolition of the punishment of death. We regret that our limits will not allow us to follow him in his luminous account of the progress of the cause, nor do more than notice some of the more important points that were touched upon. Mr. Wise, M. P., said, "it has been argued by some, that the Scriptures warranted the taking away of human life; but the very first page of the Scriptures overthrows the position, for it was there found that God pared the life of the first murderer, Cain. Criminal laws should be nothing but measures for correcting the offender, while they preserved the safety of the state."

Mr. O'Conuell adduced some cogent practical arguments against capital punishments, for which we must find space. "He had long been deeply impressed with the conviction that capital punishment ought to be entirely abolished. He could not forget that 'Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, and I will repay it.' Perhaps it was by the impulse of feeling, and what he conceived to be humanity, that in the early part of his life he was brought to this conviction; but long, and he might venture to say, great experience in the criminal law-for no advocate, at least in his own country, had the miserable boast which he could make of the frequency of his practice in that branch—that experience had confirmed him in his opinion, that there should not be in man the power of extinguishing human life, because the result was irreparable; because the injury could not be compensated which might be done, if the beings were not infallible who inflicted the punishment; (and where should we find such?) and because, while we thought we were vindicating the law

of society, we might be committing the greatest outrage that could be perpetrated upon our fellow-creatures. The honourable and learned gentleman who spoke last, shuddered at the death even of a criminal; but what would have been his feelings if he had witnessed, as he (Mr. O'Connell) had, the execution of the innocent? One of the first events which struck him when he was rising into life, was seeing a gentleman who had forsaken society, and thrown himself into a mountain lodge, abandoning the intercourse of men, and wandering about like a troubled spirit, a willing outlaw, and an outcast from the social state. He inquired the cause, and learned that it originated in these circumstances:-Two men got into his bed-room at night, and robbed him, but did not treat him with any brutality. He prosecuted two brothers for the crime; and they, being unprepared with any defence, from a consciousness of their innocence, were convicted and executed. Not a fortnight after they had been laid in the grave in the presence of their father, and amidst the tears of their brokenhearted mother, the gentleman discovered his total mistake! He would mention another instance, of which he had a personal knowledge. He defended three brothers who were indicted for murder; and the judge having a leaning, as was not unusual in such cases, to the side of the Crown prosecution, almost compelled the jury to convict. He (Mr. O'Connell) sat at his window as the men passed by, after receiving sentence. A military guard was placed over them, and it was positively forbidden that any one should have any intercourse with them. He saw their mother, strong in her affections, break through the guard, which was sufficient to resist any male force-he saw her clasp her eldest son, who was but twenty-two years of age-he saw her cling to her second, who was but twenty-and he saw her faint as she clasped the neck of her youngest boy,who was but eighteen; and he asked what compensation could be given for such agony, and for such a sacrifice of human life as that? Another case, but not of so melancholy a nature, had occurred to himself. He had been retained to defend a man charged with a Whiteboy offence-breaking into a house; and, while the owner was flogged, the prisoner was described as standing at the bedside with a candle in one hand, and a pistol in the other, preventing the wife from going out to identify the parties.

She said the man was a tall, handsome man, but a stranger to her. His client was arrested for some other offence, and there were two or three other men in the gaol charged with this offence. The woman was brought forward, to see if the man whom she had seen was amongst them; and she pointed out this man, who was not charged with the offence at all. She appeared on the table to prosecute him, and an accident compelled him (Mr. O'Connell) to leave the town, and return his brief and his fee. The woman was convinced of the man's identity, and he was convicted. There were, however, some doubts of his guilt; and the judge respited him from week to week.

In

some little time he (Mr. O'Connell) received a letter from the man, attributing his conviction to his absence. It was written in the man's own terms, and in a style which, he knew not why, impressedhim with a conviction of his innocence. He enclosed the letter to the judge, who was his intimate friend, and requested him, for God's sake, if there was any doubt of the man's guilt, not to let him be executed. Judge Burton called upon him, and said that the case was a curious one. He had charged the jury as strongly as he could upon the uncertainty of the identification, and had since allowed the man two respites. Mr. O'Connell then said to him, For Heaven's sake give him another; and before the end of the week it was demonstrated that the man was innocent, and, instead of being executed, he was at home with his family. He mentioned these facts to show with what extreme caution any one should do that which was irrevocable. When we recollected that, in criminal cases, a prisoner was almost shut out from making any defence; and that, in cases of circumstantial evidence, men were convicted not upon facts, but upon reasonings and deductions; when we recollected that the criminal law permitted the counsel for the Crown to aggravate the impression against the prisoner, and prohibited his counsel from opening his mouth in his defence, it might be said, without much exaggeration, that such a code was written in letters of blood. Was this England, the first country in the world for the love of liberty, and the encouragement of all the arts which adorn civilization and morality? was this the country where, if a man had five pounds at stake, he might employ ten or twenty counsel to speak for him as long as they liked; but, when his

life was in jeopardy, the law said, The counsel against you shall speak in aggravation of the charge; but the lips of your counsel shall be sealed?' Up to the present moment, that horrible state of the law continued. He was firmly persuaded that if he had been entitled to speak on behalf of those three brothers-feeble as might be his advocacy, perhaps his heart would have aided his judgment, and given him an inspiration beyond the natural dulness of his disposition-he felt that he would have made it impossible for any jury to convict. If the punishment of these three brothers had not been incapable of being recalled, they might have been restored to their family; and the mother who wept over their grave, might have been borne in decency to her tomb by those over whose premature death she mourned."

We are convinced that the punishment of death should be erased from the criminal code of mankind. In addition to the cases produced by Mr. O'Connell, in which innocent persons have fallen victims to erroneous convictions, we could give melancholy instances in which the innocent have suffered instead of the guilty. There is, perhaps, no crime more difficult of direct proof, and, consequently, in which there is so much danger of erroneous convictions, as in that most atrocious of crimes, murder; a most powerful reason that an irrevocable punishment should not attach to it.

INFANT SLAVERY.-A FACTORY CHILD'S TALE. I work at Bradley Mills. A few days since, I had three 'wratched cardings,' about two inches long. The slubber, Joseph Riley, saw them, showed them to me, and asked me if this was good work. I said, 'No.' He then, in the billy gait, took a thick round leathern thong, and wailed me over the head and face, for, I think, a quarter of an hour; and, for all my cheek and lips were bleeding, he wailed me on, then sent me to my work again, and I worked till a quarter past seven. I went to the mill at half-past five in the morning; he wailed me a bit past one in the afternoon. I worked in my blood; as I worked, the blood dropped all in the piecening gait. My right cheek was torn open, swelled very much, and was black. My lips were very much torn; and each of them was as thick as three lips. He lashed me very hard over my back, too, in all directions; but the skin was not torn because I had my clothes on.