of the place. It is thought, however, that Baltimore, like a promising child, has somewhat outgrown her strength. The ratio of her increase diminishes greatly, and it may perhaps be doubted, whether, in the fallen state of commerce, she will extend her present limits for many years.

I believe it is not generally known in this country, how completely some of the home fabrics have superseded the foreign in the American market. It is here supposed by many, that the higher price of labour must prevent competition with the manufactures of Europe; but this draw-back is balanced by other advantages; provisions are cheap, the raw material of first rate quality is found in the country; and there are no taxes. The blankets and broad-cloths woven of the Merino wool, are not only in the average of superior quality, but can often undersell in the market those of Europe. The same is the case with the coarse cotton goods. I have seen cotton cloth, woven in New York, at a cent per yard; and in strength of fabric, that of Europe will bear no comparison with it. The object here is to put as little of the raw material into the yard, as possible; there is not the same temptation to this in America. It may be observed also, that the employment of machinery now enabling women to perform work which formerly demanded the agency of men, there is much less difference in the price of labour, employed in some of the manufactories in Britain and America, than is here supposed. American women universally prefer employment in a cotton mill to domestic service, which they always feel to be a degradation. In accounting for any fact which, in America, strikes the foreigner as singular, he must always seek part of its explanation in the national character, which influenced by the political institutions, is there probably more peculiarly marked, than in any other country.

WASHINGTON.

The road from Baltimore hither, about forty miles, leads through an uninteresting, and for the most part, barren district. On losing sight of the city, the traveller might think that he had lost sight of all the beauty and all the wealth of the state; there are, however, in Maryland, districts of great fertility, especially in the neighbourhood of the eastern waters.

Those who, in visiting Washington, expect to find a city, will be somewhat MONTHLY MAG. No. 363.

surprised when they first enter its precincts, and look round in vain for the appearance of a house.

The plan marked out for this metropolis of the empire, is gigantic, and the public buildings, whether in progress or design, bear all the stamp of grandeur. How many centuries shall pass away ere the clusters of little villages, now scattered over this plain, shall assume the form and magnificence of au imperial city?

I envy not the man who can enter without emotion the noble, though still unfinished structure of the American capitol. Never shall I forget the feelings with which I first looked down from the gallery of the hall upon the assembled representatives of a free and sovereign nation. We of course considered with much interest some of the more distinguished members, with whom we were previously only acquainted by report, or the public prints, and waited with some curiosity until they should take their turn in the debate.

A bill was introduced by Mr. Baldwin, of Pennsylvania, a man of vigourous intellect, with a rough, but energetic delivery. The number of able speakers exceeded my expectation, though I had been prepared to find it considerable: they struck me as generally remarkable for close, and lucid reasoning, and a plain, but gentlemanly and impressive diction. When Mr. Clay rose, I believe that some apprehension was mingled with our curiosity; for who has not learned from experience, that when expectation is much raised, it it usually disappointed? The first words uttered by the Speaker of the House satisfied us that no defect of manner was to break the charm of his eloquence. This distinguished statesman has, for many successive years been called to preside in the House by an almost unanimous vote; and, it is said, that no individual ever exercised in it a more powerful influence. seems, indeed, to unite all the qualities essential to an orator; animation, energy, high moral feeling, ardent patriotism, a sublimed love of liberty, a rapid flow of ideas and of language, a happy vein of irony, an action at once vehement and dignified, and a voice full, sonorous, distinct, and flexible; exquisitely adapted to all the varieties of passion or argument ;-without exception the most masterly voice that I ever remember to have heard. It filled the 4 L

He

large

large and magnificent hall without any apparent effort on the part of the orator. In conversation, he is no less eloquent than in debate; and no sooner does he kindle with his subject, than his voice and action betray the orator of the hall; yet so unpremeditated is his language, that even in a drawing-room, the orator never appears misplaced.

Leaving the city to make a little excursion in Virginia, we missed the speeches of several distinguished members. We returned, however, to attend the close of the debate, which afforded us the opportunity of hearing Mr. Lowndes of Carolina. The close and deductive reasoning of this gentleman forms a striking contrast to the fervid oratory of Mr. Clay. They were opposed in the debate, and each possessed a manner most appropriate to his argument. Mr. Lowndes is singularly correct in his selection of language and turn of the phrase; yet the syllables flow from his lips in an uninterrupted stream; the best word always falling into the right place, not merely without effort but seemingly without the cansciousness of the speaker.

The senate being occupied in ordinary business, we had no opportunity of judging of its oratory; but being politely admitted on the floor, we admired the elegance of the chamber, and made our selves acquainted with the persons of the senators, and the proceedings of the house. The debates of the chamber, as I am informed by some of its members, are conducted with less popular vehemence thon those of the hall. I know not if it be the more advanced age of the senators, or the smaller size of the assembly, which imparts to the deliberations their character of senatorial gravity. The age fixed by law for a member of the senate is thirty-five years. and though one or two gentlemen in the chamber seem to have numbered little more than the lustres demanded, the majority of the assembly have the air of veteran statesmen, some of whom have occupied a seat in the house from its first organization.

This skeleton city affords few of the amusements of a metropolis. It seems, however, to possess the advantage of very choice society; the resident families are of course few, but the unceasing influx and reflux of strangers from all parts of the country, affords an ample supply of new faces to the evening drawing-rooms. To this continual in

termixture with strangers and foreigners, is, perhaps, to be ascribed the peculiar courtesy and easy politeness which characterize the manners of the city.

THE PRESIDENT.

Colonel Monroe enjoys the felicity of having witnessed at his election the union of all parties, and of conciliating during his administration, the esteem and confidence of the whole American nation. His illustrious predecessors having been placed in active political opposition to a strong, and once, a ruling party, of which they effected the overthrow and destruction, were exposed throughout their public career to the enmity of a discomfited minority; an enmity which, though their candour knew how to forgive, their virtues and high-minded forbearance were unable wholly to appease. The existing president came into office at a moment of all others the most fortunate; when the republic had just shaken hands with her foreign and internal enemies; and it had been difficult to find a statesman more fitted, by the benevolence of his character and mild urbanity of his manners, to cement the civil concord, than he who was elected.

VIRGINIAN SLAVERY.

The sight of slavery is revolting every where, but to inhale the impure breath of its pestilence in the free winds of America is odious beyond all that the imagination can conceive. The Virginians are said to pride themselves upon the peculiar tenderness with which they visit the sceptre of authority upon their African vassals. As all those acquainted with the character of the Virginia planters, whether Americans or foreigners, appear to concur in bearing testimony to their humanity, it is probable that they are entitled to the praise which they claim. But in their position, justice should be held superior to humanity; to break the chains would be more generous than to gild them; and whether we consider the interests of the master or the slave, decidedly more useful.

"Look into the cabins of our free negroes," said an eminent individual, a native of Virginia, in conversing with me lately upon this subject; "you will find there little to encourage the idea, that to impart the rights of free men to our black population is to ameliorate their condition, or to elevate their character." It is undoubtedly true, that the free negroes of Maryland and Vir

ginia

ginia form the most wretched, and consequently the most vicious portion of the black population.

He

Mr. Coles, a native of Virginia, and for some years secretary to Mr. Jefferson, lately removed a black colony into the state of Illinois. On the death of his father, this gentleman found himself in possession of seventeen slaves, valued at from eight to nine thousand dollars. His property was small, but he hesitated not a moment to relinquish his claims upon his negro vassals. purchased a tract of land near the settlement of Edwardsville, in Illinois, where he supplies his former bondsmen with employment, encouraging them to lay up their earnings until they shall have realized sufficient to enter upon their own farms. spent some time at Edwardsville last summer, and often visited Mr. Coles' settlement. The liberated blacks spoke of their former master with tears of gratitude and affection, and two of them, who were hired as servants by the family with whom * resided, never omitted to pay a daily visit to Mr. Coles, anxiously enquiring if there was nothing they could do for him? envy more the feelings of the man who hears that question than those of Cæsar in the capitol.

TWO VOYAGES

то

NEW SOUTH WALES,

AND

Van Diemen's Land,

WITH

I

A Description of the present Condition of that interesting Colony; including Facts and Observations relative to the State and Management of

CONVICTS OF BOTH SEXES.

ALSO

Reflections on Seduction,

AND ITS GENERAL CONSEQUENCES.

By THOMAS REID,

Member of the Royal College of Surgeons in London, And Surgeon in the Royal Navy.

[The author of this volume is evidently a wellintentioned zealot. But he reasons badly; he seems to think, that men who have fallen under the restraint of the law, do not reason at all—and he forgets that every case of conviction involves as great a difference of personal turpitude as the nature of the various crimes themselves. All his reasonings, therefore, apply only to old offenders, and to persons often convicted; but in the cases of the 170 convicts on board the Neptune, and of the 121 on board the Morley, we entertain little doubt that two-thirds FIRST Convictions! What effect,

were

therefore, but what arises from interested feelings or personal fear, can the sermons and preachings of persons have on reasoning beings, when the teachers themselves are violating the primary doctrines of our blessed Saviour, who exclaimed to a convict"Go and sin no more ;" and who teaches true christians to forgive the sins of their brethren "seventy times seven times!" In this respect, the laws of England require immediate and thorough revision, and their administration constant amelioration. Till this is done, and till severe punishments are inflicted only on the incorrigible, no feeling but SYMPATHY for the sufferings of objects of legal vengeance, will be found in the minds of real christians and benevolent persons. Yet such is the present horrid confusion of right and justice, that the punishment of minor offences is made equal to that for the greater ones; and this author tells us, without an apostrophe, of fifty-two in one ship, and forty-eight in another, being transported to the antipodes for periods within seven years, which, as they can only return by paying 150 or 200 pounds for their passage, is virtually a transportation for life! Let us practice towards others those duties which we expect from them. If Mr. Reid, Lord Sidmouth, or Mr. Capper had committed some one of those offences, or in some incautious moment, got into a legal scrape for the first time, which, by construction of law, imposed upon them a sentence of transportation for seven years, what would they think, if, after one, two, three, or four years, they were shipped off to the antipodes, with no probability of ever being able to return; and what would they think of the canting about principles, which in their own persons were so barbarously mocked? We know something of prisons and convicts, as well as those who quack themselves, like the Pharisees of old, into so much notice on the subject; and we give it as our solemn opinion, that, although every prisoner in England may really, in strict law, be guilty of the offence with which he is charged, yet if one-half of them were told to "go and sin no more," they would never again become the objects of legal cognizance. Yet of such objects, perhaps one half of the cargoes to New South Wales consist; and, under the general term convict, it is by this gentle author considered as a concession, to allow that some of them have the qualities and feelings of our common nature! We blame

no one-but we call on the legislature to revise the laws, and till then we think it grossly insulting to "floggee and preachee too!" We give Mrs. Fry and her excellent committee full credit, but we went over the same ground years before her, and set her the example which she has nobly followed. She must know that, in some respects, she is but varnishing and keeping in countenance a system which calls for radical change. She knows that, in our worst prison,

prison, all are not vicious; that owing to the fallibility of human nature, the best dispositions are seduced, and that discrimination and constant remission of punishment are necessary. She must, ere this, know that more sincere repentance does not exist in any congregation of sinners, than within the walls of a prison, and that pity and forgiveness are more called for than canting, reproof, or severity. In another place we have developed our views of a scale of punishments, but however well graduated, no punishments ought to be indiscriminately applied. Expatriation should be the extreme resort of society-punishment of death, except for murder, is as useless as it is barbarous-and of course expatriation ought, as the last resort, to be imposed only on incorrigibles. On this principle, therefore, we consider the chief part of the observations of Mr. Reid as misapplied, indiscriminate, and uncharitable; and though we are glad to observe that the victims are well-treated during the middlepassage, and that he so kindly did his duty, yet that palliative never reconciled us to the system of African slavery, more than it does to the system of indiscriminate deportation to New South Wales.]

ORIGIN OF TRANSPORTATION.

PARLIAMENT authorized this species of punishment in 1718, when the general plan of sending convicts to the American plantations was first adopted. This system continued for 56 years, during which period, and until the commencement of the American war, in 1775, great numbers of felons were sent chiefly to the province of Maryland. The rigid discipline which the colonial laws authorized the masters to exercise over servants, joined to the prospects which agricultural pursuits, after some experience was acquired, afforded to those outcasts, tended to reform the chief part; and after the expiration of their servitude, they mingled in the society of the country, under circumstances highly beneficial to themselves, and even to the colony. Possessed in general (as every adroit thief must be) of good natural abilities, they availed themselves of the habits of industry they acquired in the years of their servitude; became farmers and planters on their own account; and many of them succeeding in those pursuits, not only acquired that degree of respectability which is attached to property and industry, but also in their turn became masters, and purchased the servitude of future transports sent out for sale.

When the American revolution prevented the further transmission of con

victs to that country, the system of the Hulks and Houses of Correction was sul stituted. However, from the increasing number of delinquents, arising not only from the increase of vice, but that of population, that mode soon became inadequate to the augmented demands for disposing of the prisoners, as of course to the enforcement of that labour to which for their offences they had been sentenced. Plans were then acted upon for building extensive prisons, penitentiaries, and asylums for their reception; but the enormous expense and comparative inefficacy of those establishments, which it appears were mostly conducted in the old miserable mode of gaol discipline, the evils of which became now universally acknowledged, soon raised loud complaints against the system.

The attention of government, still directed to this necessary and important relief of the community from those who would subvert its comforts and security, caused the coast of Africa to be explored for a fit situation for a colony; but that research proved fruitless, on account of the unhealthiness of the climate, or hostility of the natives of those situations which remained unoccupied by other European nations, rendering it imprudent to risk an establishment in that country. The discovery of the vast territory of New South Wales by Captain Cook, in 1770 and 1777, opened a new field for disposing of those refractory characters. The following is recorded by Collins as the commencement of the present colony there:

"The Commissioners of His Majesty's Navy, toward the end of the year 1786, advertised for a certain number of vessels to be taken up for the purpose of conveying between seven and eight hundred male and female felons to Botany Bay, in New South Wales, on the eastern coast of New Holland, whither it had been determined by Government to transport them, after having sought in vain upon the African coast for a situation possessing the requisites for the establishment of a colony.”

MODE AND RESULT OF TRANS

lony; and appropriating to their own benefit their services, they found their work in the plantations during the term of their sentence an indemnification for the expenses incurred by their voyage, clothing, and subsequent maintenance.

It seems, however, that Government did not finally approve of contracts made in this manner by private individuals, as the authority of such persons, or its management, was found too weak to enforce proper obedience, and secure from the evils of insubordination. Moreover, the management of the convicts remaining exclusively in the hands of the contractors, the convicts might, at the expiration of their time, feeling themselves no longer restrained by their former task-masters, have emancipated themselves with regard to their employers, and, if opposed violently, have shaken off all submission to their jurisdiction. Hence anarchy might ensue, and the bad disposition of the convicts would then burst forth with increased violence, and the peaceable and industrious settlers around be annoyed and plundered. Such instances have occurred in Van Diemen's Land, where convicts, denominated Bushrangers, who had broken away from the restraint placed over them, have for several years led a vagabond, marauding life, harassing and plundering the peaceful colonists.

In order to obviate this inconvenience, and to avoid the expenses which, under such circumstances, must be thrown away, Government itself has taken the contracts for transportation, and from the superior national resources, provides a more comfortable supply of necessaries and accommodations than any which could have been obtained under the former arrangement.

such;

After the sentence of the law has been fulfilled in the colony, those who remain are still amenable of course to the authority of the local government. During their servitude care is taken to promote their habits of industry, if they have acquired or shown any and, particularly if they manifest an improvement in moral character, and conduct themselves with propriety, every facility is afforded them to become settlers, and useful members of the colony; or, if they be desirous of returning to Europe, a passage home is readily permitted, but at their own expense, and a certificate granted des

criptive of character during the term of transportation.*

Lately this benignant purpose has been carried further; for, if the father of a family have had the misfortune to fall under the frowns of justice, and should his conduct subsequently in New South Wales merit the approbation of the Governor, he will obtain his Excellency's recommendation, and is sure of being favoured with an order from the Government at home for his wife and children to go out to him in that country, where, in a short time, they have been known to form comfortable and prosperous establishments. A very liberal provision is made for the free women and children during the voyage, for which no charge whatever is made against them, or their father, on the part of the Government.

TREATMENT OF CONVICTS.

The liberality with which convicts destined for transportation are clothed and victualled for the voyage, now usually of four months duration, is highly deserving of praise, many of the persons so circumstanced, or rather the majority of them, living more comfortably, by many degrees, during that period, than they had been used to do for many years before. Although, according to the present regulations, they unfortunately have nothing in the way of employment to occupy their time on the way out; still, as the greatest care is taken of their health, at the same time that they are abundantly fed, they generally look well, and are in perfect health, by the period of their arrival, and fully capable of proceeding to any work without delay.t

Every convict received on board the ship which is to convey the number determined by Government for transportation, is provided with one suit of clothes and a change of linen, besides a flock bed, pillow, and blanket; and

*"At their own expeuse!" How could the author apply the term benignant to so cruel a system-but he glosses every thing and discriminates nothing. Is it not monstrous to see such a colouring given to an unfeeling system, which sends men and women to the Antipodes for fractional periods of seven years, and then be told of the benignity of allowing them to return on the impossible conditions of paying ther expenses?

+ This paragraph seems to be copied from some one of the early apologists of the Slave Trade.-ED.

the