in England on the "climat D'Angleterre." They thought it not surprising that men, who were always hanging themselves, should be always abusing other people.

But for some years past, the United States appear to have become the favored nation. We have utterly eclipsed the French in sharing the civilities of the English press and people. Their favorite topic now is, the unprincipled, irreligious, profligate, spitting, tobacco chewing, julip drinking, drawling, lounging, unmannerly American. They roll the subject, like a sweet morsel, under their tongues. They have an affection for it. They place it in all kinds of lights. It assumes the shape of travels in this country. It makes a favorite article in the reviews. It enlivens a leader in the Times or Chronicle. It gives poignancy to a speech in Parliament. It is the staple of the Exeter love meetings, and helps out the scurrility of the corn Exchange. They are never weary of it. Ah, if they could only, really, and in truth, bring themselves to believe in their sayings-if they could but persuade themselves to have faith in their own invectives to credit their own assertion, that America has neither men, nor money, nor intelligence, nor power; what comfort it would be to our English kin, how calmly and contentedly they would dream over a future of undisputed dominion on every shore. But unfortunately for their hapness, they do not believe one word of the speculations of traveller, reviewer, orator or editor. They have no genuine faith in the speedy downfall of the Great Republic, whose existence "with fear of change perplexes monarchs." They know that their abuse and misrepresentations are all fudge, and they are the more exasperated for knowing it. They feel, that all their invective notwithstanding, America will go on in her gigantic race, growing every day in popu lation, wealth and power. They predict the speedy dissolution of our government, and have done so for fifty years, but are the most unfortunate of all prophets. They neither believe themselves, nor are believed in by others. It is very much to be lamented. We pity the unhappy patient, but know no remedy, unless it be a course of anti-bilious medicines, and abstinence from pen and ink. But if his convalescence depends on the stopping, or retarding America in her advance to a power, which will defy all attacks or interference, the case is hopeless.

One of the most prominent points in the abuse of the

Americans at present is their frauds-the failure to pay their debts. There is nothing of which the Englishman is so intolerant as a non-punctual debtor. In his own country he hunts the poor devil with bailiffs, as he does a hare with hounds, and to a foreign delinquent his anger is ferocious. This is all very well, we have not a word to say for the knaves who repudiate. Let them be roasted by the Quarterly, or by any of the scurrilous scribblers, who, like Dickens and Marryatt, may be paying off old scores by libels on the United States. But it would be as well for the good people of England to remark, that Pennsylvania is not America-that most of the States never failed to pay their debts— that many of them have none to pay-that the American Government has paid interest and principal-that England's bankruptcy, hopeless and irretrievable, awaits a revulsion only in her Eastern Empire-that "trades proud empire hastes too swift away," is a truth not taught by her own poet only, but by the experience of all ages-that there is no essential difference between the integrity of a people who refuse, or delay to pay their debts, and one which deliberately contracts a debt which renders ultimate insolvency inevitable, that whatever frauds may at present flourish on either side of the Atlantic, are only humble imitations of one to which England has had the honor to give birth-the South-sea bubble, "that tremendous hoax," as Lamb calls it, "whose extent the petty speculators of our day look back upon with the same expression of incredulous admiration, and hopeless ambition of rivalry, as would become the puny face of modern conspiracy, contemplating the Titan size of Vaux's superhuman plot ;"*-or of another-the suspension of specie payments in 1797-when the pound note sunk to the value of fourteen shillings, and Parliament enacted that it should be regarded as worth twenty, "a gross and revolting absurdity, says Lord Brougham, unparalleled in the history of deliberative bodies." The consequence of this was, that "the havoc which the depreciation made in the dealings of men was incalculable. Those who had lent their money when the currency was at par, were compelled to receive the depreciated money in payments, and thus loose thirty or forty per cent. of their capital. Those who had let land or houses at a lease, must take so much less rent than they had

* Elia.

stipulated to receive. Above all, those who had lent their money to the Government, were obliged to take two-thirds only of the interest for which they had bargained, or were liable to be paid off with two-thirds of the principal."* And this continued for twenty years to be the condition of England so immaculate for honesty.

Indeed at the present moment, the frauds perpetrated under the influence of the existing rail-road mania, are superior to any that we can pretend to produce, and prove conclusively that we are very humble imitators of English excellence.

In the face of all this, it is quite ludicrous to see the grave charges brought against America for her exceeding love for the "almighty dollar," implying, as they do, that the accu sers are quite superior to the weakness of attaching any undue value to an object so gross. Why, truly, there never existed a nation where the love of money, or the fury to obtain it, has been more ungovernable than in Englandand with reason too, for what is an Englishman, in England, without money? He looses caste. He flies his country. He lives an exile in Belgium, Italy, France, Germany, any where but at home, where his diminished purse would expose him to unendurable scorn from his former equals. What will not gold buy or do in England? For what but the love of it, do the landholders insist on their monopoly of coining money out of the stomachs of the people? In what other region of the globe will the "almighty dollar secure larger indulgence," to "Ward, to Waters, Chartres, or the Devil?" As to us, it is the standing complaint of English travellers in this country, that even the poor privilege of kicking the waiter, and bullying the landlord, is denied in America, to the possessor of that mighty talisman, which, in England, numbers these enjoyments among the least of its gifts. It is one of the points of inferiority in America, that in this country, the traveller is obliged to be civil to the tavern keeper, and that a full purse confers no right to be insolent or rude even to the coachman of a stage coach.

But we must apologize for this digression on the eccentricities of our English neighbors-his eagerness one day for making the negro a slave, the next for making him free,

Lord Brougham.

his pocketing the spoils, and impeaching the spoilers,-his carrying civilization and religion into foreign lands, by presenting the bible with one hand, and opium with the other. It has proceeded from no want of respect or veneration for our kinsman-quite the reverse. We have for him all the indulgence of a true affection, and admit that he labors under a sort of idiosyncracy-that the habit of praising himself and abusing others, is what he cannot help--that it is one of his luxuries besides, and it would be as reasonable to expect him to abandon his roast beef, and plum pudding, and pot of London porter-that concentration of all the purities of the Thames-as to forego his favorite enjoyment of libelling his neighbors. We will leave him then to carry on the trade in negroes, on the Eastern shore of Africa, after the old fashion, and on the Western after the new-to make slaves on the one side, and apprentices on the other-while we follow Chancellor Harper and Governor Hammond, in their inquiry into the merits of that slavery, which our English ancestors have established among us.

The subject is one of great magnitude and importance. It presents many questions-all of them interesting-as it is considered in reference to religion, to political economy, to the interests of the master, to those of the slave. Is slavery a sin-does it conflict with the will of God as revealed in the Old and New Testament? Is it the best system for society for securing the greatest good to the greatest number? Is it in our own country the best system for the master-can he cultivate his lands to better advantage with other labor? Does it most conduce to the welfare of the slave in America-would not liberty be to him a nominal blessing, but a real and insupportable curse?

Greatly the most important view of the subject is the religious one. For assuredly if slavery be adjudged a sin, if it be condemned by the revealed will of God, then in christendom it cannot continue to exist. It is the duty of every man, making the laws of God the rule of his conduct, to use all practicable efforts to abolish whatever violates them. But it is on this ground, above all others, that the defender of slavery, as we find it among us, is unassailable. It may be asserted with confidence, that there is no fact in history, and no maxim in ethics better established by evidence or argument than the proposition, that slavery was recognized under the Jewish theocracy, and by the christian apostles, as a legiti

mate form of social life, and that being so recognised, it cannot be deemed a sin by those who take the holy writings, old and new, as the only revealed will of God, and standard of religious and moral duty.

Slaves existed, under the divine government, among the Jewish people. The Scriptures distinctly set forth the rules by which they shall be made, by which they shall be governed, by which they shall be punished. They are described as bought for a price; as the property of their masters; as subject to his will; as beaten with stripes; as marked; as sold; as manumitted; as placed in every possible position, to which the condition of slavery is liable. Slavery then is recognized, permitted, regulated, enjoined, 'by the Old Testament. But that which is recognized, permitted, regulated, enjoined, by the divine law, cannot be sinful. To assert that it may be, would be maintaining a proposition quite as extravagant, as that two and two make five. Slavery then being so recognized, permitted, regulated and enjoined, can by no possibility be a sin.

Again, when our Saviour taught, slaves were every where about him; he frequently makes allusion to their condition; he denounces every form of sin around him; he reproves Sadducee and Pharisee without scruple, but he uses no expression that can be tortured into a condemnation of slavery.

The apostles were in the midst of slavery in its worst forms and abuses in Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy. It could not, therefore, elude their observation. They taught the new converts to christianity, not only the great truths of religion, and the rules of morals, but many minor observances incidental to their situation, many regulations of behaviour, and even of dress becoming their new condition and profession, and rebuked any infringement of them with severity. If slavery were a sin, it could not, therefore, escape either their notice, or their condemnation. Far less would this be possible, if it were the heinous and devilish crime which Mr. Clarkson represents it to be. But there is not in the New Testament, a single expression which even insinuates a condemnation of slavery. Either then slavery is not a sin, or the Apostles not only winked at, but wilfully closed their eyes on iniquity of the vilest nature.

Now this is so clear, plain, and conclusive, that to a mind capable of a candid and honest judgment, it is irresistible. Accordingly every christian teacher since the apostolic age,