will at least serve to prove to Mr. Woodhouse, that we appre ciate with due respect the labour and ingenuity which he has displayed in the compilation of his treatise; and will also, we hope, preclude the necessity of additional recommendation to the lovers of analytics. If there be any part of the volume which we could wish to expunge, it is the notice of the quarrel between the two Bernoullis; and we wish it merely for the credit of science. When liberal minds are engaged in mathematical disquisitions, and abstract truth is the only object of research, it might be supposed that acrimonious feelings would never intrude; or if the detection of occasional error did sometimes alarm the vigilance of self-esteem, that the pain would be slight and the recollection of it would soon pass away. Of the irritation which could induce John Bernoulli to treat with marked disrespect the memory of a brother, who had been dead for sixteen years, and against whom he had no reasonable charge, we trust there are few examples. The fact however must be recorded as an additional proof, where proofs in abundance exist already, that no attainments in science can supersede the necessity of religious principle; that philosophical speculation is unable to purify the mind, and that we must look to christianity alone for the conquest of the passions and the reformation of the heart. If it could be made out, but it certainly never can be proved, that the love of abstract verities is fatal to those charities and affections which bind man to man, and form the harmony of social life: if every mathematician in short were of the temper of John Bernoulli, we should consider attainments in science as purchased indeed at an extravagant rate; and the mildest observation which we could bring ourselves to pass upon such learning would be in the words of the poet, "When I weigh this seeming wisdom well, COWPER. ART. III. The West Indians defended against the Accusations of their Calumniators; or, Facts versus Prejudices. By a Gentleman. Meyler, Bath. Mawman; Robinson; Hardy; Lon don. 1811. 2. The present ruinous State of the West India Islands submitted to the People of the British Empire, with a few Remarks upon the Imposition and Oppressions, under which the Merchants and Planters of those Islands have long suffered. By a Native of Jamaica. London: Sherwood and Co. 1811. 3. An Essay on the good Effects which may be derived in the British West Indies, in Consequence of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade; including an Inquiry into the present insular Policy of those Colonies. By Stephen Gaisford, Esq. London: Baldwin; Hatchard. 1811. 4. Notices respecting Jamaica in 1808, 1809, and 1810. By Gilbert Mathison, Esq. Stockdale. 1811. 5. Practical Rules for the Management and medical Treatment of Negro Slaves in the Sugar Colonies. By a professional Planter. London: Vernor and Co.; Hatchard. 1811. 6. A Letter to the Governors, Legislators, and Proprietors of Plantations in the British West India Islands. By the Right Reverend Beilby Porteus, D.D. Bishop of London. Cadell; Rivington. 1808. EVEN in these extraordinary times it would probably excite some surprise, were the farmers of Great Britain to present a petition to the legislature, setting forth, that they laboured under great" imposition" and "oppression," inasmuch as it was found. impossible for them to make large profits by their farms, consistently with their immunity from all personal superintendence; that their fields would not plough themselves, or their corn and cattle spontaneously proceed to the market or to the shambles, while their owners were enjoying the busy pleasures of the metropolis, or the vacant flutter of a watering place. Nor, supposing them to have succeeded by unfeeling, oppressive, or illegitimate contrivances, in rendering these opposite objects compatible, would their complaint appear more worthy of attention, should they fancy themselves injured by a legislative prohibition of these same contrivances. As well might the smuggler complain of the reduction of the duties on tea and spirits, or the band of midnight robbers and assassins, of those precautions of police which we trust will shortly deprive that numerous portion of the community of the vested interest which they have assumed to themselves in the acquisitions of industry. That the complaints preferred in the two first of the abovementioned pamphlets bear somewhat of the character to which we have alluded, we think will evidently appear from a brief summary of the contents of the third and fourth; while the two last afford experimental and convincing proofs, that the remedy for all the evils complained of has long been in the hands of the complainants; nay, that they have been solicited by motives of interest, of honour, of humanity, and of religion, by every sentiment in short which can influence the heart and the conduct of men, to hasten the application of it. Those who have been deaf to the solicitation, are very naturally suffering for their obduracy; and it is because we think that the skirmishing at the outposts, announced in these pamphlets, portends a grand attack upon the main citadel of the measure itself, that we have thought it incumbent upon us to investigate the merits of a subject which, amply as it was discussed for twelve years preceding the year 1807, is now reappearing under an aspect somewhat new, and supported by arguments which were merged in the supreme importance of the original question. The pamphlets before us are all (excepting the last), from the pens of persons of professional knowledge in West Indian affairs; their authority is therefore equal, and we think that a fairer mode of discussing the question can scarcely be adopted, than by first stating the evils which some of these gentlemen have felt, and after opposing to them the advantages experienced by others, to point out the practical results which have afforded complete satisfaction to the minds of the remainder. Thus may we hope to arrive at conclusions, which, however adverse they may be to the mistaken interests and the bad passions of some of the parties concerned, cannot with any shew of reason incur the charge of visionary humanity or morbid sensibility. We have somewhere read that the characteristic qualities of an English gentleman are courtesy and courage. But the "gentleman" (Mr. Edward White)* whose lucubrations it is our duty first to notice, seems disposed to atone for any little deficiency in the former quality by a double portion of the latter. For in the very teeth of the recorded enormities of Messrs. Hodge and another planter whom we abstain from naming, to which the newspapers of the day gave enough of publicity to exonerate us from the painful task of detailing them, he actually sets out with the professed object of justifying the slave trade by proving "that the condition of the negroes in the West Indies is preferable to their state in their own country." With this laudable * See the title to the first pamphlet at the head of this article. intent he proceeds to cite some authorities, to prove that slavery exists among some of the tribes in Africa; that the people are the property of the king, who may separate children from parents, wives from husbands, and tear asunder at his will all the ligaments of kindred. That human victims are offered up to the idols of the country, or sacrificed to the caprices of the chiefs, that certain English sailors were "seized, cut in pieces, salted, and eaten," and that the natives boasted to some Portuguese gentlemen who upbraided them with it," that English beef was very good." Our readers are no doubt fully aware what a complete justification all this (supposing it to be true) offers of the flayings, parboilings, and lacerations, of the African slaves by the Christian planters of Nevis, and Antigua. It is evidently a refined deduction from the enlarged and philosophical principle, that the true object of all law, and therefore of the moral law, is not so much the punishment of the individual as to prevent the multiplication of crimes. Nothing therefore can be more conclusive than that A. may with perfect innocence rob and murder B. provided he can prove that C. would have perpetrated the crime if A. had abstained from it; for clearly no additional crime is thus added to the stock of public vice, but merely the same crime transferred to different agents; public morality therefore is not injured; unless indeed C. should set about to console himself for his disappointment by robbing and murdering D., which seems upon the whole not improbable. Nor have we heard that the transfer of many of the abovementioned cruelties from Africa to the West Indies has at all operated towards their diminution in Africa. The wars, the murders, the flayings, the forcible separation of the most tender connections, appear rather to have increased than decreased in that devoted country; and as Mr. Wilberforce with no less truth than acuteness has observed, Africa exhibits the only instance of a country which has had communication with others more civilized than itself; where the regions on the coast are in a state of utter ignorance and barbarism, (which also are always found to be the greatest where the intercourse with the Europeans has been the longest and the most intimate,) while the interior countries, where not the face of a white man was ever seen, are far more advanced in the comforts and improvements of social life. But our "gentleman" lays great stress upon the protection afforded to the slaves by the colonial laws; as if it was not notorious to every man at all acquainted with the actual state of society in the West Indies, that those laws are little more than a dead letter, unless where private pique or individual jealousy among the planters may occasionally call them into action; and as one of the books before us plainly admits, were passed chiefly "with a view to silence the clamours for a reform at home." (Practical Rules, p. 13.) We beg however that we may not be understood as intending to cast any general reflection upon the humanity of the proprietors of West India estates. We believe that the majority of those gentlemen would turn with horror from the sight of practices which are often perpetrated by their agents on their property; and that they are merely desirous, without much inquiry, to draw from it the same profits which were enjoyed by those through whose hands it was transmitted. But it must be recollected that very few of these estates are under the immediate view and management of the proprietors, and that the agents have an interest in forcing the labour of the negroes in order to recommend themselves to their employers by procuring great present returns, without regarding the ultimate deterioration of the property. Casting aside however all considerations of this kind, we must strenuously insist, that where the power of abuse such as it has been exhibited in the long career of impunity through which the enormities of Messrs. Hodge and the other planter were carried, exists, it is more than ordinarily liable to be called into action by the passions of men emancipated from the checks imposed by religion, morality, or the decencies of society. Governor Elliott's dispatches are damning documents in proof of this proposition, nor can any "gentleman's" arguments or assertions concerning the tender treatment of the negroes, contradicted as they are by the admissions of" professional planters" themselves, at all weaken their effect. We shall therefore take leave of the work before us, after presenting our readers with one of the most refined and original morsels of biblical criticism which we will venture to say was ever offered to the world. "Slavery," says this enlightened christian writer," is distinctly authorized in many passages in Holy Writ, and positively enjoined in others, particularly in the 25 chap. Leviticus, v. 44 and 45. Both thy bondsmen and thy bondsmaids which thou shalt have, shall be of the Heathen that are round about you; of them shall ye buy bondsmen and bondsmaids.' 'Moreover of the children of the stranger that do sojourn among you, of them shall ye buy, and they shall be in your possession.' 'And ye shall take them as an inheritance for your children after you to inherit them for a possession; they SHALL be your bondsmen for ever.' "Thus," he continues, "stood the old law, which" (to bring it home to christians)" our Saviour tells us he 'came not to destroy but to |