Convention, will make your appeal, if they knew all the circumstances connected with our interview with those children? Would your opinions have the least weight or consideration with them? Suppose, if you please, that these children are of the number of those poor creatures forced into the streets of London to beg for masters more cruel than the slaveholder, inasmuch as they impose upon their slaves more degrading tasks; and suppose the slaveholder aware of the fact; would he be likely to listen to your appeal? Would he give you any credit for getting up such a mighty sympathy for men in a foreign country, while you overlook the poor, naked, hungry orphan starving at your door?

"I really hope you will give me credit for too much common sense to suppose that I can doubt that there are in this great city thousands who beg rather than steal, and at last, if need be, steal rather than die; thousands compelled to depend upon the tender mercies of strangers who have not yet learned how to turn away

the poor starving wretch with a frown, because, perchance, he may be begging for a living being unable to keep body and soul together in any other way. I greatly fear, sir, that in shunning the being duped by beggars, you are practising a deception upon yourself (which that day of trial we all expect to meet in a future world will lay bare), in supposing that so large a proportion of these beggars are abusing the benevolence of the humane.

"That there are many of the class you have described I do not doubt; and possibly their number is very large; but I am quite as well satisfied that there are still more who make to you their unavailing plea, and whom it were far better to assist than to overlook for distant objects of charity, however noble your efforts for the oppressed of other nations may be. These poor ones' come to you with a claim which, one would think, philanthropy could not deny. Their famished looks and wasted forms are God's seal upon the righteousness

of their cause; telling you in language which 'he who runs may read,' that your brother at home is dying for want of bread; and that you cannot close your ear to his cry, and hope. for the blessing Christ has promised to bestow upon those who feed the hunger and clothe the nakedness of ' one of the least of his children' in this world.”

After I had said this we walked on in silence for some time.

I had reason to believe, from his manner, that what I had said was not very agreeable to him; but I did not condemn myself for making this observation. I only discovered another illustration of that truth which has passed into a proverb; "Good men even do not always love to be reproved."

"I believe it is very common," I continued, "for us all to be more affected by distress at a distance, than by the misery around our own doors. I have seen a minister of the Gospel punish a slave who was a member of his own church, on Sunday morning, for a

trifling offence, and then go into the pulpit and deliver one of the most affecting discourses, I ever heard, on the state of the heathen world. His tears were a pledge of his sincerity."

"But, sir, you would not call him a Christian, would you?" exclaimed Mr. —, with some astonishment.

"I would not hastily conclude,” said I, "that he was not a good man; for I have known many instances to the same effect no less striking. We must make proper allowances for the power of custom and inveterate habits. I will not say that I am a better man than you because I was more deeply affected by the sight of those hungry children than you were. You have long been familiar with such scenes. But I will say, that I do not believe there are many slaveholders in America who would not have given them assistance.

"There is a circumstance connected with the state of society in England, which I find many good men here seem entirely to overlook, but which to me is inexpressibly painful: I re

fer to the cruel burdens under which that portion of your population which you call the ' lower classes' are suffering. I do not speak of the lowest class who live by begging, although the Quarterly Review estimates that in Great Britain the paupers compose one sixth part of the whole people. But I speak of that great class who are shut out from all intercourse with the better and more intelligent portions of society, and deprived of those high and powerful motives to exertion and advancement so necessary in elevating the character. The emancipation of 800,000 slaves in the British colonies was very noble, considered as an act of humane legislation; and the result has been all that the friends of that act could have anticipated. This is the united voice of hundreds who have gone there to see the working of the experiment; and Parliament has confirmed their statements that freedom has worked well.

"But still there is a consideration connected even with this glorious act which is not a little