goat, or dwell in his village. But the garments of the Christian are presented; the viands of art are offered; the food of civilization is. tasted; the cupidity of the savage is tempted, and the fete is celebrated through a novel and more valuable offering. What, these Christians, who have bought these slaves, "robbers!"

Let us look back to the days of the house of Saul; when, perhaps, David, hiding himself from his enemy's face, amidst the villages of Ammon, chanced upon the ancestors of Naamah, the mother of Rehoboam, a later king of Israel; finding them about to sacrifice a child upon the alter of Moloch-"stay thy hand!" says the son of Jesse; "I have a message to thee from the God of Israel. Deliver me the child for these thirty pieces of silver;" and, according to the law of the God of his fathers, the child becomes his "bondman forever." What, was David a "robber" in all this? Suppose the child to have been sold, resold, and sold again; is the character of the owner changed thereby?

But it is concerning the rights of the descendants of these slaves, that we have now to inquire. See Luke xvii, 7-10 inclusive:

7. "But which of you, having a servant (dovños, slave) plowing, or feeding cattle, will say unto him, by and by, when he has come from the fields, Go and sit down to meat?

8. "And will not rather say unto him, Make ready wherewith I may sup, and gird thyself and serve me, till I have eaten and drunken; and afterward thou shalt eat and drink?

9. "Doth he thank that servant (dovzov, slave) because he did the things that were commanded him? I trow not.

10.

"So likewise ye, when ye shall have done all those things which are commanded you, say, We are unprofitable servants; we have done that which was our duty to do!"

Suppose a proprietor, in any country, or at any age, receives into his employment an individual, who, thereafter, resides, and has a family upon, his estate. Upon the death of the individual, to his heirs, will any of the rights of the proprietor accrue, other than those granted, or those consequent to their own, or their ancestor's condition, or those that may accrue by the operation of law? Where is the political enactment, the moral precept, the divine command, teaching an adverse doctrine?

Before we close our view of the Doctor's second proposition, we design to notice his use of the word "nature." He says that man has rights, gifts of God, inseparable from human nature; we confess that we are, somewhat, at a loss to determine the precise idea the Doctor affixes to this term. The phrase, "human nature," is in most frequent

use through these volumes. But in Vol. 1, p. 74, he says, "Great powers, even in their perversion, attest a glorious nature." Page 77, "to regard despotism as a law of nature." Page 84, "his superiority to nature, as well as to human opposition." Page 95, "We will inquire into the nature and fitness of the measures." Page 98, "The first object in education, naturally, was to fit him for the field." Page 110, "From the principles of our nature." Page 111, "Nature, and the human will, were to bend to his power." Idem, "He wanted the sentiments of a common nature with his fellow beings." Page 112, "With powers which might have made him a glorious representative, and minister of the beneficent Divinity, and with natural sensibilities," &c. Page 119, "traces out the general and all-comprehending laws of nature." Page 125, "which pleads the cause of our oppressed and insulted nature." Page 137, "the whole energy of his nature." Page 143, "a power which robs men of the free use their nature," &c. Page 146, "Its efficiency resembles that of darkness and cold in the natural world." Page 184, "whose writings seem to be natural breathings of the soul." Page 189, "language like this has led men to very injurious modes of regarding themselves and their own nature." Idem, "A man, when told perpetually to crucify himself, is apt to include, under this word, his whole nature." Idem, "Men err in nothing more than in disparaging and wronging their own nature." Idem, "If we first regard man's highest nature." Page 190, "We believe that the human mind is akin to that intellectual energy which gave birth to nature.” Idem, "Taking human nature as consisting of a body as well as mind, as including animal desire," &c. Idem, "we believe that he, in whom the physical nature is unfolded." Page 191, "But excess is not essential to self-regard, and this principle of our nature is the last which could be spared." Page 192, "It is the great appointed trial of our moral nature." Page 193, "our nature has other elements, or constituents, and vastly higher ones." Idem, "for truth, which is its object, is of a universal, impartial nature." Page 196, "is the most signal proof of a high nature which can be given." Idem, "It is a sovereignty worth more than that over outward nature." Idem, “Its great end is to give liberty and energy to our nature." Page 198, "of our moral, intellectual, immortal nature, we cannot remember too much." Page 200, "the moral nature of religion." Page 202, "We even think that our love of nature." Idem, "For the harmonies of nature are only his wisdom made visible." Page 203, "that progress in truth is the path of nature." Page 211, "It has the liberality and munificence of nature, which not only produces roots and grains, but pours forth fruits

and flowers." Idem, "It has the variety and bold contrasts of nature." Idem, "the beautiful and the superficial seem to be naturally conjoined." Page 212, "and by a law of his nature." Page 213, "Those gloomy and appalling pictures of our nature." Page 215, "These conflicts between the passions and the moral nature."

We regret that so eminent and accurate a scholar, and so influential a man, should have fallen into such an indefinite and confused use of any portion of our language. If we mistake not, it will require more than usual reflection for the mind to determine what idea is presented by its use in the most of these instances. We know that some use this word so vaguely, that, if required to explain the idea they wished to convey by it, they would be unable to do so. But there are those from whom a better use of language is expected. Many English readers pass over such sentences, without stopping to think what are the distinct ideas of the writer. There are, in our language, a few words used in conversational dialect, as if especially intended for the speaker's aid, when he only had a confused idea, or, perhaps, none at all, of what he desired to say; and we regret, extremely, that words, to us of so much import as nature and conscience, should be found among that class. The teacher of theology and morals should surely be careful not to lead his pupils into error. Might not the unskilled inquirer infer that nature was a substantive existence, taking rank somewhere between man and the Deity? And what would be his notion, derived from the aforesaid use of the term, of its offices? What, of its influence en, and of man's relation with it? What is our notion as to the definite idea these passages convey?

"Man has rights, gifts of God, inseparable from human nature, of which slavery is the infraction."

By "human nature," as here used, we understand the condition or state of being a man, in a general sense. Our inference is, then, that God has given man rights-that is, all men the same rights-which are inseparable from his state of being a man; consequently, if, by any means, these rights are taken from him, then his state of being a man is changed, or ceases to exist: and, since slavery breaks these rights, therefore, a slave is not a man! But we find the fact to be, that the slave is, nevertheless, a man; and hence it follows, that these "rights" were not "inseparable" from his state of being a man, or that he had not the "rights."

[Thus far have we extracted from Mr. Fletcher's "Studies on Slavery," not so much with a view to present a continuous and perfect argument, as to give our readers an idea of the author's powers of reasoning, and his care to elaborate

sound and defensible views on the subject of slavery. The limits of a single article permit us to do no more.

Mr. Fletcher has a volume in manuscripts on the subject of slavery. He views the institution to be an ordinance of God-the consequent of sin and degradation-bestowed in mercy, and, as existing in this country, the greatest possible blessing to the enslaved race; but by no means does he hold the American people irresponsible for the abuse of the mighty power of guardianship over a race, whose ancestors could neither protect themselves nor their children from moral degradation and heathenism worse than the lowest slavery that ever darkened the annals of human misery. Great the trust, solemn the responsibility, for the New World to receive the outcasts of earth's eldest continent and teach them the virtue, the restraining power, of labor-the science of life— the hopes of immortal being!]

ART. V.-MEXICAN MINES AND MINERAL RESOURCES IN 1850. INTRODUCTION; THE MINES OF MEXICO; MEXICO UNDER THE COLONIAL SYSTEM.-BY BRANTZ MAYER.

Ir is generally supposed that the mineral wealth of America was one of the most powerful stimulants of Spanish conquest and emigra tion; nor is the idea erroneous if we recollect the manner in which the Castilian power was founded on this continent and the colonial policy it originated. It will be seen by the tables annexed to this article, that the results have largely fulfilled the hopes of European adventurers, and that the wealth of the world has been immensely augmented and sustained by the discovery of the New World.

In the order of the earth's gradual development under the intellectual enterprise or bodily labor of man, we find the most beautiful system of accommodation to the growing wants or capacities of our race. Space is required for the crowded population of the Old World, and a new continent is suddenly opened, into which the cramped and burdened millions may find room for industry and independent existence. The political institutions of Europe decay in consequence of the encroachments of power, the social degradation of large masses by unjust or unwise systems, or the enforced operation of oppressive laws; and a virgin country is forthwith assigned to man, in which the principle of self-government may be tried, without the necessity of casting off by violence the old fetters of feudalism. The increasing industry or invention of the largely augmented population of the earth exacts either a larger amount or a new standard of value for the precious metals, and regions are discovered among the frosts and forests of a far off

continent, in which the fable of the golden sands of Pactolus is realized. The labor of man and the flight of time strip commercial countries of their trees; yet, in order to support the required supply of fuel, not only for the comfort and preservation but also for the industry of the race, the heart of the earth, beneath the soil which is required for cultivation, is found to be veined with inexhaustible supplies of mineral coal!

The bounty and the protective forethought of God for his creatures is not only intimated but proved, by these benevolent storehouses of treasure, comfort and freedom; and whilst we acknowledge them with proper gratitude, we should not forget that their acquirement and enduring possession are only to be paid for by labor, thrift, and social as well as political forbearance.

We do not think these observations out of place in an article devoted to the mineral wealth of Mexico. The subject of property and its representative metals, should be approached in a reflective and Christian spirit, in an age in which the political and personal misery of the overcrowded masses of Europe, are forcing them to regard all who are better provided for, or more fortunate by thrift or the accident of both, as enemics to the poor. The demagogue leaders of these wretched classes, pushing the principle of just equalization to a ridiculous and hideous extreme, have not hesitated to declare, in France, since the revolution of February, 1848, that " property is robbery."* We shall not pause to examine or refute this false dogma of a dangerous incendiary. The common sense as well as the common feeling of mankind revolts at it. Property, as the world is constituted by God, is the source of new industry-because it is, under the laws of all civilized nations, the original result of industry. "It makes the meat it feeds on." Without it there would be no duty of labor, no exercise of human ingenuity or talent, no responsibility, no reward. The mind and body would stagnate under such a monstrous contradiction of all our physi cal and intellectual laws. The race would degenerate into its former savage condition; and force, itstead of its antagonists, industry and honest competition, would usurp the dominion of the world and end this vicious circle of bastard civilization.

And yet it is the duty of an American-who, from his superior position, both in regard to space in which he can find employment, and equal political laws by which that employment is protected, stands on a vantage ground above the confined and badly governed masses of Europe to regard the present position of the European masses not

"La propriete, c'est le vol."-Prudhon.