home as dead weight; and would consequently relieve our merchants from the unheard of necessity of employing two-fifths of the ships engaged in the East India trade in importing the sand of the Ganges into England! The American and Continental traders are relieved from this burden; and if it be continued on those of England, it will certainly end, and that at no distant period, by throwing the whole trade of India into the hands of their rivals.

Thus far we have treated this important question, with reference only to the rights and interests of the sugar growers of the East and West Indies, and the people of England. But there is another class whose interests will be much more deeply and materially affected by its decision-we mean the poor Africans! The friends to the Abolition of the Slave Trade must bestir themselves on this occasion. It is well known, that that detestable traffic is carried on at this moment, and in spite of all that has been done to check it, to a greater extent, and under circumstances of greater barbarity than ever. Nor is it really possible to suppress this traffic by mere dint of restrictive regulations. Free labour is at present so high in the West Indies, as to hold out an overwhelming temptation to import slaves; and when such is the case, it is, we are afraid, too much to trust to registry laws, and such devices, to prevent their importation. On this point, the opinion of Bryan Edwards is deserving of serious attention Whether,' says he, 'it be possible for any nation in Europe, singly considered, to prevent its subjects from procuring slaves from Africa, so long as Africa shall continue to sell, is a point on which I have many doubts; but none concerning the conveying the slaves so purchased into every island in the West Indies, in spite of the maritime jorce of all Europe. No man who is acquainted with the extent of uninhabited coast of the larger of these islands, the facility of landing in every part of them, the pre6 vailing winds, and the numerous creeks and harbours in all the neighbouring dominions of foreign powers (so conveniently situated for contraband traffic), can hesitate a moment to pronounce, that an attempt to prevent the introduction of slaves into our West India colonies, would be like that of chaining the winds, or giving laws to the ocean.' (History of the West Indies, Vol. II. p. 136). There is, in fact, but one way to put down West India slavery, and that is, by allowing the produce raised by comparatively cheap free labour to come into competition with that raised by slaves. When this is done, the latter will be drawn from the field; and there will be no farther motive to tear the poor Africans from their native soil.

It is plain, therefore, that the case at issue between the East and West India sugar raisers, does not merely involve the question, whether the interests of 100 millions of our fellowsubjects shall be sacrificed to those of one million, and whether we shall be obliged to pay a bonus of two millions a year to the West India planters, but it also involves the question, Whether the slave trade shall be really and truly abolished?-Whether we shall remove the present irresistible temptations to commit a crime we have made punishable by death? We have not time to enter further on this most important branch of the subject; and we leave it with the less reluctance, as it has been very ably discussed in the pamphlet by Mr Cropper of Liverpool, prefixed to this article. Mr Cropper's views are equally enlightened and profound; and discover, throughout, that active and disinterested spirit of benevolence which, so eminently distinguishes the sect (Quakers) to which Mr Cropper belongs; -a sect to whose unwearied exertions the legal abolition of the slave trade is principally to be ascribed.

But then it is said, and it is the last plea,-the dernier resort -of the West Indians, that slavery is common in Hindostan; and that, by allowing East India sugar to come into the British markets, we merely substitute the produce of the labour of one set of slaves for that of another! We shall immediately show, that there is as little similarity between East and West India slavery, as there is between the condition of the peasants of England and those of Russia. But, supposing the statement of the West Indians to be true to the letter, still it is undeniably certain, from the cheapness of free labour in Hindostan, that no foreign slaves ever have been, or ever can be, imported into that country. And hence it is obvious, that the substitution of East for West India sugar in the markets of Europe, would at all events put a stop to the further exportation of slaves, and would thus save Europe from the guilt, and Africa from the suffering, attending this atrocious traffic. This is a sufficient answer to the plea of the West Indians; but it is not all. There is, in fact, no comparison whatever between the treatment and comforts enjoyed by the slaves in the East and West Indies. Our readers are sufficiently acquainted with the misery and degradation of the latter; and, to unable them to compare their situation with the situation of the East India slaves, we shall subjoin Sir Henry Colebrooke's account of the latter.

Slavery,' says this unimpeachable authority, is not un• known in Bengal. Throughout some districts, the labours of husbandry are executed chiefly by bond servants. In certain districts, the ploughmen are mostly slaves of the peasants, for

whom they labour; but, treated by their masters, more like hereditary servants, or like emancipated hinds, than like pur'chased slaves, they labour with cheerful diligence and unforced zeal. In some places, also, the landholders have a claim to the 'servitude of thousands among the inhabitants of their estates. This claim, which is seldom enforced, and which, in many instances, is become wholly obsolete, is founded on some traditional rights acquired many generations ago, in a state of 'society different from the present: And slaves of this descrip'tion do, in fact, enjoy every privilege of a freeman except the " name, or, at worst, they must be considered as villeins attached to the glebe, rather than as bondsmen labouring for the sole benefit of their owners. Indeed, throughout India, the relation of master and slave appears to impose the duty of protection and cherishment on the master, as much as that of fidelity and obedience on the slave; and their mutual con'duct is consistent with the sense of such an obligation, since ' it is marked with gentleness and indulgence on the one side, and with zeal and loyalty on the other.'* Those who can find in this description any thing similar to the condition of the slaves in the West Indies, must certainly be endowed with very peculiar means of perception.

Here we take leave, for the present, of this truly great question. We trust it will be decided as the interests of justice, humanity, and sound policy concur in suggesting; but, however it may now be disposed of, we feel no doubt about the ultimate result. It is impossible that the attempt of the West India planters to fetter the growing commerce with India, to lay a heavy tax on the people of Britain, and to bolster up the slave trade, can be permanently successful. Sooner or later it must be abandoned; but the longer it is supported, the more injurious it will become, and the greater will be the loss and misery entailed on this country, and on Asia, Africa, and the West Indies.

* Report on East India Sugar, Third Appendix, p. 80.

ART. XI. A Letter to the Honourable Robert Peel, on the Courts of Law in Scotland. 8vo. pp. 75. Edinburgh, Constable & Co. 1823.

THIS HIS is a smart pamphlet on a very important subject; and contains many valuable and some rash suggestions, on a much greater variety of topics than we are now prepared to handle. Our present business, indeed, is with one only of this author's great miscellany of themes; but that one is both of urgency and of moment enough to entitle it, we think, to a separate and a careful notice.

We formerly directed the attention of our readers to the singular mode in which criminal Juries are appointed in Scotland. Our statements, upon that occasion, were so full and so minute, that there can be no need for resuming them. But, considering that we live in a part of the empire where trial by jury is almost the only popular part of the constitution which the inhabitants have hitherto been permitted to enjoy, and that the system has not yet attained the perfection with us which it has reached elsewhere, and of which it is easily capable, we think it our duty to give a very short exposition of the changes which have recently taken place, and the defects which still require to be removed.

We explained, that the great evil of our practice was, that the presiding Judge selected the Jurors; that in trials at Edinburgh, he named the fifteen individuals of whom the Jury in each case was composed; that, at the circuits, he not only selected these, but previously extracted, out of a larger list, the forty-five persons out of whom these fifteen were to be chosen; and that, in thus exercising his single and his double selection, he was the absolute monarch of the Jury,-neither the parties nor his brethren being entitled to demand, or ever receiving the slightest information of the grounds on which his choice proceeded. This is the system, which, with two or three honourable exceptions, majorities of the persons entitled to attend Scotch county meetings, voted to be so perfect, that any attempt to improve it must necessarily proceed from a restless spirit of innovation.' Of so venerable a fabric, that NO stone could be displaced without the risk of consequences, some of which, perhaps, human wisdom could not foresee.

Well! this system was examined; the public attention was pointed to it; and it was subjected to the test of Parliamentary feeling. The result adds one to the many examples of the ul

* No. 71.

timate triumph of reason, and of the impossibility of permanently defending plain grievances, when they are calmly exposed and legitimately questioned. For, in the first place, a statute passed last Session, by which the right to challenge five Jurymen peremptorily, was given to each prisoner, and also to the prosecutor. This point, to his infinite credit, was yielded in the House of Commons, by the present Secretary of State, without a struggle. Whatever the foresaid persons, at Scotch county meetings, might say, Government found it impossible to maintain that it was right that people should have their lives disposed of, without the power of objecting, by any knave or idiot who, from the ignorance of the Judge, might be set to try them. In the second place, the Court of Justiciary, to its great honour also, has deprived itself of the power of naming the forty-five persons out of whom the petit jury must be taken at circuits. This was done by what is called an act of Adjournal; or, in other words, a regulation of Court, by which the Sheriffs of the three or four shires which each circuit comprehends, instead of sending to Edinburgh a list of forty-five persons for each county, out of which the Judge selects one set of fortyfive, who are summoned to attend the circuit court, are directed only to send a list of the exact number of jurymen who are required to serve, for their respective jurisdictions, at each town.' The effect of this is, that there is no necessity for any reduction of the numbers originally sent to Edinburgh. The persons who are to attend the circuit are sent there directly by the Sheriffs themselves, generally fifteen from each county,-and there is no intervention by the Court at all. These are two pretty important stones to have been quietly removed at once; and yet, to our eyes, the fabric seems far more venerable than ever. If one other could have been displaced, it would have been nearly as perfect as mere regulation can make it. But, in the third place, the fundamental evil remains, and the presiding Judge still selects the Jury.

The

This is the situation in which the matter now stands. exact effect of what has been done, and the exact nature of what is still wanting, may easily be deduced from these explanations.

I. The peremptory challenge is a prodigious point gained— not for prisoners merely, but for justice. No challenge for cause can ever reach one-tenth of the really objectionable persons who may be called upon to serve. The right of the parties, therefore, to reject a certain number of proposed jurors, without assigning any reason for it, is indispensable for any administration of justice by jury trial; more especially when

fair