missions, arising from stamps or fines, or "That the existing obstructions to manuother fiscal regulations, shall be removed ;- in the possession, and also in the transmission, by bequest or otherwise, of any property they may acquire;— "That the Slaves shall be protected by law instruction for the Slaves, and of christian That means shall be provided of religious education for their children; "That the driving system shall be peremptorily and entirely abolished, so that the whip shall no longer be the stimulant of labour; "That an end shall also be absolutely put to the degrading corporal punishment of females; and that measures shall be taken to restrain, generally, the power of arbitrary punishment, and to prevent its abuse; "That, the means of religious instruction being provided, the Sundays shall be given up to the slaves for rest, recreation, and religious instruction and worship; (Sunday markets being abolished;) and that equivalent time shall be allowed them, on other days, for the cultivation of their provision-grounds; "That the marriage of Slaves shall be authorized, and sanctioned by law; and that they shall likewise be protected in the enjoyment of their connubial rights. "In respect to the proposal of causing the Slaves to cease from being mere chattels, and attaching them, under certain modiùications, to the soil, it was said, that whatever reform of this kind was introduced must be prospective only, as its retrospective operation might disturb the present tenure of property; and take away, in many cases, the only security on which titions to Parliament, judiciously ment of the Propositions to which we and practically drawn up, the now refer :hands of the Administration. To them our free and happy Constitution gives a legal influence in such concerns; which influence is a public trust, and ought, on great occasions, to be conscientiously exerted. Nor are we without the hope, that, when the case shall have been coolly considered, a large proportion of the West India Interest itself, (which, we are happy to know, includes many Gentlemen of distinguished benevolence, sincerely anxious for the prudent and gradual elevation of their Slaves from the condition of mere goods and chattels to the dignity and privileges of men,) will not merely acquiesce in the intended changes, but lend the aid of their influence and experience to the various arrangements necessary for their peaceful introduction. Greatly should we rejoice to see the cause thus taken up, not by any one Society or Party, however respectable, but by wise and humane men of all classes, co-operating with each other, in a spirit of candour and conciliation, under the auspices of a friendly Government, and proceeding with an unalterable steadiness of purpose to the completion of one of the noblest objects that ever occupied a nation's cares, the eventual emancipation from slavery of Eight Hundred Thousand of our fellowsubjects. That this work must be one of considerable time and difficulty, we are well aware. But, for that very reason, it ought to be instantly begun; and all who are unfeignedly solicitous that "the topstone" should, in due season, be "brought forth with shouting," should forthwith unite in laying the foundation.- Such a foundation would, in our judgment, be laid, by the adoption of the initial measures enumerated by MR. CANNING, in his Speech on the 13th of May, and subsequently recommended, we believe, to the Colonial Legislatures, in an Official Dispatch, by EARL BATHURST. They by no means include every thing which would, in the progress of the work, be found indispensable; but they would form an excellent beginning. The following is an exact and authorized state money had been advanced. The question was therefore reserved for further consideration. in Courts of Justice was also thought to be "The admission of the testimony of Slaves beset with so many difficulties as to require a more deliberate investigation. At the same time, Government professed themselves friendly to the principle of admitting the testimony of Slaves, subject only to such mofor a time require. difications as the interests of justice might "The propriety of relieving Negroes and Persons of Colour from the operation of that unjust principle of Colonial law, which subjects them to be dealt with as Slaves, unless they shall be able, by legal proof, to establish their right to freedom, was admitted; and it was signified that further inquiry should be made as to the means for granting them the requisite relief. It was also admitted to be desirable, that no Governor, Judge, Attorney-General, or Fiscal, nor any of the Religious Instructers about to be appointed, should hold property in Slaves; and though it might be unfair to give to this principle a retro-active effect, yet that there could be no objection to its being made to operate prospectively." Our Readers, in general, we are sure, will peruse with satisfaction this compendious view of the actual pledges, and promised inquiries, of the Government. Nor should their gratitude be withheld from the recently-formed "Society for mitigat ing, and gradually abolishing, the state of Slavery throughout the British Dominions;" to whose efforts alone it is owing, under the blessing of Gon, that the subject, which had slept for several years, under the influence of an almost hopeless despair, has been brought so impressively under the notice of the Public, and of Parliament. By obtaining a distinct official recognition of such principles as the preceding extract implies, should they even at present accomplish nothing more, they have rendered an unspeakable service to humanity; and have acquired a glory, which no misrepresentations or calumnies can take from them, and of which their very opponents may hereafter envy them the possession. We pray GoD to grant, that all their future proceedings may be characterized by that union of wisdom, candour, and moderation, with firmness, activity, and zeal, which such a cause peculiarly demands; and that to the imperishable honour of having procured for the Negro-Slaves the pledge of such incalculable benefits, they may be perinitted to add the yet greater felicity of seeing the pledge redeemed, and the proposed benefits actually enjoyed. As to the Cause of Missions, it has, as we intimated last month, already derived from the late occurrences in Demerara, a new and striking testimony in its favour. Of the very numerous Society of Wesleyan-Methodist Negroes in the Colony, including 1216 Members, NOT ONE has been found to be criminally implicated in the insurrection. We certainly believe, that Christianity solemnly imposes such obligations on any nation holding others in bondage, as, if felt and obeyed, will infallibly lead, first to the "mitigation," and sooner or later to the "abolition' of that bondage; and we think that, on the Proprietors of Slaves, or their Representatives, in this country, those obligations ought to be most explicitly and fearlessly inculcated. The Holy Scriptures, .without conveying any thing which can be fairly construed into a moral sanction or approbation of Slavery, (for, in this case at least, that would be quite inconsistent with the brand of reprobation which they expressly fix on all "Men-stealers,") do, how ever, recognize it as a state actually 66 existing; and they lay down prin- to the very interesting facts reported in the Letter, and to the observations of the Committee by which it is accompanied.-Two Missionaries, belonging to another Society, were arrested, being charged with some guilty knowledge or participation of the plans of the Insur gents. One of these, we are happy to learn, has been liberated. The other, MR. SMITH, has been put on his trial; but the result is not known in England at the time of our writing. RIOT IN BARBADOES, &C.-We shall simply mention here this disgraceful transaction, which shows that there are yet other persons in the West Indies, besides Negro-Slaves, who need to be taught the christian duty of abstaining from acts of violence, and of "leading peaceable and quiet lives." For the particulars of the persecution, which MR. SHREWSBURY, an excellent Methodist Missionary, has experienced, and for a full exposure, published by order of the Committee, of the unjust pretexts by which the Rioters attempted to vindicate their proceedings, we refer to a part of the "Missionary Notices" before mentioned, which we have copied in page 49 of this Magazine.We are sorry to learn, that a similar outrage has been committed (and we believe on the like false pretences) against MR.WRAY, a Missionary sent by another Society to BERBICE; and that there also the Chapel, in which the Negroes worshipped Gor, has been destroyed. The Wesleyan Committee have ordered their Chapel in Barbadoes to be immediately rebuilt; and are about to apply to Government for redress and protection. Having mentioned the Wesleyan Missionary Committee, it may be right to state, that they are not accountable for any observations, bearing on the general question of Slavery, which have been made in this, or any former Number of our "Retrospect." From any interference in that question, they, as a Missionary Committee, like their Agents in the West Indies, are very properly careful to abstain. For the opinions maintained in this Article, the Editor of this Magazine is alone responsible. On a subject, which now excites universal interest, he felt it his duty to embrace the present opportunity of respectfully avowing his sentiments. It has been his sincere wish to take such a view of it, as might, he hoped, equally exempt him from the sin of that cowardly trimming, in reference to the great principles of Eternal Righteousness, which no allegation of expediency can for a moment justify, and from the opposite imprudence of advocating any rash or ill-considered methods of securing, even to such principles, that universal triumph, which they are sure eventually to achieve. London, Dec. 20th, 1823. RELIGIOUS INTELLIGENCE. METHODIST CHAPELS OPENED. TODDINGTON, in the Luton Circuit." A new Chapel was opened here, by the REV. JOSIAH HILL, on Wednesday, June 18th, 1823. The ground was kindly given by a friend; and all the carriage of materials was also performed gratuitously, through the kindness of different persons.-The Chapel is thirty-feet, by twenty-four, in the clear; and is sufficiently high to admit a gallery. The whole expense amounts to £240; towards which £140 have been raised, by Subscriptions and Collections." CHARLBURY, in the Witney Circuit. -"A new Chapel was opened here, Oct. 24th, by the REV. RICHARD REECE, and the REV. JOHN WILLIS. The ground was the gift of MRS. BOLTON, widow of the late MR. EDWARD BOLTON, of Blancford-Park. The Chapel is twenty-eight feet by thirty-four, in the clear. The expenses attending this erection are £400; towards which £110 have been subscribed, and £40 collected at the opening of the Chapel. All the seats are let, to the amount of £20 per annum. There is an encouraging prospect of good. The new Chapel already is too small to contain the people who attend; and the addition of a gallery is contemplated." TRENCH, in the Wellington (Shropshire) Circuit." A new Chapel, thirty-nine feet by thirty, was opened here, Nov. 2d. By private subscriptions, £150 have been obtained; and £40 were collected at the Opening-Services, when Sermons were preached by the REV. JAMES GILL, and the REV. JOHN CHETTLE, The entire cost will be above £350. The pews are nearly all taken." ROUGHLEE, in the Colne Circuit. "A new Chapel, thirty-six feet by twentyseven within, was opened here on Sunday, Nov. 9th, by the REV. JOSEPH MANN. Roughlee is rendered memorable in the annals of Methodism, by the fierce and brutal persecution which the REV. JOHN WESLEY, the REV. WILLIAM GRIMSHAW, and some other Preachers, endured there in the year 1748, and from which they narrowly escaped with their lives. (See WESLEY'S Journal for that year. Works, vol. ii. p. 433.) Since that period, during a lapse of more than fifty years, many attempts have been made to establish the influence of genuine religion in that rude and mountainous neighbourhood, with but little success. The erection, therefore, of this commodious Chapel, to which a large, attentive, and permanent Congregation, and a Sunday School, are likely to be attached, is a very pleasing event." BRADFORD-MOOR, near Bradford, Yorkshire.-"A new Chapel, which will hold from five to seven hundred hearers, was opened in this populous neighbourhood on Friday, Nov. 21st. The Preachers were the REV. R. NEWTON, and the REV. A. E. FARRAR. The Collections amounted to about £50, in addition to considerable private Subscriptions previously obtained." Society whose recent establishment has elicited these observations, is likely, in our opinion, to hold a place of distinguished utility. We copy the following Extracts, illustrative of its plan, and of its claims on the public patronage, from an LADIES' HIBERNIAN FEMALE-SCHOOL SOCIETY. We have much pleasure in giving that publicity, which the extensive circulation of this Magazine affords, to the benevolent Institution, whose title we have placed at the head of the present Article. To Philanthropists of every denomination we earnestly recommend this new Society. And among the METHODISTS, in particular, we trust that the subject will excite a due share of interest; for it relates to a country, which has for more than seventy years been occupied, as a field of christian labour, by Itinerant Evangelists belonging to their community;-which owes much to their zeal and liberality and to which, under GoD, they are indebted, in return, for some of the most eminent and useful Ministers, who have ever adorned and blessed their Connexion. For many years, they were almost the only people who opposed any very material check to the triumph of Popish Superstition in Ireland. There their venerable Founder, MR. JOHN WESLEY, his excellent Brother CHARLES, and not a few of the Preachers who were connected with them, endured severe persecutions and sufferings; and were long permitted, as DR. ADAM CLARKE has justly observed, to “ that race of glory alone," exposed to "universal danger and general reproach." Of late, other Societies have come forward to take a part in this great and patriotic work; and we heartily wish them God's speed. Some of these direct their efforts to objects exclusively religious; while others employ themselves in the important task of providing such an education for the rising generation, as shall promote at once their temporal comfort and their moral improvement. Among the latter, the "Address," which it has lately issued, " to the Ladies of Ireland." We shall rejoice to see the Institution receive the attention and support of the Ladies of England also. "THE object of THE LADIES' HIBERNIAN FEMALE-SCHOOL SOCIETY, is the education of the Female Children of the lower classes in Ireland, in reading, needle-work, knitting, spinning, and the knowledge of the Holy Scriptures, by the formation of Schools, conducted by approved mistresses, under an efficient and vigilant superintendence. run The Society originated at a Meeting of Ladies, held in London, July 2d, 1823. The encouragement which it has already received, favour; and affords the liveliest hope to those shows that a strong feeling exists in its who take au interest in its progress, permanency, and diffusive usefulness, that it is only necessary to make its plan extensively known, in order to obtain the assistance and co-operation which will render it a blessing to Ireland, a country which has so powerful a claim upon sympathy, and affectionate aid, and which gives a pledge, in the national character of its inhabitants, that benevolent effort, when wisely directed, will not be expended without grateful and satisfactory re turns. "With the melancholy details of the ignorance, poverty, and insubordination of the Irish peasantry, who is not acquainted ignorance, existing among a people possessed of the capacity of acquiring knowledge, in a ing in its most squalid and distressful forms more than ordinary degree;-poverty, stalkacross the most fertile soil;-insubordination, under a kind and paternal government! of the legislature rendered nugatory; and Statesmen have been perplexed; the labours laws have only proved that there are causes of evil more powerful than any means of coercion or direction, which stretch beyond their grasp, and lie too deep for their application. The good which may by such means be effected, or the evil which may be corrected, it is not the province of the Committee of this Society to estimate; but on one obvious principle they rest with confidence,that the evils which spring from the mind and the heart must be corrected in their source; and that for them, instruction, and the influence of good principles, early and deeply laid, are the only remedy. "This sentiment is a prevailing one. The highest authority has asked: 'Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles ?and the force of this reproof to those who have lamented what Ireland is, without reflecting what Ireland might become, by patient and friendly culture, has led, for a few years past, to the application of moral means for the removal of evils and miseries which so largely spring from moral causes. "But among recent plans of a kind and sympathizing benevolence, exerting itself in various and most laudable efforts, what has been done for the FEMALE CHILDREN of the Irish poor? Nothing directly; nothing on system; nothing which recognises it as a great and national object, to unfold their minds; to plant in them the seeds of religious truth without party-bias or passion; and to teach them those domestic arts which at once afford them useful employment, and create a feeling of decency, order, and character. For it is not in a school for boys that the proper instruction for girls can be efficlently communicated; nor, as experience has shown, does the advantage of reading alone offer a sufficient inducement to their attendance. "It is to the female children of Ireland that this Institution directs its sole care. It ori ginated in the compassion of female hearts; it aims at the elevation of female character, and the diffusion of morals and happiness throughout the large mass of society in Ireland, by the strength which intelligence and virtue give to female influence. "Is this object chimerical? Not unless all history be a fable, and all experience delusion. Man derives his character from woman. By her his disposition is moulded at an age when the impress is too deep to be obliterated, and when the control of natural affection gives awful power to an example which is constantly present to childhood, and steals upon the memory of youth in connexion with associations never to be dissevered. To be a mother, is to be a messenger of peace,-or a malignant spirit, armed with a destroying charm, rather than a destroying weapon. The influence of well-conducted Schools supplies, however, to numerous children that moral charity which an ignorant and vicious mother denies it does more;-it counteracts evil in the present generation, and, by elevating the character of the future mother, it purifies the sources of the next. The human eye falls not upon a scene more interesting and delightful, more full of hope, more fraught with felicity, than that presented by a family, however lowly, where matronly order and virtue blend with the affections of a mother's bosom, and where she lives only to train up the little ones who surround her in habits of honest industry; to inspire them with a sense of the value of character; to implant in them the fear of GOD, and to send them forth into the world guarded against its temptations by her anxious advices, and consecrated, so to speak, by prayers which Heaven never disregards. "Such families do exist, and that among the poor: and could they be created in every part of Ireland, who will not allow, that her ages of agitation would give place to ages of repose, and that her voice of mourning and of frantic rage would be turned into the voice of melody? How different is the picture of her present state! And it is so, in part at least, becmise her females have been neglected, and left to ignorance and barbarism, to sloth and uncorrected passion. To say that Irish Females of the lower classes cannot generally read, is to give but a partial and negative view of their condition, though that is accompanied by an utter ignorance of the Scriptures, and the absence of morally controlling principles. Slovenly domestic habits; an almost total unacquaintance with the use of the needle, by which poverty itself is invested with supernumerary rags; violent passions; profane language, imitated by their children in their earliest accents; women the fomenters of broils among the men, and often their impassioned exciters to fights and sanguinary tumults ;this is the sad, the heart-rending picture of female condition, and female manners, which whole districts, of that populous country present. It need not be asked, what state of society must emanate from these circumstances. "Deep and extensive as the evil is, it is not insuperable; and a rightly-conducted education has proved, in some parts of Ireland, and in a greater degree in other countries, the instrument, under the divine blessing, of effecting a new creation of converting ferocity into mildness; and of displacing ignorance, sloth, vice, and misery, by useful knowledge, industry, morality, and happiness. The state of the female peasantry of Ireland affords sufficient room for commiseration; none for despair. The female heart is there susceptible of kindness; the benefit of orderly and industrious habits, when once displayed, will be felt with a quick perception of their value,-knowledge, by the Irish of all classes, being ever held in veneration; the very aberrations of superstition show that there is respect to revealed truth; the maternal feeling is of the most intense character, and the Irish mother will bless the Schools in which her children are taught what is useful to them in this world, and essential in the next. No deficiency is anticipated, by the Committee, of benevolent and gratuitous agents in Ireland, to superintend the execution of the Society's plaus, and to look out for suitable Schoolmistresses-and the appeal is now made to the benevolent and the patriotic of the United Kingdom to carry this great design into effect; to rescue the Female Children of the poor in Ireland from their present degradation; and to carry useful knowledge, virtuous principles, and domestic order into every cottage. Who will not feel compas sion for these children, that ever received impressions through the eye, or through the medium of reflection? We find a motive to take an interest in their cause in looking to the future effect of their protection. See it in a life of peace, of virtue, of character, of respect! See it in a laborious assiduity to impress on the hearts of their children the sacred principles they have received! See it in that gratitude which unceasingly implores Heaven for blessings on the heads of those who had pity on their youth!" A Donation of Ten Guineas, a personal Subscription of One Guinea annually, or a Collection of One Shilling per week, constitutes a Member of the Society. No books are to be used, in Schools deriving assistance from the Society, but the Scriptures, and approved Spelling-books.-Employment in Needle-work, and what belongs to exclusively Female Education, considered a prominent and necessary part of the system. an is |