to weaken the force of the rest. Upon the singular and important events of the late war in the West Indies, and especially the extraordinary revolution in St. Domingo, many important observations might be. made, tending greatly to fortify my general conclusion. But it is impossible in a work like the present fully to staté, and still more to reason upon, the whole of the extraordinary phænomena from which my own convictions are derived. Yet I cannot wholly suppress at this great crisis, an opinion so closely connected with the general subject of this work, and with the destiny of my country; an opinion which has long had a powerful influence on the conduct of my life; and which I share in common with many men of the clearest understandings, as well as the most distinguished piety and virtue.

If my necessary limits will not allow me fully to state the hypothesis itself, and the positive arguments upon which it stands, much less to remove difficulties, or repel objections; but there is one which, from its specious. nature, seems to demand some general notice..

Is it objected that other nations have also drunk, and hitherto much deeper than ourselves, of the phial of divine wrath poured out in the French revolution? I admit the fact. But did they still drink deeper too of "the cup of trembling," the dregs of which may soon be all our own, the objection would still be of little weight.

Without attempting to explain, or conjecture, the entire scheme of a chastising Providence; it may be presumed, that those nations also, have all grievously provoked the indignation of a righteous God; and some of them in the same way, though not in the same degree, with ourselves. Infinite wisdom well knows how to punish many different

offenders, by the same identical scourge, or through the same sources of evil.

I am relieved indeed from the necessity of suggesting a probable cause of provocation on the part of Austria, Prussia, and Russia; since the striking retaliation which two of those powers have already met with, for their injustice and cruelty towards Poland, seems of late to have made a strong impression on the public mind. We not only hear in the conversation of the serious, and even of the irreligious; but read in the public prints, where matter of pious observation does not often find a place, remarks on the exact retribution which Divine Providence has in this case brought home to the spoilers of an unfortunate nation. To be sure, when we turn our eyes to Poland as the seat of immediate war; when we recollect within how few years, its patriotic and unhappy Sovereign was deprived of his sceptre, by a foul confederacy of those powers, two of whom have since nearly lost their own; when we reflect on the unjust and violent partitions of territory, to which they have already been compelled in their turns to submit; and how reasonably they may dread a final dismemberment of their dominions:-When, in a word, we find Buonaparte at Warsaw; and recollect how lately he was at Berlin, and Vienna; it would be difficult even for an atheist, to ascribe such strong characteristics of a providential retribution, to the mere effect of chance.

What I would wish to add to the existing popular impressions on that subject, is only the remark, that Poland was like Africa, impiously destroyed upon pleas of political expediency. That idolatrous principle, that grand heresy of the age, which strikes at the very foundation of the whole edifice of morals, and insults the Divine Lawgiver,

by arraigning the wisdom or goodness. of his institutions, was the alleged defence of three mighty Sovereigns, for an avowed violation of justice. They threw down the gauntlet to Omnipotence; and his vengeance seems to have taken it up.

In other countries, causes of provocation enough might be found perhaps, without listening to those accounts which have been given of the degenerated state of their private morals and manners; enough at least to satisfy those, who consider the substitution of philosophical scepticism for Christianity, as no venial offence against God. In Italy, that Caprea of gross and beastly sensuality, it would be still less difficult to find adequate causes, for its share of the general plagues. But after all, should any apparent difficulties remain on this subject, they would be only such as belong, in our finite views, to the ordinary providence of God. Some less offending nations of Europe, like innocent members of the same family, or country, may possibly be involved with their more guilty neighbours or connections, in evils which are the penal chastisement of extraordinary, as well as those which are the natural effects, of ordinary crimes. The Almighty has particular, or individual distinctions enough, and compensatory provisions enough, in store, to reconcile with universal justice the occasionally awful display of his moral discipline towards nations and communities of men, without disturbing the general laws of nature; but it is evident, that unless such a miraculous discrimination as was exhibited in Goshen, were again to be made; a scourge inflicted on many of the nations of Europe, must be felt in some measure by the rest.

As to France, Spain, Holland, and Portugal, their

shares in the oppression of Africa, at that epoch of general provocation which immediately preceded the grand revolution in France, were only inferior to our own. I mean, not to convey that they were chargeable with no other sins, peculiar in their extent and character to that period; but in Africa and the West Indies, those slave-trading nations, had all like ourselves, recently and greatly aggravated their long established offences.

Here, as in other parts of this great subject, I deeply regret the necessity of abstaining from full historical statements, of facts little known to the public.

It may perhaps surprise many readers to hear, that the unfortunate Louis XVIth, a short time prior to the revolu tion, distinguished himself from all his predecessors, by zealous endeavours to extend the slave trade of France.

Such however was the fact. That shocking trade, had been nearly abandoned by the French merchants; and the misguided monarch, under evil advice, laboured strenuously to induce them to resume it. By an ordinance of Oct. 1784, he offered a bounty of forty livres per ton (which reducing the French measuration of ships to our own standard, was equal to eighty livres per ton English) upon all ships that should clear out from the ports of France for the slave trade; and he added premiums on negroes imported into the French Colonies, of sixty livres per head, in the windward Islands, and one hundred livres in St. Domingo.By subsequent ordinances, these premiums were raised by him to no less than one hundred and sixty livres in the former colonies, and two hundred and thirty livres in the latter.* The natural effect was so enormous an increase of this guilty

*See Privy Council Report on the Slave Trade, part 6. Title France.

commerce, that in 1787 and 1788, 60,345 slaves were imported into St. Domingo alone. On the whole, it may be fairly computed, that 300,000 human beings were carried into a miserable captivity, at the direct instigation of that Government which was soon after so terribly chastised.

It may perhaps be equally unknown to the British public at large, that at the same memorable period, Spain began a new career of oppression in her Colonies, and framed a new system of trade for them, expressly in order to encourage the importation of slaves, which accordingly did produce that effect to an enormous extent. The facts of this latter case, are so various, striking, and important, that they deserve a very particular statement; but from the absolute necessity of compression, I will here only give the recital of a decree of his Spanish Majesty, of February 1789, by which several of the new regulations were introduced.

"In order, says that ill-advised, and since unfortunate Monarch," "to promote by every imaginable means the

great advantages which the encouragement of Agricul "ture must produce, I thought proper to cause the seve"veral plans of the introduction of Negroes into the Is"lands of Cuba, Santo Domingo, Porto Rico, and the province of Curaccas, to be well examined, with a view of recurring to the urgent necessity there is of such helps, "without which these countries can neither prosper or flourish, nor produce to the state the immense riches, "which the climate and fertility of their soil afford; and

having treated this serious subject with that attention "which the importance of it claims, I have determined for "the present that this trade shall be carried on under "the following rules and conditions." He afterwards, in the 12th Article, recites the object to be, "to procure for