SLAVE TRADE.

Extract from Mr. WILBERFORCE's Speech in the British Parliament.

WOULD you be acquainted with the character of the Slave Trade-look to the continent of Africa, and there you will behold such a scene of horrors as no tongue can express, no imagination can represent to itself. One mode, adopted by the petty chieftains of that country to supply our traders with slaves, is, that of committing depredations upon each other's territories: This circumstance gives a peculiar character to the wars in Africa. They are predatory expeditions, of which the chief object is the acquisition of slaves.

But this, sir, is the lightest of the evils Africa suffers from the Slave Trade. Still more intolerable are those acts of outrage, which we are continually stimulating the kings to commit on their own subjects. Instead of the guardians and protectors, those kings have been made, through our instrumentality, the despoilers and ravagers of their people.

A chieftain is in want of European commodities. He sends a party of soldiers by night to one of his own defenceless villages. They set fire to it; they seize the miserable inhabitants as they are flying from the flames, and hurry with them to the ships of the Christian traders, who, hovering like vultures over these scenes of carnage, are ever ready for their prey.

Nor is it only by the chieftains that these disorders are committed; every one's hand is against his neighbour. Whithersoever a man goes, be it to the watering-place, or to the field, he is not safe. He never can quit his house without fear of being carried off by fraud or force; and he dreads to come home again, lest on his return, he should find his hut a heap of ruins, and his family torn away into perpetual exile. Distrust and terror everywhere prevail, and the whole country is one continued scene of anarchy and desolation.

But these evils, terrible as they are, do not equal those which are endured on board ship, or in what is commonly called the middle passage. The mortality during this period is excessive. The slaves labour under a fixed dejection and melancholy, interrupted now and then by lamentations and plaintive songs, expressive of their concern for their relations, and friends, and native country.

Many attempt to drown themselves; others obstinately refuse to take sustenance; and when the whip and other violent means have been used to compel them to eat, they have sometimes looked up in the face of the officer who executed his task, and consoled themselves by saying, in their own language, "presently we shall be no more.

O, sir! are not these things too bad to be any longer endured? I cannot but persuade myself that whatever difference of opinion there may have been, we shall be this night at length unanimous. I cannot believe that a British House of Commons will give its sanction to the continuance of this infernal traffic. Never was there, indeed, a system so big with wickedness and cruelty. To whatever part of it you direct your view, the eye finds no relief.

It is the gracious ordinance of Providence, both in the natural and moral world, that good should often arise out of evil. Hurricanes clear the air, and persecution promotes the propagation of the truth. Pride, vanity, and profusion, in their remoter consequences, contribute often to the happiness of mankind. Even those classes of men that may seem most noxious have some virtues. The Arab is hospitable. The robber is brave. We do not necessarily find cruelty associated with fraud, nor meanness with injustice.

But here it is otherwise. It is the prerogative of this detested traffic, to separate from evil its concomitant good, and reconcile discordant mischiefs; it robs war of its generosity; it deprives peace of its security. You have the vices of polished society, without its knowledge or its comforts; and the evils of barbarism, without its simplicity.

No age, sex or rank is exempt from the influence of this wide-wasting calamity. It attains to the fullest measure of pure, unmixed wickedness; and, scorning all competition or comparison, it stands in the undisputed possession of its detestable preeminence.

ADDRESS TO THE HIGHLANDERS.-Scott.

SEE, the dark hours of night and of slumber are past,
The morn on our mountains is dawning at last;
Glenaladale's peaks are illumined with the rays,
And the streams of Glenfinnan leap bright in the blaze.

Ye sons of the strong, when that dawning shall break,
Need the harp of the aged remind you to wake?
That dawn never beamed on your forefather's eye,
But it roused each high chieftain to vanquish or die.

Awake on your hills, on your islands awake!
Brave sons of the mountain, the frith, and the lake!
'T is the bugle but not for the chase is the call;
"T is the pibroch's shrill summons-but not to the hall.

'Tis the summons of heroes for conquest or death,
When the banners are blazing on mountains and heath;
They call to the dirk, the claymore, and the targe,
To the march and the muster, the line and the charge,

Be the brand of each chieftain like Fin's in his ire!
May the blood through his veins flow like currents of fire!
Burst the base foreign yoke as your sires did of yore!
Or die like your sires, and endure it no more!

ANSWER OF LEWIS, DAUPHIN OF FRANCE, TO THE POPE'S LEGATE. Shakspeare.

YOUR grace will pardon me, I will not back;
I am too high born to be propertied,
To be a secondary at control,

Or useful serving-man, and instrument,
To any sovereign state throughout the world.
Your breath first kindled the dead coal of wars,
Between this chastised kingdom and myself,
And brought in matter that should feed this fire,
And now 't is far too huge to be blown out,
With that same weak wind which enkindled it.
You taught me how to know the face of right,
Acquainted me with interest in this land,
Yea, thrust this enterprise into my heart;
And come you now to tell me, John hath made
His peace with Rome? What is that peace to me?
I, by the honour of my marriage-bed,
After young Arthur, claim this land for mine:

And, now it is half conquered, must I back,
Because that John hath made his peace with Rome?
Am I Rome's slave? What penury hath Rome borne,
What men provided, what munition sent,
To underprop this action? Is it not I,
That undergo this charge? Who else but I,
And such, as to my claim are liable,

Sweat in this business, and maintain this war?
Have I not heard these Islanders shout out,
Vive le Roy! as I have banked their towns?
Have I not here the best cards for the game,
To win this easy match played for a crown?
And shall I now give o'er the yielded set?
No, on my soul, it never shall be said.
I will not return,

Till my attempt be so much glorified
As to my ample hope was promised,
Before I drew this gallant head of war,
And culled these fiery spirits from the world,
To outlook conquest, and to win renown,
Even in the jaws of danger and of death.

MR. BURKE'S OPINION RELATIVE TO THE RIGHT OF ENGLAND TO TAX AMERICA.

OH! inestimable right! Oh! wonderful, transcendent right, the assertion of which has cost this country thirteen provinces, six islands, one hundred thousand lives, and seventy millions of money! Oh! invaluable right! for the sake of which, we have sacrificed our rank among nations, our importance abroad, and our happiness at home! Oh! right! more dear to us than our existence, which has already cost us so much, and which seems likely to cost us our all.

Infatuated man! (fixing his eye on the minister,) miserable and undone country! not to know that the claim of right, without the power of enforcing it, is nugatory and idle. We have a right to tax America, the noble lord tells us; therefore we ought to tax America. This is the profound logic which comprises the whole chain of his reasoning. Not inferior to this was the wisdom of him who re

Have you

solved to shear the wolf, What! shear a wolf! considered the resistance, the difficulty, the danger of the attempt? No, says the madman, I have considered nothing but the right. Man has a right of dominion over the beasts of the forest; and therefore I will shear the wolf. How wonderful that a nation could be thus deluded.

But the noble lord deals in cheats and delusions. They are the daily traffic of his invention; and he will continue to play off his cheats on this House, so long as he thinks them necessary to his purpose, and so long as he has money enough at command, to bribe gentlemen to pretend that they believe him. But a black and bitter day of reckoning will surely come; and whenever that day come, I trust I shall be able, by a parliamentary impeachment, to bring upon the heads of the authors of our calamities, the punishment they deserve.

Extract from E. Everett's Oration, delivered at Charlestown, July 4, 1828.

A LATE writer in the London Quarterly Review, has permitted himself to say, that the original establishment of the United States, and that of the colony of Botany Bay, were pretty nearly modelled on the same plan. The meaning of this slanderous insinuation, is, that the United States were settled by deported convicts, in like manner as New South Wales has been settled by felons, whose punishment by death has been commuted into transportation. It is doubtless true, that at one period, the English government was in the habit of condemning to hard labour as servants in the colonies, a portion of those who had received the sentence of the law.

If this practice makes it proper to compare America with Botany Bay, the same comparison might be made of England herself, before the practice of transportation began, and even now; inasmuch as a large portion of her convicts are held to labour, within her own bosom. In one sense, indeed, we might doubt whether the allegation were more of a reproach or a compliment. During the time that the