found, hard-hearted enough to become the purchaser! How,' he adds, 'is it possible to reconcile this and a thousand other practices of the same kind with the boasted Declaration-“ We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that their Creator has endowed them with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"! Well was it remarked by a traveller in that country, that if there be an object truly ridiculous in nature, (and, let us add, truly detestable in ethics,) it is an American patriot signing resolutions of independence with one hand, and brandishing a whip over his affrighted slaves with the other."

But there are other reasons which tend very much to stagger us in our belief of the professed sincerity of the American government to put an end to the slave-trade. It was broadly asserted in Congress, by one of the most respectable of the representatives of one of the Northern States, and not attempted to be contradicted, that though the laws were highly penal against the slave-trade, yet it was a well known fact that fourteen thousand slaves, at the least, had been brought into the country, in the course of the year 1818.' That these could only be introduced by a general connivance is quite certain; and that it is so, we have the authority of the Aurora, a Philadelphia paper in great circulation. In that of November 20, 1819, which now lies before us, it is said, 'That so far from any prospect of the slave-system being done away, their introduction into many parts of the United States has been connived at, and even some vessels of the United States have brought in slave-ships, whose cargoes have been clandestinely disposed of; and it appears, by a late Georgia Newspaper, that a public agent of the United States has been concerned in the ignominious traffic. In fact, (continues the writer) the government of the United States was particularly informed, more than two years ago, of the names of the owners of more than fifty vessels belonging to citizens of the United States, from Boston to Savannah, and the names of the vessels, and their captains, who were concerned in carrying on the slave-trade with Havannah. We say, the Executive had this list authentically made to the proper department,' &c.

We deem it right to notice these things, that the world, in general, and the people of this country in particular, may not be duped by fine speeches and lofty pretensions in the cause of humanity, into the belief that we have a real co-adjutor, in our own honest exertions for putting an end to this detestable traffic, in the government of the United States. We do not think, with the Marquis of Lansdown, that the Congress has proved its sincerity by passing an Act which makes the trade to

be

be piracy; while it almost simultaneously produces another which sanctions the very worst species of slavery. If any advance, how. ever trifling, has been made towards the extermination of the African trade, (which yet we scarcely dare to hope,) it has been by our own unassisted efforts, and by them alone.

What then, it will be asked, is to be done? The 'mixed courts' are evidently favourable to the daring speculator; and their structure and proceedings are so anomalous, and so much at variance with every principle of justice administered in the British courts, that we are decidedly of opinion the character of the nation would suffer nothing by their discontinuance. How must a British officer abhor the idea of his declaration on oath and his evidence being put in competition with the deposition of a monster who had already set all laws at defiance, human and divine-while he himself is shut out of the court, and neither allowed to confront the offender, nor to put special interrogatories to him in his own person or by his representative! The expense of these courts, of which there are four abroad and one in London, is no trifling consideration; and as they appear, from the papers laid before parliament, to be wholly inefficient for the purposes for which they were intended, the sooner they are broken up the better. What indeed could be expected from the kind of people nominated-by the Portugueze, for instance,as judges and arbitrators-(not gentlemen zealous for the national honour, and their own individual character, but habitual and hardened slave-dealers)-but what actually took place, namely, the most gross and shameful partiality? It is little to reply, that some of them have been degraded on this account. We know they have; but nothing has been gained on the score of justice and humanity, since their seats are filled by the same descriptions of persons.

*

Thus the question recurs- -What is now to be done? It is difficult to answer satisfactorily; but we presume to think, that, after the anathema pronounced by the combined sovereigns of Europe against the trade, it is incumbent upon them to do, what they have full power to do,-namely, to declare it piracy: for

*We are willing to believe, and indeed are morally certain, that the English commissioners are of a very different description, though those of Sierra Leone are certainly not held in the highest estimation by the officers of the British navy; but we are very much disposed to think that Sir George Collier must labour under some mistake in the representation of their conduct made to the Admiralty, and printed in the papers laid before parliament. Both he and his officers, however, will be as much surprized, as we have been, to find Mr. Grégory and Mr. Fitzgerald reporting to Lord Castlereagh, under date 5th January, 1821, the actual reduced state of the trade,' particularly as they state the ground of this conclusion to be the information obtained through his Majesty's cruizers,' which is in direct opposition to all the statements made by these cruizers.

6

although

although it was agreed by the plenipotentiaries that the determining of the period when this trade is to cease universally, must be a subject of negociation between the powers,' yet it was also declared to be understood that no proper means of securing its attainment, and of accelerating its progress, were to be neglected; and that the engagement, thus reciprocally contracted between the respective sovereigns, cannot be considered as fulfilled until the period when complete success shall have crowned their united efforts. We think then, that, as six years and a half have passed since the combined sovereigns made this public declaration, the success of which instead of being 'complete' has been entirely negative,' they are bound in honour and conscience to take some further steps; and we know of none so likely to be efficient as the one we have suggested: for, as the American Committee justly observe, the detestable crime of kidnapping the unoffending inhabitants of one country, and chaining them to slavery in another, is marked with all the atrocity of piracy. As such, therefore, it ought to be stigmatized and rendered punishable.'

As we have our doubts, however, whether any further steps will be speedily taken by the sovereigns of Europe, and are pretty well satisfied in the mean time that the onus of thwarting its progress will continue to be laid upon England, we must end as we began, with strongly recommending the purchase from the natives of the little island in the bay of Fernando Po, described in the early part of this Article. At this secure and healthy anchorage the ships of the squadron might conveniently replenish their wood, water and provisions, all of which the great island is capable of supplying in the utmost abundance. A small class of vessels attached to the ships of war might, at all seasons, reconnoitre the several rivers, and return with information in fortyeight hours from the most distant of them-thus keeping up a kind of moral blockade, which, if rigidly pursued, would, at no remote period, have the effect of a legal one.

ART. IV.-1. An Enquiry into the Doctrines and Necessity of Predestination. By Edward Copleston, D.D. Provost of Oriel College, Oxford, and Prebendary of Rochester. London. 1821. pp. xvi. 219.

2. Archbishop King's Discourse on Predestination. With Notes by the Rev. Richard Whately, M.A. Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. London. 1821. pp. xiv. 126.

THE

HE remark which Cicero made concerning philosophy, that there was no opinion so unreasonable, as not to have found

some

some defender, is, in a still higher degree, applicable to theology, the noblest and most important kind of philosophy which can engage the attention of a reasonable being. It is scarcely possible to estimate the injury which has been done to the cause of truth by men, who have speculated, in the abstract, upon the relations which subsist between the Creator and his intelligent creatures, as if the nature and properties of both were perfectly understood. A code of intellectual and moral laws, deduced from the various processes of the human mind, is transferred to the operations of the Deity; and men speak with confidence of the necessary course of his proceedings, upon the strength of principles, which are grounded upon an imperfect acquaintance with the functions of a limited intelligence. It is perfectly true, that constituted as we are, we have no other means of understanding the nature and attributes of God, than to investigate the powers and faculties of our own minds, and to conceive the Deity to possess them in the highest degree of perfection of which we can form a notion. But it does not follow, because this is the best, or the only method, that it is therefore adequate to the end which we propose to ourselves; because it is by no means certain, that our Creator intended us to enjoy a fall and satisfactory knowledge of his own nature, or of his moral government of the world. Indeed, independently of the absurdity which attaches to the supposition, that an inferior intelligence should be able to comprehend a superior in all its parts, it is utterly inconsistent with a state of moral discipline, that the creatures who are subject to it, should have a perfect comprehension of all its features and bearings; or, consequently, of the nature of that Being upon whom these depend. Every observable analogy leads us to believe, that man is in progress to a more perfect state; as a preparation to which, he is here placed in a course of moral discipline and if this be the case, to complain of any difficulty, or seeming contradiction, in the plans of God's providence, is only to complain that he is not more perfect than God has thought fit to make him; that he cannot anticipate that promised state, where faith will terminate in knowledge.

:

The neglect of this one consideration, that man is at present in a state of discipline, with regard to his intellectual as well as his moral habits, has been the fruitful source of many an error inju rious to the purity and the utility of religion. Religion is the practical law, by which our conduct and our hopes are to be regulated in a state of trial; and if once we enter into speculations upon its nature, which have no reference to our actual condition, as creatures in a course of probation, there is great danger of our falling into difficulties and errors, because we are wandering beyond the legitimate province of religion. As far as reason will conduct us

to

to the grounds of those commands, the observance of which tends to the amelioration of our moral state, or afford us an insight into the nature of those attributes of the Deity, which are calculated to exalt our piety, so far we may proceed with safety: if we would go beyond this, we must commit ourselves to the guidance, not of our own reason, but of revelation.

A secondary cause of the confusion which the speculations of human reason have introduced into theology, is the imperfection of human language, or, rather its inadequacy to a purpose, which it was never intended to answer : for, as to its proper objects, it is sufficiently perfect. If it be impossible, as undoubtedly it is, for a finite and imperfect intelligence to form a correct idea of one which is perfect and uncircumscribed, it is plain that language, which must always be correlative with the ideas of those who invent it, cannot, in strict metaphysical propriety, be employed by beings of a finite understanding, in speaking of the divine nature. It will express very well the ideas which they have of God; and these, for all the practical purposes of the state in which they are placed, may be and are sufficient; and the ideas themselves may be in kind just, as far as they go but certainly they are inadequate, and so, of course, are the words which express them; and, therefore, these words are very likely to be the causes of confusion, when not employed with care. Here again it is necessary to keep in view the practical objects of a knowledge of divine things; or we shall be misled by the words in which we are obliged to speak of them. The human mind, as Reid has observed, delights in analogies. There is scarcely any thing, when considered with regard to its relative effect upon some other thing, for which an analogy may not be found amongst objects of a totally different class; and these analogies are employed to facilitate the conception of things, which are not easily apprehended, by comparing them with others with which we are more familiar. This practice has prevailed so universally, that in many cases, the proposition, which asserts the analogy, has been confounded, in common speech, with the enunciation of one or both of the ratios of which it consists; and the consequence has been, that many propositions are continually stated, which are essentially false; but which are not productive of material error, as long as the terms of both ratios in the analogy are cognizable to human reason; as when we say, 'the mind apprehends a certain truth,' instead of saying, 'the mind is in the same relation to a certain truth, as the hand is in, to an object which it lays hold on, or apprehends.' It is where the terms cease to be homogeneous, that analogy leads us into error; and this distinction is one of the leading features of the new philosophy; for the old, down to the time of Des Cartes, was purely analogical.

Archbishop