Attend to truth.

Look at these enormous sums, and say what we have got for them! Only the net proceeds of his Majesty's share of a few slave ships sold and paid into the military chest at Sierra Leone; and the collection of idle people assembled in that settlement, which require an establishment exceeding in expenditure L.800,000 per annum to keep them idle, and from disappearing from the map of the world! Listen to facts. What have we done in Africa? Have we suppressed the Slave Trade? No! It is quadrupled in extent, and QUINTUPLED in horrors. Have we civilized or reclaimed, that is, have we made more moral and industrious a single African beyond the bounds,nay, even within the bounds, of our own narrow territories? No! Have we taught, or have we planted additional agriculture in Africa? No! Have we extended or created commerce in Africa? No! At this day it is less in the bona fide articles of legitimate commerce than it was in 1789.+ Have we created a settlement in Africa, with which, in case of war and misfortune, we could at a peace purchase any British object or interest in any other quarter, by renouncing or exchanging it? No! The meanest power in the world would scorn to accept, even as a free gift, the whole of the

Total,

L.3,058,456 18 3

251,000 0 0

441,442 6 7

*L.3,750,899 4 10

settlements which we at present maintain in Africa! In a political point of view, is Sierra Leone a Gibraltar, a Malta, the Ionian Islands, the Cape of Good Hope, a Mauritius, a Ceylon, a Sincapore, a Bermuda, a Barbadoes, or a Jamaica? No! It commands nothing-it influences nothing in this world! What, then, I must repeat, have we done IN Africa, or FOR Africa? The answer must be-NOTHING! And what, in our connexion with Africa, have we done for Great Britain? Why, we have sacrificed thousands of valuable lives; and we have squandered away many,--MANY MILLIONS of money! Yet the work of folly, and delusion, and extravagance, and waste, still proceeds! Will the nation and our legislature submit to this for ever? Impossible!

I have thus, and at great length, adverted to Mr Macaulay's work, and followed out the Report of the Commissioners, in order therefrom to show the accuracy of my former statements, and the misrepresentations, the errors, and the falsehoods, put forth by my irritated and incautious opponent, regarding the detested spot. The reproaches of " mercenary writer," "partizan of West Indian slave-owners," and all such ribaldry, the contemptible weapons of detected delinquency, and exposed error, and Afri

Total,

100,000 0 0

L.254,948 0 0

Ditto, by way of West Indies,

Gold dust,

L. 117,817 0 0 5000 0 0 200,000 0 0

322,817 0 0

L.19,062 4 2!!

can malevolence, I treat with scorn. These have had their day, and are now only used by the jaundiced eye and malevolent pen of Mr Kenneth Macaulay, by pens which are paid before hand, or work under "Contract," in all they do, and the junta which sets them on; but these weapons can no longer crush truth, nor shield deception. The point at issue is not, whether I am connected with the East Indies or with the West Indies, with the Mufti of Mecca, or the Lama of Thibet,-but whether what I have stated with regard to Sierra Leone, is true or untrue? This is the point at issue-the question before the public;-a question which Mr Kenneth Macaulay can neither answer by misrepresentation, nor evade by false and unmerited reproaches. Let him rail, bluster, write his efforts are vain. Sierra Leone and its system will be pursued from day to day, from year to year, till it is corrected, or abandoned! He cannot prevent this. His system, HIS Sierra Leone also, as it is, and some of its thick-and-thin supporters, as they are, have, in defiance of his and their anger, and their efforts, each been drawn forth, and recorded in volumes which will not soon decay, and imprinted in pages such as these in which I have again the honour to address you; which will exist and be read when he and they, and the whole concern— yea, even MARO, AFFOOA, ACTOOA, and Kockquo-are rotten and forgot ten!

BLACKWOOD'S MAGAZINE is read (where is it not read?) on the Coast of Africa, and welcomed as a deliverer from cant, error, deception, and imposition. And at Sierra Leone, such dialogues as the following frequently take place: "Have you seen the Last Number," say military gentlemen stationed there, as they run to meet, at landing, officers of the navy coming in from a cruise. "No! Anything in it?" "Yes! Another tickler to them!" "Can we see it?" "Almost impossible -very difficult." "But we must see it before we are off!" "Well, let us

think; perhaps you may get a peep at Mr C-n's store, where a Number lies in some measure pro bono publico, and almost torn to pieces from the number of hands which endeavour to get hold of it." Off they go-rush amidst the assemblage-read perhaps three deep “Surprising !” astonishing!" "who in this world informs him ?" "who tells him all these things?"— "how does he get such correct information?" &c. &c. Aye," observes Mr C-n, with a sigh, "there it isquite correct-WE CANNOT DENY A WORD OF IT!"

--

Except as it will benefit my country, the civilization of Africa can do me no service. Our present system is decidedly wrong, and it is with satisfaction I perceive that a new point is to be chosen, and a more judicious system, it is presumed, to be adopted. But it is with pain I perceive that the expedition sent to accomplish this has been dispatched at an improper season of the year; and it is with greater pain I perceive that it has been directed to call at Sierra Leone, more especially in the midst of the sickly season (August), in consequence of which the accounts from that fatal spot, dated the 14th of September, inform us that the crew of the Diadem transport had already got sickly, which, it is to be feared, will spread; and they may be thus cut off by disease, or carry it with them to be cut off in an island where, as yet, they have neither home nor shelter; and thus the whole undertaking be blasted, which if it is, adieu to the civilization of Africa; for with and from Sierra Leone, it is now evident Great Britain never can accomplish that work. I am, &c.

Glasgow,

Dec. 10, 1827.

JAMES M'QUEEN,

P.S.-A house rented by Government in Sierra Leone, at the rate of L.500 sterling per annum, belonged to Mr K. Macaulay. The Commissioners, p. 103, tell us, "that it would not sell for THREE YEARS' purchase!"

VOL. XXIII.

M

THE Corporation of Liverpool are said to have solicited the erection of a Bishopric, for which they are in return to show their zeal by the erection of a cathedral. The Bishopric is to be composed of the diocese of the Isle of Man, and a fragment of that of Chester. The diocese of Man is an absurd anomaly in the establishment, for it makes his Grace the Duke of Athol head of a church, and gives him the disposal of mitre, which, of course, always falls on the head of the "gude blude." This strange privilege ought to be extinguished, and probably will, by the way most congenial to the pockets of the great dispensers of the good things of this world. But the formation of a new diocese out of that of Chester may have its difficulties. Chester is an immense diocese, extending over a considerable part of the north-west, even into Yorkshire; but it has the episcopal objection of being rather unproductive as it is. Such a Bishop as Bishop Bloomfield deserves the richest see of them all; and even if he should be translated, his successor will have to stomach the mortification.

But the proposal of the Liverpool people is more obnoxious. To build a Cathedral would be to embark in a tremendous expense, for no useful object under the sun. Cathedrals were the natural growth of the monkish system. When rival abbots laboured to attract popular favour to their pious fooleries, by exciting popular wonder, the Cathedral, too, was the scene of rival ambition. Nothing could better show off the idolatrous tricks or the pompous train of this early prelacy. The Cathedral, besides, gave the chief employment that men of monkish seclusion could find for the exercise of their tastes in architecture, which were sometimes cultivated in Italy, and were admirable. The expense of the building was unimportant to those who received immense sums of money which they had but few other means of employing; the work gave occupation to artists and the peasantry. It was equivalent to the manufacturing occupation of later days, and at once made the brotherhood popular, serviceable to the district, comfortable and stately in their dwellings, and se

cure in the possession of a property which could not be taken from them by the common predatory habits of the time. They produced noble buildings; and however it is to be regretted that the enormous sums laid out on them were not better employed, in the popular education, in the propagation of science, or in works of humanity and charity, yet here we have them, and it would be culpable to let them go to decay. But the idea of building new Cathedrals is totally absurd, extravagant, and useless. The modern expense of building a single Cathedral on the old scale-and to build it on any other must be beggarly-would actually erect fifty tolerable churches, which are as much wanting in the northern parts of the diocese of Chester as in any other quarter of the kingdom,-would repair all the glebehouses, would erect and furnish an hospital in every town in Lancashire, and, in short, do a multitude of most useful and most necessary things. The best Cathedral that we could build would be a bad one, for economy would, of course, be among the principles of the founders. But economy has nothing to do with the lavish expenditure that alone could make one of those edifices in any degree correspondent to the name. We should have a bad Cathedral, probably never more than half-finished; for the funds and the zeal of the Corporation would soon be equally exhausted by the expenditure, which would so soon be discovered to be totally misapplied.

The fact is, that the whole Cathedral system is, to the mind even of churchmen, the most cumbrous and inefficient part of the church polity. The reformers, however, were forced to take it as it was-edifice, form of government, and state of revenue. The prebends were once little better than sinecures; and though they are now often given to men diligently employed in parishes, or perhaps as the rewards of literature, they are obnoxious from their being connected with scarcely any other actual duty than that of sitting in a stall twice a-day, for a month or two in a year, for an hour at a time, which is called residence, and which any man alive may do, and devote the rest of his existence to lounging at a watering-place,

touring on the continent, or going pleasantly through the nothingness of London life. This is not said in a spirit of reproach to the general spirit of the British ecclesiastics, for they uniformly, when they have any sense of the infinitely solemn importance of their duty, regret this temptation to indolence, a temptation which is besides chiefly reserved for men willing enough already to save themselves trouble the sons and connexions of the higher orders. The whole system ought to be revised. The stalls ought to be connected with positive duties. The Cathedrals ought to be turned into Colleges for theological education, or for some public purpose connected with the public knowledge. The stalls ought to be given to clergymen distinguished by their literature, and who would be actual professors. It is singular that in England, the Protestant head of Europe, and the actual stronghold of whatever religious truth subsists among men, there is no institution for religious education. In the universities it forms an altogether subordinate branch, and the divine is left to hunt out his knowledge as well as he can.

What is the practical value of St.

Paul's and Westminster Abbey as churches? Next to nothing. A corner is railed off, in which a service is chanted, which during the week nobody attends, which on Sundays is attended by no more than the ordinary congregation of any of the small churches, and which is the most incongruous and unsuitable form of service, as any one will know who attempts to sing his prayers. The Cathedral and its service are equally the legacy of Papal times. St. Paul's and Westminster Abbey are actually little better than cemeteries, and very fine ones they are; and it is well, on the whole, that we have such receptacles for our national monuments. But as there are no such uses for our country cathedrals, however it may be right to keep them up, the Liverpool Corporation will act wisely in thinking a little, before they fling away their money on a mountain of stone, useless to every purpose but those of the contractors for the stones, and the idle, who may be pleased to promenade its aisles. Let them build churches, hospitals, and alms-houses, if they have money to dispose of, and desire to dispose of it usefully.

WHY, among the innumerable books of the day, has no book appeared on the destiny of Theatres? The OperaHouse is in the market again. It would seem of all others the most certain source of fortune, yet nothing is more unaccountable than the fates of every lessee of this theatre, contrasted with the eagerness for the purchase. The history of the adventurers for the last half century would be worthy of a first-rate collector of the speculations of mankind. Gould, who had the theatre when Kelly, whose Memoirs have lately so much amused the world, was manager, died, it was supposed, deeply embarrassed. Some of his shares got into the hands of an opulent trader, Waters, who purchased on until he had in one way or other embarked little less than a plum in the speculation. He grew sick of it, and a party started up to purchase his title. They actually offered him L.90,000. He pondered on this most tempting chance of inde

pendence, but some property boxes to be soon out of lease, and to revert to the income of the lessee, tempted Waters still more! he finally refused the offer, with expectation of making a mine of gold out of those boxes. He relied on a banker, the banker relied on something else; both were mistaken! the bank stopped, and Waters went abroad sur le champ.

Another lessee was Taylor, whose name has figured so often in the perpetual Chancery proceedings of this theatre. He, however, began his speculation with so little to lose, that his losses could not be formidable; but his chief dwelling continued to the last to be in a place where, as the wits say, to live within Rules, is not always to live in comfort.

Ebers, a respectable and active mahager, then took it, urged by the peculiar patrons of the Italian Theatre among the nobility. He carried it on with unusual spirit, and apparently with considerable success. But he too