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were not able to advance; and the children were not allowed to take leave of their dear relatives; with tears in their eyes, they could only look at them, and leave them to their fate. In order not to see the father left behind in so miserable a situation, wives and daughters took him between them and helped him on, while he had his arms round their necks, and he was sometimes carried by them.

'Children from six years, and even from four years of age, were obliged to run. But they could seldom bear the fatiguing march, and were obliged to be carried by their mothers and sisters. I even saw mothers with a sucking babe in one arm, a child of two years of age in the other, and at last an exhausted boy on their backs, sink under this threefold burden......

'An hour before sunset, they halted again, and distributed boiled corn (dohna) among the slaves. But during the night, the misery of the slaves reached its highest pitch. In the month of January, in which the change of the temperature is generally keenly felt, as the thermometer frequently falls to eight degrees, the cold was so intense, that it might be compared with the cold of Northern Germany, when four or five degrees below the freezing point. Let the reader remember that the poor negroes are naked, without any covering, exhausted with hunger and fatigue, and he can judge what these poor people had to suffer; fires were, indeed, kindled; but as there was a deficiency of wood, they were not sufficient to protect against the cold. The wailing and moaning of the children, sick, wounded, and dying, were therefore terrible; and one morning they found a sucking child frozen to death, still on the breast of its mother. The negroes have, indeed, no covering when in their villages, but are quite naked, with the exception of a cotton girdle round their loins; but during the night they lie in their huts and cover themselves with skins, all of which they were deprived of on their march.

Those who wore the sheba round their necks could not sleep on account of pain, their necks were so pressed together, that they could not move them, and thus not one was free from suffering. A woman near her confinement was delivered, one night, without any assistance. The new-born babe was wrapped up in a shirt which I had given to the mother, and safely brought to Lobeid. I gave my donkey to the mother to ride on.

It is, indeed, impossible for me to describe all the misery which I witnessed during the time I remained with them. Language fails; the sufferings which the slaves have to undergo is beyond conception, and no words can describe the pain which a sensitive heart feels when witnessing such scenes. I did all in my power, partly by kind words, and partly by small presents, to make the soldiers as well as the country people who had to escort the slaves more compassionate; the consequence was, that many of them would take a poor child that could not move his wounded feet any longer in the sand, or that was a burden to his exhausted mother, on his arms, and carry it nearly the whole of the way. But it was impossible for me to put a stop to all the acts of cruelty, and I was obliged one day to see an unfeeling soldier knock down with the butt-end of his gun, a poor man whose

feet were quite inflamed on account of the wounds which he had received in battle, and whom pain prevented from keeping step with the others.

'I was no longer master of my feelings; I drew my sword, and would have hewn this tiger into pieces if my servant had not stopt me, by wrenching the sword out of my hand; he likewise took my pistols from me, and did not return either until he saw that my anger had cooled.

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On the eighth day the whole expedition arrived at Lobe:d, where the distribution of the slaves took place, and this is the chief reason that the soldiers treat the slaves so unmercifully; for as they are obliged to take these instead of the arrear pay, and that at a very high price, and as the slaves frequently die before they have sold them again, and the soldiers consequently lose all, they try all they can to let the old and feeble perish before they reach Lobeid. If the troops in Cordofan, and in other provinces, received their pay in ready money, I feel convinced that they would treat these unfortunate people with more humanity.'—pp. 168—175.

Such are the means adopted to replenish the slave marts of Egypt and Turkey, and we need not be surprised at their atrocious character. Once admit a right of property in man, and there are no bounds to the enormities which will be perpetrated. Avarice-griping, remorseless avarice-will pursue its horrible vocation regardless alike of human suffering and of the threatened vengeance of heaven. The history of all nations goes to prove the fact that the existence of slavery is a fruitful source of brutality and crime. It cannot be perpetuated without them, -it would die out for want of victims if the man-stealer did not go forth in the shape of European traders, or of Turkish mercenaries, to procure a fresh supply for its charnel-house. The extinction of slavery, therefore, is the only effectual means of abolishing the slave-trade. Other means may palliate, but this alone will terminate an evil under which Africa has groaned for centuries. To this, therefore, the combined labors of philanthropists should be directed, and we rejoice in the recent Antislavery Convention, because it has served to open up to view the whole field of exertion, exhibiting to the humane of every creed and clime what remains to be done on behalf of degraded and suffering humanity.

The pleas by which the Egyptian ruler sought to evade the manly and indignant remonstrances of Dr. Madden, were flimsy and delusive in the extreme. Slavery he affirmed was lawful, and Constantinople was the seat of the chief functionary of the law. Thither, therefore, our countryman was advised to proceed to obtain the concurrence of the Mufti, as though Mohammed Ali, who had despised Turkish law and braved the Sultan's power, were incapable of doing an act of justice, or of restrain

ing his own subjects from the perpetration of enormous wrongs, without the sanction of those functionaries against whom his life has been one act of continuous rebellion. The hollowness of this plea is ably exposed by Dr. Madden, whose words we quote.

Your Highness was pleased to inform me, that the great impediment to the suppression of this trade, or the restriction of slavery itself, was the sanction which the latter received from the law and religion of the land; and, therefore, to effect any change it would be necessary to go to Constantinople, and obtain the concurrence of the head of the religion and the law, in any measure that should be proposed for the abolition of slavery, or the trade in slaves..

، The fact, I am perfectly aware, is not to be denied, that slavery, as it existed of old in the form of domestic servitude, is recognized by the law, but your Highness must be well aware that the barbarous wars which are made on the people of Africa, for the purpose of obtaining slaves; the perfidy that is practised in entrapping unwary natives; the violence that is employed in seizing on their defenceless women and children; the murders that are committed in the surprisal of their villages, and the surrounding of their habitations; the starving of their people into terms of submission, where they have resisted the marauders; the violation of their women; the capture of the young and the robust, the slaughter of the old and the infirm; the burning of their dwellings; the wasting of their lands in sort, that this savage warfare, and the atrocities that follow in its train, are nowhere prescribed or sanctioned by your law.

'It would be a calumny to assert, that the religion which is founded on that law, is chargeable with the crimes that are committed by the wretches who follow this felonious trade. This trade, may it please your Highness, is at variance with every law human and divine, and the wickedness of it being unknown to the giver of your law, the system that has arisen from it, and exists only by its continuance, cannot be considered as that kind of servitude that was tolerated by him, and which had for its object the disposal of prisoners captured in wars, undertaken for an aim very different from that of the slave-hunts of Sennaar.......

It would be in vain to tell the people of England that the slave-trade was to be tolerated in Egypt on the ground of its legality. That plea can only be admitted for its continuance by those who are utterly ignorant of Mohammedan law. It would not be believed that a prince who has the power to triumph over the deepest rooted prejudices of his people to carry his victorious armies into distant countries-to oppose successfully the greatest obstacles that can be thrown in the way of the accomplishment of his political designs, had not the means at his command of abolishing this trade, and putting an end to the 138–141. evil practices that have grown out of it.'—Ib. pp.

'Your Highness did not deem it necessary, when you recently established the national guard at Cairo, to send to the Mufti at Stamboul (the head of the religion), to consult him on the investiture of the

Sheikel Islem of El Masr (or the chief of the law at Cairo) with the military rank and dignity of a general, and yet the law and the religion had made this man their minister, and the exigency of the times made this minister your soldier. Here the law and the custom of ages were opposed to the change, but the wants of the state and the will of Mohammed Ali required that it should be made.

The same will I would fain see exerted in effecting another change, and one that would give the death-blow in Egypt to the crime of stealing men, and retaining these stolen men in slavery. I cannot allow myself to believe this will is wanting on the part of your Highness. Other matters, unfortunately considered of greater moment and more immediate political importance, have turned away the attention of your Highness from this subject, and afforded you but a single opportunity of manifesting a desire to repress the enormities of this traffic on the part of your military commanders at Fezaglou.

That lesson has been lost for want of repetition. It is not a sudden impulse of generosity, or a single effort of benevolence, that is sufficient to encounter and overcome an evil of such magnitude as that of slavery in any of its forms, but a series of energetic measures, wisely devised and resolutely directed to the abolition of it.'-pp. 147, 148.

The latter part of the volume contains some interesting information respecting Indian slavery, and the persecution to which the Jews have recently been subjected at Damascus, but for the reason already stated we pass over these topics. The former we purpose ere long entering upon at large, and in the meantime we recommend such of our readers as have not already done so, immediately to acquaint themselves with the heartrending but instructive details of the present volume.

Art. IV. Sermons on Practical Subjects. By the late LANT CARPENTER, LL.D. 8vo. pp. xvi., 502. Bristol and London. 1840.

WE E have lately had occasion to apply the protest, non tali auxilio, nec defensoribus istis,' -in lamenting the feebleness and manifold incompetency of some who have put themselves forward as the assertors and vindicators of great principles of the gospel; and in acknowledging the superior talent and temper, and in no small degree excellent moral sentiments, of those who answered the unwise challenge by coming forth on the other side. This proceeding has exposed us to the severe censures of a party, which does not appear to deem itself bound to observe the rules of truth and equity in its manner of treating opponents. We lament this, not for our own sakes, but for theirs, and for the injury done to the cause of gospel

truth by its being associated with unworthy methods of advocacy. We trust that we have learned Christ' to better purpose than to have recourse to means, under the pretence of serving him, which violate the obligations of veracity and justice. We feel ourselves to be 'set for the defence of the gospel,' and from the heart we desire to 'count all things but loss for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus our Lord:' but, on this very account, we are the more bound, to speak and act the 'truth (aλn0Evɛv) in love,' and 'in meekness to instruct those 'who set themselves in opposition' to that which we are convinced is the doctrine according to godliness,-as the truth is ' in Jesus.' It is our solemn and heart-felt conviction that the essence of the gospel is exterminated, and its blessings intercepted, by those who reject the proper deity of our Saviour's pre-existent nature, the propitiation for the sins of the world by his sacrificial offering up of himself, the infinite value of his obedience, and the influence of His Spirit in the production and maturing of a holy character. Therefore, we are doing all in our power to maintain and diffuse those truths, with their whole range of alliances: and therefore also we should judge ourselves to be very questionable friends to them, not to say absolutely treacherous, were we not to 'do justice and love mercy,' with regard to those who pain our hearts and awaken our fears.

Nor would we be insensible to the reflection, that the way to instruct and convince is not that of indiscriminate condemnation and ruthless threatenings, which never fail to be associated with false assumptions and moral misrepresentations. The imperfection and sinfulness of human minds are shown in many deep-working ways; and these require a cautious and jealous observance. The limits of religious truth and error often melt into each other, by a gradation almost imperceptible. In the conflicting systems of those who sincerely believe in divine revelation, there are not many errors which do not involve some important and most precious truth, either held defectively or driven to an extreme which sets it in a position at variance with some other truth. Often, the warmest supporters of a momentous doctrine blend with it some subtle error, or some pernicious principle of a practical nature. There are many and very diverse ways in which we may have a zeal on the behalf of 'God, but not according to knowledge;' and, as the consequence of which, we may disfigure the form and fair proportions of truth, defile its beauty, and obscure its evidence. In such case, it is presented under an appearance of deformity and degradation to those who have imbibed prejudices against it; no friendly hand interposes to unravel the confusion and eliminate the wrong assumptions; and truths of the first importance are apprehended falsely and rejected precipitately; or the misun

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