dition of the slaves. We must give them institutions which they may have no temptation to change. We have governed the Canadians liberally and leniently; and the consequence is, that we can trust to them to defend themselves against the most formidable power that any where threatens our Colonial dominions. This is the only safeguard. You may renew all the atrocities of Barbadoes and Demerara. You may inflict all the most hateful punishments authorised by the insular codes. You may massacre by the thousand, and hang by the score. You may even once more roast your captives in slow fires, and starve them in iron cages, or flay them alive with the cart-whip. You will only hasten the day of retribution. Therefore, we say, "Let them go forth from the house of bondage. For wo unto you, if you wait for the plagues and the signs, the wonders and the war, the mighty hand and the outstretched arm!"

If the great West Indian proprietors shall persist in a dif ferent line of conduct, and ally themselves with the petty tyrants of the Antilles, it matters little. We should gladly accept of their assistance: But we feel assured that their opposition cannot affect the ultimate result of the controversy. It is not to any particular party in the church or in the state; it is not to the right or to the left hand of the speaker; it is not to the cathedral or to the Meeting, that we look exclusively for support. We believe that, on this subject, the hearts of the English People burn within them. They hate slavery. They have hated it for ages. It has, indeed, hidden itself for a time in a remote nook of their dominions: but it is now discovered and dragged to light That is sufficient. Its sentence is pronounced; and it never can escape! never, though all the efforts of its supporters should be redoubled, never, though sophistry, and falsehood, and slander, and the jests of the pothouse, the ribaldry of the brothel, and the slang of the ring or fives' court, should do their utmost in its defence, never, though fresh insurrections should be got up to frighten the people out of their judgment, and fresh companies to bubble them out of their money, never, though it should find in the highest ranks of the peerage, or on the steps of the throne itself, the purveyors of its slander, and the mercenaries of its defence!

1 Since the above article was prepared for the press, we have met with a new and very important work on the subject of West-India Slavery. It is

entitled, "The West Indies as they are, or a real Picture of Slavery, particularly in Jamaica," by the Rev. K. Bickell, a clergyman of the Church of England, who resided a considerable time in that island. The work is ill written; and it might have been reduced with advantage to Lalf its present size. It produces, however, an irresistible impression of the honesty and right intentions of the author, who was an eyewitness of the scenes he describes and it confirms, in a remarkable manner, all the leading statements which, on the authority of Mr. Cooper, Dr. Williamson, and Mr. Meabing, were laid before the public two years ago, in the pamphlet called "Negro Slavery." Mr. Bickell has also brought forward various new facts of the most damning description, in illustration both of the rigours of Negro bondage, and of the extraordinary dissoluteness of manners prevail. ing in Jamaica. We strongly recommend the work to general perusal, as a most seasonable antidote to those delusive tales of colonial amelioration, by which it has been attempted to abate the horror so universally felt in contemplating the cruel and debasing effects of the slave system.

THE LONDON UNIVERSITY.1

(Edinburgh Review, February 1826.)

FEW things have ever appeared to us more inexplicablo than the cry which it has pleased those who arrogate to themselves the exclusive praise of loyalty and orthodoxy, to raise against the projected University of London. In most of those publications which are distinguished by zeal for the Church and the Government, the scheme is never mentioned but with affected contempt, or unaffected fury. The Academic pulpits have resounded with invectives against it; and many even of the most liberal and enlightened members of the old foundations seem to contemplate it with very uncomfortable feelings.

We were startled at this. For surely no undertaking of equal importance was ever commenced in a manner more pacific and conciliatory. If the management has fallen, in a great measure, into the hands of persons whose political opinions are at variance with those of the dominant party, this was not the cause, but the effect of the jealousy which that party thought fit to entertain. Oxford and Cambridge, to all appearance, had nothing to dread. Hostilities were not declared. Even rivalry was disclaimed. The new Institution did not aspire to participate in the privileges which had been so long monopolised by those ancient corporations. It asked for no franchises, no lands, no advowsons. It did not interfere with that mysterious scale of degrees on which good churchmen look with as much veneration as the Patriarch on the ladder up which he saw angels ascending. It did not ask permission to search houses without warrants, or to take books from publishers without paying for them. 1 Thoughts on the Advancement of Academical Education in England 1826.

There was to be no melo-dramatic pageantry, no ancier: ceremonial, no silver mace, no gowns either black or red, ng hoods either of fur or of satin, no public orator to make speeches which nobody hears, no oaths sworn only to be broken. Nobody thought of emulating the cloisters, the organs, the painted glass, the withered mummies, the busts of great men, and the pictures of naked women, which attract visitors from every part of the island to the banks of Isis and Cam. The persons whose advantage was chiefly in view belonged to a class of which very few ever find their way to the old colleges. The name of University was indeed assumed; and it has been said that this gave offence. But we are confident that so ridiculous an objection can have been entertained by very few. It reminds us of the whimsical cruelty with which Mercury, in Plautus, knocks down poor Sosia for being so impudent as to have the same name with himself!

We know indeed that there are many to whom knowledge is hateful for its own sake, owl-like beings, creatures of darkness, and rapine, and evil omen, who are sensible that their organs fit them only for the night, and that, as soon as the day arises, they shall be pecked back to their nooks by those on whom they now prey with impunity. By the arts of those enemies of mankind, a large and influential party has been led to look with suspicion, if not with horror, on all schemes of education, and to doubt whether the ignorance of the people be not the best security for its virtue and repose.

We will not at present attack the principles of these persons, because we think that, even on those principles, they are bound to support the London University. If indeed it were possible to bring back, in all their ancient loveliness, the times of venerable absurdities and good old nuisances if we could hope that gentlemen might again put their marks to deeds without blushing-that it might again be thought a miracle if any body in a parish could read, except the Vicar, or if the Vicar were to read any thing but the Service, that all the literature of the multitude might again be comprised in a ballad or a prayer, that the Bishop of Norwich might be burned for a heretic, and Sir Humphry Davy hanged for a conjurer, that the Chancellor of the Exchequer might negotiate loans with Mr. Rothschild, by

extracting one of his teeth daily till he brought him to terms, then indeed the case would be different. But, alas! who ran venture to anticipate such a millennium of stupidity? The zealots of ignorance will therefore do well to consider, whether, since the evils of knowledge cannot be altogether excluded, it may not be desirable to set them in array against ach other. The best state of things, we will concede to them, would be that in which all men should be dunces together. That might be called the age of gold. The silver age would be that in which no man should be taught to spell, unless he could produce letters of ordination, or, like a candidate for a German order of knighthood, prove his sixtyfour quarters. Next in the scale would stand a community in which the higher and middling orders should be well educated, and the labouring people utterly uninformed. But the iron age would be that in which the lower classes should be rising in intelligence, while no corresponding improvement was taking place in the rank immediately above them. England is in the last of these states. From one end of the country to the other the artisans, the draymen, the very ploughboys, are learning to read and write. Thousands of them attend lectures. Hundreds of thousands read newspapers. Whether this be a blessing or a curse, we are not now inquiring. But such is the fact. Education is spreading amongst the working people, and cannot be prevented from spreading amongst them. The change which has taken place in this respect within twenty years is prodigious. No person surely, will venture to say that information has increased in the same degree amongst those who constitute what may be called the lower part of the middling class, farmers for instance, shopkeepers, or clerks in commercial houses.

If there be any truth in the principles held by the enemies of education, this is the most dangerous state in which a country can be placed. They maintain that knowledge renders the poor arrogant and discontented. It will hardly be disputed, we presume, that arrogance is the result, not of the *bsolute situation in which a man may be placed, but of the relation in which he stands to others. Where a whole society is equably rising in intelligence; where the distance between its different orders remains the same, though every order advances, that feeling is not likely to be excited.

An