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been urged," said the Bishop of London in a speech already quoted, “that there is a general law of amity in these matters, which should prevent any missionary body from trespassing on the fields of labour of others—a law which I fully recognise, because I feel that heathenism is wide enough, and there is room for all, without interfering with one another, to labour in some different portion of the field." Then let this "law of amity" be not only recognised but obeyed. The American Board began its Mission in Hawaii, in 1820. The mission was still in its infancy, and the people still heathen, when Mr. Ellis was sent from Tahiti, in 1822. When in 1824 the London Missionary Society resolved to send a second missionary to Hawaii, it was specified in the resolution of the Board that provided it should not be perfectly in accordance with the sentiments and feelings of the American missionaries, that Mr. Pitman should unite with them and Mr. Ellis in the labours of the Sandwich mission, he should in that case avail himself of the first opportunity that might occur to proceed to some other station. When Mr. Ellis visited America on his way to England, he found that the officers of the American Board thought that upon the whole it would best promote the spread of the Gospel in that part of the world if they occupied the North Pacific, and the English missionaries the South. Mr. Ellis concurred in this opinion, and on his recommendation the London mission to Hawaii was not resumed. And during the forty years which have passed since then, God has greatly blessed the American mission in the Northern Pacific, and the English mission in the Southern. Neither Roman Catholics nor Reformed Catholics acknowledge the law of amity which has issued in such happy results to the cause of Christ and of souls. But though perplexing and injurious, their machinations against the Biblical and apostolic faith of the nations of Polynesia will, we feel assured, come to nought. The Lord be the Teacher and Shield of His own Churches! EDITOR.

THE ANTHROPOLOGISTS AND THE NEGRO.
THE Society of savants known as the
Anthropological Society might have
been expected, from its title, to study
the various races of men from the
most dispassionate, impartial, and
scientific point of view; and if at all
susceptible of anything like emotion
would, it might have been anticipated,
regard with a philosophic philan-
thropy the more degraded portions of
mankind. Humanity, in every sense,
it might have been fairly supposed
would constitute its object. Since it
has existed, however, its members

have done little but show a rabid
desire to attack everything which has
the sanction of religion, and to main-
tain with ignorant audacity the wildest
theories of science. Not content with
going into the remote past to prove
Adam a myth, and to trace an illus-
trious genealogy for man which should
connect him with apes and animal-
cules, our Anthropologists have come
back into the light of the present
day to utter gross slanders against
Christian missionaries, who are seek-
ing, at the sacrifice of their own lives,

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to civilize and evangelize heathen nations. Livingstone has been, however, a sufficient answer to Captain Burton. From this, the attack has turned against those among whom the missionaries labour; and as the recent events in Jamaica appeared to present a favourable opportunity for a scientifie onslaught upon the negro race, a special meeting of the Society was held at St. James's Hall, Feb. 1st., to hear Captain Bedford Pym, R. N., read a paper on "The Negro at Home and Abroad." To a short examination of this paper we invite our readers' attention.

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At the outset the lecturer remarked that he did not feel called upon to stand up as the champion of the theoretical grievances of every lowcaste and depraved population of the empire." Are we to infer that he was ready to become the champion of "the theoretical grievances" of the highcaste populations? But why should the grievances of the low-caste races be regarded prima facie as "theoretical?" The more degraded a race, we should expect that when they had a grievance it would be one that very sensibly affected them. A review of

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the negro race from the historical point of view was then attempted. After showing that the negro appeared on Egyptian sculptures as a slave, the inference was drawn that, after " turies of contact with the Egyptians, the Persians, the Greeks, the Carthagenians, the Romans, and the Arabians," the negro remained unbenefited by all their different types of civilization. It would naturally be concluded by any one unacquainted with history that the negro race had been at various times governed by all these nations, or at least had been in

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the fact is, that only on the shores of the Mediterranean and Red Seas, and along the banks of the Nile, was Africa in connection with any of the ancient empires. The negro was at times captured, and brought into the slave-markets of Egypt, or of the colonies founded by Asiatic and European nations on the borders of Africa; but that was the sole knowledge he had of the civilized world. The vast continent of Africa was never penetrated by any types of life higher than its own.

The negro, after this very full historical statement, was summed up as cruel, sensual, brutal under superstition, and slothful. But are not these qualities those of every uncivilized, idolatrous race, and even of civilized heathen nations, especially of those inhabiting tropical countries? Could not as much be said of the Hindoos, the antiquity of whose civilization cannot be denied. But, on the other hand, slave-owners being our witnesses, we affirm that in the negro race there is a docility, fidelity, affection when kindly treated, and patient endurance in labour, without which their servitude would never have been so long submissively borne by them, or have been sought to be continued by their white masters. We do not choose the worse tools for our work. If the negro had been found to be only what Captain Pym declares he is, the slave proprietors would soon have given up the " Institution" in despair of rendering it profitable.

As to being cruel and sensual, who have been more so than the white masters? Les Casas was described as a philanthropist for conceiving the

benevolent idea of slavery. Let Captain Pym propose a monument to Les Casas, to be erected in Trafalgar Square! On one of the sides of its base let there be sculptured in basso relievo the happy scene between decks on the middle passage of a slaver. On another side, extracts from the former slave-laws of the Southern States of America, to show the elegant literature which the "Institution" fosters. On the third, let there appear such amiable features of American slavery as the separation of mother and child at slave auctions, hunting fugitives with blood-hounds, and young negroes going South, having been "bred" with that view. On the fourth, let the eye rest on the massacre at Fort Pillow, the interior of Andersonville, and the assassination of President Lincoln, to show the humanising influences of slavery on the whites who support the system. This is an age of heroworship. Let not Captain Pym be ashamed of his hero.

The opinion of Franklin that the negro is best when "held to labour;" of Commander Foote, that the negro race has produced no poet, philosopher, or statesman; and of Mr. Foster, that gradual emancipation would have been desirable, were then quoted. Probably Franklin would have maintained that for whites and blacks alike, labour is the best thing. If the philosopher advocated slavery for the black race, it is only an illustration of how corrupting the "Institution" has been to American society, thus to pervert the sense of justice in the mind of such a man. However, it needs more than the ipse dixit of any man, great as he may be, to justify the system of slavery. As to no genius

having been manifested by the negro, it would be hard to see how it could have developed itself under the conditions of slavery. A Toussant L'Ouverture and a Frederick Douglas have, however, under more favourable circumstances, sprung from the negro race. That emancipation would have been better if it had taken place gradually in the Southern States, we could ourselves believe without upholding slavery. But then it would have been better simply because slavery had destroyed nearly all power of self-government in its victims; and that it did not take place gradually is due alone to the action of the South.

The condition of the negro colony of Liberia, which, it was declared, had not advanced in wealth or social prosperity during its forty-five years of independent existence, owing to the restrictions imposed by its people and their idleness, was then referred to. But could not the same be said of Spain and other countries occupied by white races at the present day? Does not history prove, too, that every race when emerging from barbarism, progresses in civilization and self-government only after long and painful trials, and after many failures? The same may be said on behalf of Hayti. Was not the civilization of our own country of long growth? Having referred to the degraded condition of the negroes at home, in Africa, Captain Pym inferred that slavery there must be regarded as the effect, not as the cause of this degraded state. It is singular to see in this statement how the badness of his case is admitted, how in his hatred of the negro race he condemns the slave-holding white nations. For, if in Africa slavery results from a degraded social state, does it not,

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also, wherever else it exists?

Was this an oversight, or was it a confession of an inward sense of the moral wrong of slavery?

The antiquity and universality of slavery were adverted to. Rome with its 60,000 slaves at the beginning of the Christian era, and Russia with its serfs so recently emancipated, were cited as illustrations of the enslaving of the weaker part of a race by the stronger members of the same, without which it was urged "progress would have been at a standstill." But all history shows that Rome's greatness was created by the wisdom, the courage, the patriotism of her free people, not by her slaves, who, at last, through ministering to the effeminacy and corruption of the citizens, besides exposing them to constant civil dangers, aided materially in effecting the downfall of the empire. In Russia we should be at a loss to say what progress serfdom has been the means of effecting, any more than it did in the feudal period of our own country. Why has the system of enslaving the "weaker" part of the same race been abandoned, if it so greatly aided progress? Why should it not be revived in England? Let Captain Pym and the " 'stronger" set about this reform, and seek to turn to some account the poor white trash" in our workhouses, large cities, and rural districts.

But African slavery-the slavery of another race it is declared is very different from this older system. African slavery is to rescue the negroes from barbarism, "their right to continue idle spectators of the toil of their fellow-creatures being contrary alike to the laws of God and man." How plausible and virtuous an immoral

and false statement may be rendered by the" ore rotundo." African slavery was not "the result of rapacity and fraud," but arose from " a rude instinct adapted to the then condition of society," i. e., we suppose, it was politically and economically a sound principle. But let us apply practically this vague and grandiloquent definition of slavery. What would the large landed proprietors of England say, if all the ploughmen and farmlabourers rose in revolt, and seizing the landlords endeavoured to make them take a turn at the plough, declaring that "the right of the latter to continue idle spectators of the toil of their fellow-creatures was contrary alike to the laws of God and men?" Or suppose the Fenians should among their other mad projects conceive, on this principle, of coming over to England to seize a few ship-loads of wealthy, idle English gentlemen, like Captain Pym, to till the soil of “ould Ireland!"

We imagine the old cotton and tobacco planters would be amazed at the credulity of the Anthropologists, if they could rise from their graves and hear themselves described as political philosophers. But as education advanced and men's minds became enlarged, our savant proceeded to declare it was found out that progress could be obtained without slavery. To this statement we must give a direct denial. In no case has slavery been given up through the advancing intelligence of the slave-owners convincing them that they could dispense with the system. The freedom of the serfs in Europe was won after a long struggle by the growth of popular liberty. The emancipation of our slaves in the West Indies was mainly

due to the exposure of the wrongs of the slaves by Christian missionaries on their return to England, which created a popular sentiment against slavery; and to this day the ministers of the Gospel are hated in Jamaica from that cause. In America we know how slavery was defended with the sword to the last. Not education but Christianity abolished slavery, and that in defiance of the slave-owners, not with their consent.

Captain Pym, again, in his philosophical eloquence says, "there is something grand in the refuse people of the old world aiding in the subjugation of the new." We should have thought that the reference had been to the utilisation of sewage rather than to the stealing of men and women to make them beasts of burden. This heartless indifference to human suffering is to our mind simply horrible. Yet this is anthropology! The affirmation that the slave is better off in bondage than in freedom, we may leave to the freedmen of America to answer, notwithstanding the sufferings they have experienced in consequence of having attained their liberty through the ordeal of civil war. The material benefit of slavery to Spanish America, the West Indies, the United States, and England, was pleaded, when the present condition of the Southern States of North America, of the West Indies, and of Spanish America is notoriously one of disorder and poverty. If there was a season of prosperity, it has gone, just because the basis of that prosperity was rotten and has crumbled away. And who suffered most from the destruction of the American slave-system in England? Clearly, Lancashire, which had most profited by it.

In reference to the countries in which slavery had been established, Captain Pym proceeded to declare that while the negro had had the most opportunities to improve he had the most misused them. "In America he had not been able to graft himself on to an existing civilization; in Hayti, he had not preserved civilization; and in Jamaica he had not been able to

attain to civilization." With regard to America the assertion is simply ridiculous, when we consider that all previous legislation and all existing social prejudices have tended, and the latter still do, to prevent the negro from sharing the interests of the community, and that he has only now began to exert a social influence. The case of Hayti has been already spoken" of. Jamaica, to which the rest of the paper was devoted, is now becoming a subject of anxious study, and we may leave Captain Pym's statements respecting the condition of the negro there, and the character of recent transactions, to Dr. Underhill and the report of the Royal Commission.

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There is something very suggestive in seeing how anti-Christian science is ever opposed to liberty, humanity, and even common justice. We need not fear the Anthropologists. Their 'science," falsely so called, their impudent slander of true and good men, their scepticism and irreligion, their defence of all enormities and barbarities, past and present, will bring upon them only the scorn and indignation of the people of England, who have learned to love freedom and righteousness too well to give them up at the bidding of these sciolists.

DEVONIAN.

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