or emancipation inversely, and offer a few the blacks is also hopelessly absurd. They observations on each; but before doing so are there in the Southern States, and there we may remark, that pecuniary compen- they must remain to cultivate the land. sation, or the purchase of the freedom of First, The proven inferiority of the slave the slave population, is utterly and totally system to the free system. What was out of the question. Britain could afford formerly suspected is now proven, and the the outlay, because the empire was only more the proof is known, circulated, cannegotiating the affairs of some small colo- vassed, and reflected on, the more does it nies; but the New Englanders would become a valid argument and a moving as soon think of buying up the Pope power. Let us, in the first place, contrast and Cardinals as of buying up the slave the Free States with the Slave States in rights of the planters. The extradition of the following table : Free States,..... Slave States,. P.C'nt P.C'nt P.C'nt Doll'rs Doll'rs Bush's Bush's Doll'rs Miles. Miles. P.C'nt P.C'nt P. Cent. P. Cent. 11.35 6.59 10.00 6.00 105.85 274 1000 2.40 6.37 53.8 46.2 61.5 83.5 Stirling, 338. Compiled from De Bow's Compendium of the Census, and the Treasury Report of 1853. three selected years, our Slave-Colonies (West Indies and Mauritius) furnished for home consumption, only 178.000 tons of sugar and molasThus the free produce, instead of dwindling away ses; in the second, 180,026; in the third, 211,631. in obedience to prediction, has increased about 19 per cent."-Chambers, p. 160, from Anti-Slavery Advocate. This table proves that in every single | tion of a system doubly free. In the first of the item, without exception, the Slave States are inferior to the Free States. But listen to Mr. Stirling, "Marvellous as has been the progress of the Northern States of the Union, it is, I am persuaded, nothing compared with that which is in store for the South, so soon as she shall have the virtue and wisdom to remodel her institutions in the spirit of freedom." (247.) Leaving the above table to speak for itself, we turn to the question of slave and free labour, with the same population before and after emancipation. This, in fact, is the real question, and the following quotation will suffice to show in what sense the West Indies have been "ruined:" "The impression, we believe, prevails among the American planters that the British West Indies are rapidly returning to a state of nature, and especially are fast abandoning the sugar cane, as too much for the energies of free labour. Happily, the commercial returns dispel this ridiculous illusion. Slavery was abolished by the Act of 1833, the system of forced labour being still continued for some years, under the name of apprenticeship, and the monopoly by differential duties remaining unbroken until 1845. If we take the produce of the three years, 1835, 1845, and 1855, we shall see at a glance, 1st, The latest achievements of the slave system with protection duties; 2d, The result of free labour without free trade; 3d, The most recent opera Second, The commercial as distinguished from the plantation period of society. Plantation agriculture implies little more than animal labour. Commercial industry implies the growth of intelligence. Wherever commerce prevails over mere agricul ture, the bonds of slavery are relaxed, and ultimately are broken. If commerce could undermine the feudalism of Europe, it can have no great difficulty in rooting out the slavery of America, which, after all, is only black feudalism. Hear Mr. Stirling : "Further, among the commercial class of the South there is much concealed hostility to slavery. This is particularly the case in the large trading towns of the frontier States; in Wheeling, Virginia; in Louisville, Kentucky; and above all, in St. Louis, Missouri. In St. Louis there are about 30,000 Germans, all to a man opposed to slavery. Indeed, slavery in St. Louis exists only in name. When the time comes, the party of freedom in the Slave States will find itself suddenly endowed with unlooked for strength. Two thirds or three-fourths of the commercial business | tive of a new society, that has not yet been of the south are carried on by northern men, or moulded into form-exactly as we tolerate foreigners. At present these men hold their a Californian with a revolver in his belt, alpeace-they bide their time. But many of them hate the system they are forced to endure."-P. $21. though the European gentleman has given up the habitual use of arms. America feels not merely the sarcasms of British writers, Hear, again, the American correspondent but far more intensely she feels the moral of the "Times:" weight of British consistency and political rectitude. She feels beaten, not by the "The soil of Missouri, its climate, and its enterprise of Britain, but by the honesty of productions, are as much adapted to free as to Britain. She feels robbed of her place in slave labour. Hemp, tobacco, and Indian corn, the world's estimation, because there is are its staple agricultural products, but its com- another country that bears a free flag, and merce and its manufactures promise to be of carries it fearlessly before all-before high greater value than its agriculture. St. Louis, the and low, rich and poor, bond or free-a depôt of the former, is near the junction of the Missouri and Mississippi, with an inland naviga- flag which her very slaves are taught to tion of thousands of miles in every direction, with reverence in their childhood—a flag that is great accumulated wealth, a large tonnage, and not draggled one day in the blood of promises to become the great city of the interior Negroes, and next day flaunted in the face of this country. The mountains of Missouri are of foes-but a flag that covers every man, full of mineral wealth, and want only to be woman, and child born in the British struck by the hand of well-directed industry, to dominions, and gives them the same right yield a stream of wealth. The population of the to the full protection of the British crown. eastern part of the State is young, and largely from the Free States. It is easy to see that all She knows that whatever her strength, her these causes might bring about in Missouri a feel- population, or her territory, she can never ing in favour of emancipation not shared by the attain to a similar estimation in the eyes of other frontier States."-(Times, Aug. 29, 1857.) the world, until the curse of slavery is rooted out, and thus the opinion of Europe, and of the world, is perpetually disintegrating her slave system, perpetually exposing its rottenness and worthlessness, and perpetually passing a sentence of condemnation, from which no escape is possible, except by the surrender of her black institution, and by the coming over of America to the side of freedom. Fourth, The moral aversion of the Northern States to the slave system. Third, The public opinion of Europe. Perhaps the greatest achievement of civilization, is the triumph of catholic opinion. What is the catholic opinion of the civilized world? On some subjects we are compelled to answer, "The civilized world has not yet arrived at its conclusion"-with regard, for instance, to the mode of political government. But where it has done so, as in the case of piracy and slavery, we acknowledge that the catholic opinion must prevail- This feeling on the part of the inhabitants must be reduced from a form of opinion to of the Northern States is every day bean overt act, and from an overt act to an coming more widely diffused, and every day outward condition of society. Britain, deepening in intensity. The Fugitive Slave France, Germany, Holland, Belgium, Spain, Law brought the reality of the system home Portugal, Italy, countries where slavery to the door of the North, and created a reonce prevailed, have given in their declara- vulsion which first rendered that law a total tion on the side of freedom. Even Russia failure and an impracticable absurdity, and is coming rapidly over to the common con- then began to express itself in struggles viction, and Turkey is at least on the way. for Kansas," and other similar efforts. The All nations that join in the community of North is not yet alive to the full degradation civilization must necessarily abandon slav- of its own position, and, consequently, exery, or must at least expel it to colonies; ercises less weight than really belongs to it; and this common, habitual, effortless, but but every day the progress is towards more invincible influence, is bearing most power- decisive action; and, though the foolish fully on America. So long as they retain prejudice against colour complicates the inslavery, the States cannot be admitted on fluence which the North undoubtedly posterms of equality into the community of sesses, all the more recent proceedings of nations; and the Americans know and feel the Free States prove that the North is this fact with ever growing acuteness. The gradually tending to a European style of black stain is always present; and, until it thought, by which slavery must ultimately is removed, America knows that she can be condemned. Even while we write, it is not take her place at the council-table of announced that the State of Maine-the nations, except as the tolerated representa-northernmost State, and one that never had slaves-had admitted persons of African de- same in any department whatever of man's scent to the franchise of citizens, and entitled social existence; let them do it in the fear them to vote for Governor, Senator, and of God, as the highest duty they owe to their State Representative. Here we sec, com- race, and Providence, that fails not to the mencing at the extreme north, the second brave, will show them at length the fruits course of Freedom's progress-the first and harvestings of their endeavours ripening course being the abolition of slavery without in the respect of the world. No race has conferring the right of citizenship. worked so hard for its place as the AngloFifth, The education and social elevation Saxon; none has paid down the price of of the coloured American. So far as re-success with such constant and untiring gards the slave, we may quote from Mr. punctuality, in all quarters of the globe, and Stirling :under all circumstances of earth or ocean. Is it, then, too much to ask, that those to "The elevation and the emancipation of the whom the Anglo-Saxon accords full freedom, Negro must go hand in hand. Now, the enno- with all its hard-won benefits, bought by blement of the slave can only be effectual by centuries of unflinching toil, shall not be enreversing those influences which have degraded titled to assume social equality until they him. High motives of action must be substituted for low ones. Free will must rule instead have at least proven themselves worthy of force, and voluntary contract take the place workers in the world's great cause? Let of the cowhide. By giving the slave an interest the coloured American once win his place, in his labour, we shall stimulate his energies, and and the Anglo-Saxon will secure it to him in raise him in his own esteem. His labour will perpetuity, in the midst of a civilization cease to be a degrading and irksome drudgery. which the dark man could not have attained The idea of property, with all its civilizing influ- without the white man's aid. Already this ences, will be awakened within him, and the consciousness of voluntary exertion will gradually lead to that development of the power of will which lies at the root of all human ennoblement." —Letters, p. 240. process is at work, and the next generation will see a vast change in the position of the coloured American. Lawyers, doctors, editors, manufacturers, and others, on the way to the higher platforms of society, are now seen clothed in the cloud of Africa-painted black by nature for nature's purposes, but not the less endowed with the immortal spirit of man, that may live for ever. The elevation of the slave, however, during the time he is a slave, is not the quarter to which we look for amelioration. We look rather to the elevation of the free coloured American. If the men of African blood be Sixth, Christian civilization. Modern civ. capable of standing on a footing of equality ilization is so essentially the result of Christwith the white races, the coloured American ianity, that we cannot separate the one from must prove it by the actual, tangible, realized the other. Paganism can civilize man up fact. He must become a man of education, a to a certain point-it can make him an man of wealth, and a gentleman. If he can artist--but it leaves the moral world a wilddo so, he has won the battle of his race; if he erness, with fiery serpents in it. Civilizacannot do so, in a free country, and with the tion is the outward and worldly expression fair field of honourable competition open of the spiritual truth of Christianity; and before him, then we should be compelled to Christianity and civilization are both essenconclude, that there was some inherent in- tially antagonistic to slavery. This is proven feriority which nothing can eradicate, and by the historic course of Christianity, which that he must remain, even if free, a hewer has gradually lifted the veil from the eyes of sugar canes and a drawer of molasses. of nations, and gradually swept slavery out The Jew-against whom prejudice during of the older societies of Christendom. It is the middle ages in Europe was incompara useless to aver, that, in the Slave States, bly stronger than the vulgar prejudice of Christianity appears under a corrupted form, present Americans against the yellow and and even preaches slavery. It does so; but and black complexions-has won his place the preaching of a few half-educated and inin European society; but won it, not by the terested men, placed in the worst of circumelevation of the Jews of Poland, or of the stances, can no more affect the historic old clothesmen of London, but by the man- evidence, that Christianity bears freedom on ful competition of the Rothschilds, fairly its wing, than the secession of a few renelaunched in the open market of the world, gades to the Moslem faith can prove the and winning the battle of mercantile life; decay of Christianity, and the advance of taking the guineas from the very teeth of Mohammedanism. Take up a map of the the christian Jews, and daring them to their world, and plant your finger on the Christian faces in a free encounter in the lists of countries, one after another; you have money. Let the coloured Americans do the planted them on the countries where slave ry has been abolished. Plant your finger on the countries where slavery is thoroughly rooted out and forgotten; you have planted your finger on the countries that are most peculiarly Christian. Nor has this result been the impulse of accident: it has been the universal and constant tending of Christianity to elevate man as man-to draw him upward into intelligent freedom, where he shall be able to rule and guide himself under the administration of just laws, framed by the living conscience of society for the welfare of all. Christianity is so fatal to the very essence and being of slavery, that slavery dies before it; and though a Christian nation may begin, like Bishop Meade of Baltimore, by preaching slavery, it will infallibly end, like Bishop Meade, in the emancipation of its slaves. The historic course of Christianity is in no degree affected by the utterances of a few tortuous-minded men, who seek for sophistry to defend a surrounding evil. The progress of Christianity is independent of all such local and temporary hindrances. It will sweep slavery, not only out of the States, but out of the world itself. Its very nature is to make man a free spirit, under the laws of God. Christianity walks with the seed of truth in one hand, and the seed of freedom in the other; and she sows broadcast the two to gether, as the twin blessings with which she endows the earth. 2. 3. and History of the Atomic Theory up to his Time. By ROBERT ANGUS SMITH, Ph.D. F.C.S., Sec. to the Lit. and Phil. Soc. Published also as Vol. XIII. New Series of the Memoirs of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester. Pp. 298. Lond. 1856. Memoirs of the Life and Scientific Researches of John Dalton, Hon. D.C.L., Oxford; LL.D., Edinburgh; F.R.S.; President of the Literary and Philosophical Society, Manchester; Foreign Associate of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Paris; Member of the Royal Academies of Science of Berlin and of Munich, and of the Natural History Society of Moscow, etc., etc. By WILLIAM CHARLES HENRY, M.D., F.R.S., Fellow of the Chemical and Geological Societies, and Corresponding Member of the Royal Academy of Sciences, Turin. Printed for the Cavendish Society. P. 250. Lond. 1854. The Life and Discoveries of Dr. John Dalton. By GEORGE WILSON, M.D., etc., etc. (Brit. Quarterly Rev., Vol. I., p. 157, Feb. and May 1845. AMONG the great men who have illustrated the passing century, there is no brighter name than that of John Dalton. Among the Watts, the Cavendishes, the Herschels, and the Youngs of his own country, he ocSuch are the causes that are working out cupies a distinguished place; and foreign the demolition of American Slavery; and nations have not hesitated to crown him the result we regard as altogether indubita- with the honours which they so readily and ble. Slavery is doomed, and must die. The so impartially concede to original genius. future is, of course, inscrutable; but we It is always instructive to trace the steps by shall venture to hazard an anticipation. The which "Industry and Genius" lead their next census of 1860--will so alter the po- possessors to brilliant discoveries; but sition of North and South, of Free States there are cases of a peculiar interest, where and Slave States, that the election of an the provincial sage has been ill equipped for anti-slavery President, in 1861, may be his arduous enterprise, or where the path reckoned as not improbable. Should an of research has been encumbered with the anti-slavery President find himself installed failures of unsuccessful rivals. Ingenuity in the chair at Washington, the slave ques- and patience may sometimes procure for the tion must be brought to an issue, so far as apprentice philosopher the materials and the extension of slavery is concerned. If the instruments of study, which an acadeslavery can then be confined to limits, and no longer allowed to enter new territories, its domestic demolition becomes a matter of detail, as it cannot be perpetuated if confined to definite boundaries. mical or more opulent rival can command; but the sage who first reaches the goal, and carries off the prize, is often doomed by contemporary injustice, and the ignorance of the historians of science, to wear for a while a mutilated laurel. From both of these misfortunes Dalton was destined to suffer. Without pecuniary means he was compelled to carry on his researches under the harness of professional labour, and with the ART. VI.-1. Memoir of John Dalton, D.C.L., cheapest and most imperfect apparatus; and F.R.S., Instit. (Acad. Sc. ;) Paris; So- when he had triumphed over all the difficulcius, President of the Literary and Philo- ties which had beset him, and achieved a sophical Society of Manchester, etc., etc. ; | European reputation, his claims to origin John Dalton was born at Eaglesfield,* ality were keenly contested by the very say, that it does much honour to its distinrivals whom he had outstripped in the race guished author. of discovery. But though thus pursued under difficulties, the studies of Dalton had a small village 23 miles south-west of a prosperous issue. The laws of proportion Cockermouth, in Cumberland, on the 5th of and combination, the foundation and the nu- September 1766. His father, Joseph Dalcleus of the Atomic Philosophy, with which ton, occupied a small cottage on the estate he enriched the science of chemistry, were belonging to the family, and having only as firmly established as if he had occupied two small rooms, one of which was ten the most favoured position; and, while his feet square, and the other still less." He competitors in discovery have received their earned a scanty subsistence by weaving meed of praise, his independent claims have common country goods, while his wife, been ratified by the acknowledged arbiters Deborah Greenup, eked it out by selling of European fame.* paper, ink, and quills. On the death of his elder brother, he succeeded to the family property, and removed to the larger house, which is described as one of the better class of farm-houses. This small copy-hold estate, which measured about 60 acres, came into the possession of the philosopher in 1834, upon the death of his elder brother, who had increased it considerably by purchase; and it afterwards passed into the hands of his cousins on the mother's side. Deborah Greenup, through whose mother the property came, was the third daughter of a family, of one son and seven daughters, who resided at Greenrigg, Coldbeck. Upon the death of the only son, who practised as a barrister in London, the Greenrigg estate went to his unmarried sister Ruth, who left it to Jonathan and John Dalton, and their cousin John Bewley, who in 1827 sold it for L.750. In no event of his career has Dr. Dalton been more fortunate than in the biographers who have appreciated his labours, and in the fellow-citizens who have done honour to his name. Within a comparatively brief period since his death, three eminent individuals have published Memoirs of his Life and Discoveries, and in the wealthy and enterprising city which he adorned, a massive tombstone of granite has been placed over his grave, a statue erected to his memory, and a new street inscribed with his name. Dr. William C. Henry, one of his pupils, and the accomplished son of the late Dr. Henry, was appointed by Dr. Dalton his literary executor, and in a well written volume has given an interesting sketch of the life of his friend, and an able account of his writings and discoveries. Considering chemical literature as demanding a more minute history of the On his mother's side Dalton was connectAtomic Theory, up to the time of Dalton, ed with many families in the neighbourhood; than has been given in the works of Dr. but of his relations on the father's side, very Kopp and Dr. Daubeny, Dr. Angus Smith little is known. The philosopher himself has been induced to draw up a New was anxious to learn something of his ancesMemoir of its Author, and to make the dis- tors; and in his latter years, when he had tinctive feature of the volume a history of been honoured with a national recognition of our ideas of matter, bearing on modern his services, he traced as well as he could chemistry, until the time when Dalton the history of his family. In a parchment flourished. This important task has been pedigree, surmounted with armorial bearably executed, and the future historian of ings, he records the alliances of the Daltons chemistry will find valuable materials in with the Greenups, yeomen or "statesmen Dr. Smith's excellent work. of the lake district," and also with the Fearons, who possessed property at Eaglesfield, in the reign of Elizabeth. So early as 1845, before any of these biographies were undertaken, and only a few months after the death of Dalton, Dr. Jonathan Dalton, the grandfather, was George Wilson, drew up for the "British the first of the family who joined the Quarterly Review," an able article on his Society of Friends, a connection which was Life and Writings. This brief memoir was, for nine years, the only biography of the philosopher, and the only just appreciation of his discoveries; and we need hardly * "Much," says Dr. Smith, "has been said of the Atomic Theory. Some have given credit to Dalton, some have taken it from him; most writers have even confusedly mixed him up with others."— Memoirs, p. 3. kept up by his descendants. Joseph Dalton and Deborah Greenup had three children, Jonathan, John the philosopher, and Mary. Although in narrow circumstances, Joseph was anxious to give his family a good education, and he is said to have instructed both his sons in mathematics. At *The first meeting-house of the society of Friends in England was erected in this village. |