average standard in most of the churches, and a fair average standard of double this amount would show less than thirty charges in the United States that have not slighted any of the

collections.

II. The whole trouble lies with the lower ths, or, to use decimal numbers of proximate accuracy, with the lower ninetenths of the members. Yet these might easily be brought up to an average of $1 per member, without asking any one to do any thing unreasonable. This is shown

1. By what is being done by other denominations.

2. By other branches of Methodism.

3. By our conferences of foreign-born brethren, even with our present methods.

4. By the success of the Woman's Foreign Missionary Society. In four cases out of five, where they have made a fair degree of effort, they have raised from nearly as much as six of the General Conference collections combined, to large multiples of these six collections combined.

III. 1. We can make no considerable improvement by more vigorously working our present methods.

2. The adoption of the Calendar plan, it has been clearly shown, could be of very little advantage.

3. A method is needed that will allay the apprehension of excessive and innumerable demands, and by which the different claims will cease to be in any degree dissipating and counteracting forces, and all become cumulative and conspiring to produce the proper convictions in the minds of the people.

4. The best plan that now seems practicable is to adopt standards, and especially a minimum standard, and to devise means on every charge, by collectors or otherwise, for reaching every member. If it is deemed wise to take all together, let them be divided by scale, except where contributors direct otherwise, and let them be paid in periodically— monthly or quarterly-and let the occasion be celebrated by a public and special meeting, devoted to these interests; and then let each preacher answer the question at Conference, as now concerning missions, "How much has been raised?" and "How many of the members are contributors up to the standard?"

IV. Nearly all of our people-and who shall say how many of our preachers?-have almost every thing to learn about these benevolences as a means of grace; and yet this is their most important function in the Church. Immeasurable as is their power for good to the receiver, when rightly worked they are more blessed to the giver.

ART. V.-GEORGE BOURNE, THE PIONEER OF AMERICAN ANTISLAVERY.

SEVERAL ably written accounts of the rise, progress, and history of the Antislavery conflict in America have been published, but for lack of data covering the earlier presentations of that form of Antislavery known as "abolition without compensation," or "immediate abolition," they have failed to account for its origin. They have not explained why there was so great a change from the spirit and method of the advocates of emancipation of the era following the Revolution. It is fully time, therefore, that the persistent advocate of the doctrine of "immediate abolition without compensation," the originator of the American Antislavery Society and conflict, should be duly noticed, more especially as it will relieve the Churches from the apprehension that the contest originated with opponents of Christianity.

As it has been so long taken for granted that Mr. Garrison was the originator and prime leader of the Antislavery conflict, I will, before giving a sketch of

THE PIONEER OF "ANTISLAVERY" IN AMERICA,

present to the public the copy of a letter addressed to the writer by Mr. Garrison in 1858. It was written currente calamo, in answer to one addressed to him giving an account of the formation by the writer of the African Civilization Society, "to promote the Christian civilization of Africa," and "the cultivation of cotton there by free labor." In this beautiful panegyric Mr. Garrison renders ample testimony to the friend and preceptor from whom he derived his doctrines, his enthu

siasm, and who animated his courage for his life-long work of abolition:

BOSTON, Nov. 18, 1858.

MY DEAR FRIEND-It gave me the greatest gratification to receive and read your letter of the 8th instant. It seemed next to receiving an epistle from your venerated father, whose memory will ever be dear to me, and whose labors, sacrifices, and perils in the cause of the millions in our land who are "appointed to destruction" ought to be biographically chronicled and perpetuated. I confess my early and large indebtedness to him for enabling me to apprehend, with irresistible clearness, the inherent sinfulness of slavery under all circumstances, and its utter incompatibility with the spirit and precepts of Christianity. I felt and was inspired by the magnetism of his lion-hearted soul, which knew nothing of fear, and trampled upon all compromises with oppression, yet was full of womanly gentleness and susceptibility; and mightily did he aid the Antislavery cause in its earliest stages by his advocacy of the doctrine of immediate and unconditional emancipation, his exposure of the hypocrisy of the Colonization Scheme, and his reprobation of a "negro-hating, slaveholding religion." He was both a "son of thunder," and "a son of consolation." Never has slavery had a more indomitable foe or freedom a truer friend.

*

You inquire whether your father was not the author of the work entitled, "Slavery Illustrated in its Effects upon Woman," published in this city, in 1837, by Isaac Knapp. He was, as every line of it bears witness. I wish it could be republished and a million copies of it be distributed broadcast.. I thank you for sending me a copy of the Constitution of the African Civilization Society, and the pamphlet by Benjamin Coates, which I have briefly noticed in the "Liberator" of this week. I am not prepared to state my views of this new movement at length, but I heartily wish prosperity to every benevolent effort to increase the growth of free cotton, whether in Africa, India, or elsewhere, and thus to strike a heavy blow at slavery pecuniarily. I am in hopes, however, that we are nearer the jubilee than such a move

* Mr. Garrison's phrase, "hypocrisy of the Colonization scheme," would have been more accurate had he written "hypocrisy of some of the advocates of Colonization;" for while George Bourne had many conflicts with those Colonizationists who presented that scheme as a cure for slavery, his boundless love for the cause of Christian missions permitted him to look upon the work of Christian civilization in Africa with great favor. Had the published objects of the American Colonization Society been identical with those of the colored men now enlisting in the work of the Christian civilization of Africa, he could have had no controversy with its advocates. When Mr. Garrison penned the foregoing letter, recommending that the "life, labor, and sacrifices" of George Bourne in behalf of the enslaved "should be biographically chronicled and perpetuated," he did not know that his own life and labors would have been several times chronicled before even this brief sketch should be made public.

FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXXIV.-5

ment would seem to imply. Still, let every just instrumentality be used for the eternal overthrow of slavery. I will send a copy of the "Liberator" to your society with pleasure. Yours to break every yoke,

TO THEODOre Bourne.

WM. LLOYD Garrison.

Mr. Garrison's account of the effect produced upon him from the teachings of George Bourne is not only an eloquent eulogy, but a positive declaration of the source from which he derived the peculiar doctrine of "abolition without compensation," that distinguished the modern Abolitionists from the Emancipationists of the former period. It also explains why George Bourne is called the Pioneer of Antislavery. He was the early and persistent advocate of the doctrine that no recompense should be made to slave-holders. Almost all opponents of slavery who had preceded him had recognized the propriety of compensating the slave-owners when a ransom was demanded. Mr. Bourne looked upon compensation as a compromise with oppression and sin, and labored with great energy to overthrow that as an error. Long before the earnest labors of Benjamin Lundy commenced in Western Virginia, George Bourne, as will be seen, had violently attacked the system in Central Virginia, by preaching, lecturing, and publishing tracts and books written with great earnestness and vigor. In order of sequence, of the three pioneers whose thoughts and whose labors gave tone to the modern Abolition movement, we may thus arrange them: George Bourne, 18051845; Benjamin Lundy, 1815-1838; William Lloyd Garrison, 1830-1865. To what extent Mr. Lundy may have been influenced by the labors of Mr. Bourne in Virginia does not appear, but he upheld the standard nobly until it was grasped by Mr. Garrison. The extensive acquirements, effective eloquence, and fearless courage of the earliest of these three pioneers had much to do with his success in starting the movement; yet without the conversion of Mr. Garrison to his views the doctrine of "immediate and unconditional emancipation" would not have attained as speedily its growth and its influence upon national affairs. As appears from the lucid and discriminative articles on Mr. Garrison by Dr. Dorchester, Benjamin Lundy had also made an impression upon him in favor of Antislavery principles; but, as we perceive from his

own testimony, he "felt and was inspired by the magnetism of that lion-hearted soul which knew nothing of fear," and which had for years faced danger and death in behalf of the oppressed.

HIS ANCESTRY AND BIRTHPLACE.

Rev. George Bourne was born on the 13th day of June, 1780, at Westbury, Wiltshire, England. It was his signal privilege to be descended from an ancestral line embracing some of the names illustrious as martyrs and confessors in the first annals of the Reformation and the era succeeding, and to be early placed under decided religious influences and among favorable religious associations. His father, Samuel Bourne, was for thirty years a deacon of the Congregational Church at Westbury. His mother's name was Mary Rogers, a lineal descendant of John Rogers, the Protomartyr in the reign of persecuting Queen Mary, and who was the gifted translator and editor of the Bible which he published under the nom de plume of "Thomas Mathews," supplementing and completing the work of Tindale and Coverdale. As a coincidence showing how different lines of early Reformation families united to give that remarkable development which fitted the pioneer for his work, it may be mentioned that his maternal grandmother was Mary Cotton, a descendant of Dr. Rowland Cotton, son of Rev. John Cotton, the first Puritan minister of Boston. On his father's side he reckoned the martyr James Johnston, who suffered death at the Cross of Glasgow, in 1684, in defense of "the Covenant and work of Reformation," at the time of the bloody Anglican persecution against the Presbyterians of Scotland. Here, then, were three lines of succession from men who loved the truth more than honor, or rewards, or life itself. No wonder that he stemmed the tide of slave-holders' opposition for seven years in Virginia without fear, and, sustained by Almighty power, denounced the Divine judgments upon the transgressors, which were so terribly fulfilled in the retributions of the late war. From his earliest years he manifested an aptitude for learning, and a strength of mind which gave ample promise of that power and force which enabled him to face all opposition and encounter all reproach in behalf of what he esteemed to be the truth of the Gospel. After pursuing academical studies,