It is now, in our opinion, sufficiently evident that this great question is once again to be forced in some shape or other upon Parliament, in the course of the ensuing session. The Clarksons, &c. are publishing new pamphlets with old contents. And Mr Brougham, in a euloge on some of these productions in the last Edinburgh Review, talks openly of the "delusive" conduct of the ministry in the matter of the Buxton debate. Mr Brougham was present at that debate, and he made one of the unanimous house which accepted Mr Canning's resolutions: but a few months have passed, and this eminent statesman has had such opportunities of examining the whole affair candidly and completely during the interval, that he has been enabled to make up his great mind, that he was one of a House of Commons that suffered themselves to be juggled by Mr Canning, in May last. Societies on societies, meanwhile, and associations upon associations, and subscriptions on subscriptions, are springing and spreading everywhere, and embryo petitions begin already to stir and quicken. Liverpool, the enlightened city of Liverpool, in former days the great mart and mainspring of the slave trade, the last that clung to that traffic, the one only place that for a season Rachel-like lamented, and would not be comforted because it was not this very Liverpool, takes the lead in supporting the wildest measures of those, whom for thirty years she execrated as her most relentless enemies. Blessed change! Salutary transformation! The slave trade of Liverpool was-the Indian free trade of Liverpool is-The days of the ultra-antiabolition spirit of Liverpool are gone by-the day of the ultra-mitigation spirit of Liverpool has dawned and grown. We live in beautiful times!

The article in the Edinburgh Re

Don Juan, Canto XII.

view is well, and on the whole temperately written. This we admit freely: because, whatever other people may do, we entertain a high respect for Mr Brougham's talents, and are always gratified when we find him abstaining from that coarse and virulent strain of language, which is one of the sins that most easily beset him, and which has indeed done more to degrade him in the general eye, than many of his more serious offences. When we have said this, however, we are afraid we have exhausted praise. The article contains no new FACTS of the smallest importance, and exhibits no felicitous application of intellect to the exposition of obscure or controverted TRUTH. It is a mere string of old commonplaces, calmly and cleverly expressedinterspersed with a few specimens of glaring, and we can scarcely believe, involuntary misrepresentation, both as to facts and as to principles of which more, perhaps, in the sequel.

In the meantime, it is our intention to direct our own readers' attention both to the true facts and the true principles, onthe consideration of which this case must be judged. We shall have, after a fair and full examination of both, no difficulty in bringing home the guilt of flagrant and systematic deviation from, and suppression of, FACTS, to those who were beaten in the Buxton debate, and, we think, about as little in shewing that all the three parties who were represented in that discomfited knot, are chargeable, either with a total blindness to the true principles of reason, as applicable to the question before us, or with the worse fault of pretending such blindness, for the purpose of diverting suspicion from the glances of a penetrating, pervading, and most unscrupulous selfishness.

The report of the debate above mentioned, published by the Mitigation Society, and enriched with the preface and commentaries of that body, has

been already more than once spoken of by us. It is, in fact, the most important publication, in every point of view, to which the present controversy has yet given rise. It is here that we can consider at leisure, the expressed sentiments of all parties-it is here that we can compare the conflicting statements, and balance the opposed arguments, of the leaders; and it is here also, unless we be very greatly mistaken, that we can most clearly detect the system of chicaneries by which the humbler tools of one side are at least suffered to back the open warfare of its chiefs. Before a new debate occurs, it were well that the old one should be thoroughly sifted and understood. The Edinburgh Reviewer distinctly charges the ministers with having conducted themselves on this occasion like hypocrites and knaves-we at least know not what other meaning can be given to the epithet "delusive" already quoted from this performance. The charge is no light one, and we venture to prophesy, that it will be effectually answered in the proper quarter. But we, in the meantime, shall take the liberty to reverse the situation of the parties, and placing the mitigators themselves at the bar, see what answer they can make to certain charges of the very same character, which every attentive and candid reader of the volume in question must have in some measure anticipated.

Our general assertion is simply this: The speakers on Mr Buxton's side are chargeable with many mistatements as to matters of fact, and the mitigation commentators still more grievously so. In proving this, we shall at least do some good; for we shall teach these persons to be more cautious the next time they come before the senate and the public: we shall probably have shorter speeches, and less triumphant annotations cura variorum. Some obstacles, at all events, will be brushed away from the threshold, and the rival champions will both come with greater ease into their true arena, and have a salutary fear before their eyes, in case they should be tempted to think of bringing any but the right weapons with them.

A word or two more, however, in limine. It is really very annoying to see the extent to which the abuse of words and phrases has been carried in the whole of this matter. Why, for

example, should we be compelled to talk of the Society for the Mitigation of West Indian Slavery? The Society for the Mitigation of the Mitre, or the Society for the Mitigation of the Duties on East Indian Sugar, would be far nearer the truth. Mr Buxton's far-famed motion about the slaves was made on the 15th of May last; Mr Whitmore's motion about the sugar followed on the 23d day of the same month. The same people-certainly the same influencefigured on both occasions. Mr Wilberforce was one of the great men on both. What have the avowed objects and views of Mr Wilberforce to do with the question about the duties on sugar?-These gentlemen are so confident of support from their own set, and from the gaping multitudes whom their sweet words command and stultify, and so certain, at the same time, that they are not to be bearded, as to the truth and essence of all their schemes, by any person, far less any party whatever in Parliament, that it is not wonderful they should venture much. And yet-if anybody had predicted a year before, that the next motion about West Indian slavery would be made in the same week with a motion about East Indian sugar, people in general would have utterly disbelieved it."No," it would have been said, "that will, to be sure, be in their minds; but you are going too far now. They are not quite so regardless of appearances; religious as they are, they are a little more wise in their generation, notwithstanding, than you seem to give them credit for."-Probably no answer would have been made to this; and yet the event has shewn itself. Say what people may, these men are not to be altogether despised. The very audacity of their proceedings half redeems their folly. This open and thorough-going reliance upon the gullibility of John Bull, shews an intimate and even intense acquaintance with the assailable points of the national character. There are two quackish ways of doing things; the conciliatory, that is, the pluckless method, of late too often adopted by those who ought to be most above it; and the bold brazen method-the method of the Bishes, the Burgesses, and the Buxtons. This last has been adopted, and with much success, by the Society for the Mitigation of the Duties on East Indian Sugar. They were re

solved to have their two debates-there were two strings to their one bow, and they must have them. They had them both, and they had the assurance to do the thing at once. They did not waste time in pumping for apologies. They did what they were resolved to do at once. The moment the one string was snapt, the other was fitted on, and tightened for the discharge. All this was as it should have been. Fas est ab hoste doceri. Would the real friends of England and of the negroes, had the wit or the courage to act upon the same principle now and then! If it were but for the sake of variety, the experiment is worth their trying-and at any rate it is but a little variety in quacking.

Since we are talking of the audacity of these agitators, we may as well exhibit one more specimen of this great quality of their logic ere we go farther. Mr Clarkson shrewdly and sagaciously illustrates the sin and horror of West Indian bondage, by asking how AN ENGLISH GENTLEMAN Would like to be made a slave of at Algiers or Tripoli-and whether, if this English gentleman had a wife and a family of daughters to partake his enslaved condition there, this would have any other effect than that of greatly increasing his misery?-And why, says he, why not talk of AN ENGLISH GENTLEMAN, since there have been instances of AFRICAN PRINCES carried off, and enslaved ?-This passage is triumphantly quoted by the author of the Critique on Clarkson's Pamphlet, in the last Number of the Edinburgh Review.

The argument is assuredly one that comes home to our business and our bosoms. An English gentleman, a member of the Society of Friends, or of the House of Commons, or, at any rate, we shall say of the Mitigation Society, is lugged out of his bed in London, and finds himself, after a brief voyage, stript to the skin, and labouring beneath a brazen sun in the field of some Bey of Morocco. His wife and daughters, torn from their piano-fortes, their Sunday-schools, their little tea-parties, and the weekly luxury of Mr Edward Irving, or Mr Rowland Hill-torn from the arms of their natural protectors and from the hope of

a decent establishment, are compelled to figure in the haram of some great Plenipotentiary; or, if their personal charms find no favour in his eyes, to spin hemp, and carry pails of water, beneath the sway of Hassan the chief of the black eunuchs. The picture is pregnant with the most appalling horrors! Marie Antoinette in the Temple, or even in the Conciergerie, was nothing to this-and yet it seems, mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur.-You, the English gentleman, can have no right to shudder-for African princes have been dealt with after the same fashion in Barbadoes.

We might "deny the butler and the coach-horse"-we might deny the "African prince"-but let it be so for the moment. What earthly relation is there between an African prince and an English gentleman? In what does the misery of a new-made slave consist? Is it not in his being carried from a good state of existence into a bad one, and in being subjected to the caprice of another, instead of enjoying the free command of his own motions? The better his previous condition was, will not his present one be the worse to endure? And is it not obvious, that if any one thing be more likely than all besides to embitter his reflections, it will be the discovery, (should such be forced upon him,) that the human being, to whose power he is subjected, stands in reality lower, everyway lower, in the scale of humanity, than himself? These are questions which we apprehend the worthy Mr Clarkson himself will have no hesitation about answering in the affirmative. And what is the consequence?-We believe we might almost save ourselves the trouble of saying a word about it.

Who is an African prince, and what is it that he has to lose? If he be a sovereign prince, (which, of course, Mr Clarkson would consider as the severest case of all,) what manner of man is he? Is he not some ferocious brutal savage, the oppressor of some benighted and most miserable horde of savages? Is he not a creature who amuses himself every day with cutting off human heads-and that sometimes with his own royal hand ?* Are not all the festivals of his reign so many solemn exhibitions of everything that

is most abominable, and most incredible to us? When he prays to the demon of his beastly worship, does he not water the holy soil with blood poured out like water? Are not his children shut up like wild colts ?-Are not his uncles—his brothers, seared in the eye-branded on the cheekmaimed-mutilated-murdered every day, amidst the grim applause of the more plebeian victims that await the brand or the hatchet of the next whim of this crowned brute? Are not his walls and his floors paved with African skulls? Are not his reins, if he has a horse, strung with African ears, noses, and viler trophies? Does any man dare to deny that such is the state of things in those African districts from which the immense majority of slaves have at all periods been abstracted? Does any man dare to deny, that their princes were, and are the chief patrons of all the enormities of that slave trade, which ceased to appear the extreme of horror, only because it could not be contemplated otherwise than with them in its foreground? Does any man dare to deny that which has been asserted by so many witnesses of the most unimpeachable veracity, that half these African princes would at this moment give even their own ears to see the slave trade re-established among them in all its pristine vigour ?-or doubt, in opposition to the celebrated taunt of Duke Ephraim himself, that for the want of that method of disposing of their prisoners of war and their victims of caprice, the banks of those unexplored and melancholy rivers are bathed at this hour in a deeper deluge

of this African blood?

Hear for a moment Mr Macleod, (in his Account of the African Prince of Dahomy :)

"In order to water with their blood the graves of the king's ancestors, and to supply them with servants of various descriptions in the other world, a number of human victims are yearly sacrificed in solemn form; and this carnival is the period at which these shocking rites are publicly performed.

"Scaffolds are erected outside the palace wall, and a large space fenced in round them. On these the king, with the white strangers who think proper to attend, are seated, and the ministers of state are also present in the space beneath. Into this field of blood the victims are brought in succession, with their arms pinioned; and a Fetisheer, laying his hand on the devoted head, pronounces a

few mystical words, when another man standing behind with a large scimitar, severs the sufferer's head from his body, generally at a single blow, and each repetition of this act is proclaimed by loud shouts of applause from the surrounding multitude, who affect to be highly delighted with the power and magnificence of their sovereign.

"His bards, or laureats, join also at this time, in bawling out his strong names (their term for titles of honour) and sing songs in his praise. These scenes are likewise enlivened by a number of people engaged in a savage dance around the scaffolds: should the foot of one of those performers slip, it is considered an ill omen; the unfortunate figurante is taken out of the ring, and his continues without interruption, as if nothing head instantly struck off, whilst the dance unusual had occurred.

rally prisoners of war, whom the king of"The people thus sacrificed, are geneten puts aside for this purpose, several months previous to the celebration of his horrid festival; should there be any lack of these, the number is made up from the most convenient of his own subjects. There are years in which they have single, and others in which they have double customs. One of the latter occurred when I was there, and an enormous number (several hundreds) were said to have fallen. But the amount, probably, was considerably exaggerated; for, as Mr Abson had dispensed with viewing this part of the ceremony, he could only judge from the report of those who were anxious to magnify the grandeur of their king, and Mr James, who, three different years, took the trouble to count the victims, never reckoned more than sixty-five, on any one occasion.

"Their bodies are either thrown out into the fields to be devoured by vultures and wild beasts, or hung by the heels in a mupractice exceedingly offensive in so hot a tilated state, upon the surrounding trees, a climate. The heads are piled up in a heap, for the time, and afterwards disposed of in decorating the walls of the royal simbomies, or palaces, some of which are two miles in circumference, and often require a renewal and repair of these ornaments.

"Adahoonza, after a successful attack upon Badagry, having a great number of victims to sacrifice, ordered their heads to be applied to this purpose. Mr Abson, in his account, says, 'the person to whom the management of this business had been committed, having neglected to make a proper calculation of his materials, had proceeded too far with his work, when he found that there would not be a sufficient number of skulls to adorn the whole palace; he therefore requested permission to begin the work anew, that he might, by placing them farther apart, complete the design in a regular manner. But the king would by no