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ing your own liberties you undoubtedly suffered much; yet, if your negroes, emulating the spirited example of their masters, were to throw off the galling yoke, and, retiring peaceably to some uninhabited part of the western region, were to resolve on liberty or death, what would be the conduct of the southern planters on such an occasion? Nay, what would be your conduct? You, who were "born in a land of liberty," who "early learned its value;" you, who, "in a word, devoted the best years of your life to secure its permanent establishment in your own country, and whose anxious recollection, whose sympathetic feelings, and whose best wishes are irresistibly excited, whensoever in any country you see an oppressed nation unfurl the banners of freedom; possessed of those energetic sentiments, what would be your conduct? Would you have the virtue to applaud so just and animating a movement as the revolt of your southern negroes? No! I fear both you and your countrymen would rather imitate the coldblooded British cabinet, and, to gratify your own sordid views, would scatter, among an unoffending people, terror, desolation, and death. Harsh as this conclusion may appear, yet it is warranted by your present practice; for the man who can boast of his own rights, yet hold two or three hundred of his fellow-beings in slavery, would not hesitate, in case of a revolt, to employ the most sanguinary means in his power, rather than forego that which the truly republican laws of his country are pleased to call his property. Shame! Shame! that man should be deemed the property of man; or that the name of Washington should be found among the list of such proprietors!

Should these strictures be deemed severe, or unmerited on your part, how comes it, that while, in the northern and middle states, the exertions of the virtuous quakers, and other philanthropists, have produced such regulations as must speedily eradicate every trace of slavery in that quarter?-how comes it, that from you these humane efforts have never received the least countenance? If your mind

* See the answer of the President of the United States to the address of the Minister Plenipotentiary of the French Republic, on his presenting the colours of France to the United States.

have not sufficient firmness to do away that which is wrong the moment you perceive it to be such, one might have expected that a plan for amcliorating the evil would have met with your warmest support: but no such thing. The just example of a majority of the states has had no visible effect upon you; and as to the men of Maryland, of Virginia, of the two Carolinas, of Georgia, and of Kentucky, they smile contemptuously at the idea of negro emancipation; and, with the state constitution in one hand, and the cow-skin in the other, exhibit to the world such a spectacle as every real friend to liberty must from his soul abominate. "Then what is man? And what man, seeing this, And having human feelings, does not blush And hang his head to think himself a man?"

The hypocritical bawd who preaches chastity, yet lives by the violation of it, is not more truly disgusting than one of your slave-holding gentry bellowing in favour of democracy. Man does not readily perceive defects in what he has been accustomed to venerate; hence it is that you have escaped those animadversions, which your slave proprietorship has so long merited. For seven years you bravely fought the battles of your country, and contributed greatly to the establishment of her liberties; yet you are a slaveholder! You have been raised by your fellow-citizens to one of the most exalted situations upon earth, the first magistrate of a free people; yet you are a slave-holder! A majority of your countrymen have recently discovered that slavery is injustice, and are gradually abolishing the wrong; yet you continue to be a slave-holder! You are a firm believer, too, and your letters and speeches are replete with pious reflections on the Divine Being, Providence, &c.; yet you are a slave-holder! Oh, Washington! ages to come will read with astonishment," that the man who was foremost to wrench the rights of America from the tyrannical grasp of Britain, was among the last to relinquish his own oppressive hold of poor and unoffending negroes.

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In the name of justice, what can induce you thus to tarnish your own well-earned celebrity, and to impair the fair features of American liberty with so foul and indelible a blot?

Avarice is said to be the vice of age. Your slaves,

old and young, male and female, father, mother, and child, might, in the estimation of a Virginian planter, be worth from fifteen to twenty thousand pounds. Now, Sir, are you sure that the unwillingness which you have shown to liberate your negroes does not proceed from some lurking pecuniary considerations? If this be the case, and there are those who firmly believe it is, then there is no flesh left in your heart; and present reputation, future fame, and all that is estimable among the virtuous, are, for a few thousand pieces of paltry yellow dirt, irremediably renounced. EDWARD RUSHTON.

Liverpool.

LETTER FROM THE LATE MR. R. SANDEMAN TO HIS FATHER.

[Concluded from our last.]

I myself remember well how cheerful and fervent you appeared upon your return from Tealing and Dundee, and notwithstanding that as I observed you got little thanks at home for such expensive journies, yet I never saw you look more cheerful than you did then. I recollect very well I have stood at the chair's back till late at night, as is usual for boys when anything new or surprising draws their curiosity; and I have had a kind of satisfaction in hearing and seeing you and the brethren that sometimes came along with you from Dundee appearing so warm and hearty in your conversing about the kingdom of Heaven; and that in the view of hardships and sufferings in this world, which you seemed to make very light of in comparison of the glorious hope set over against them.

These appearances, which seemed some way new and strange to me, sometimes affected me, and were, I think, among the first things that served to recommend Christianity to me; and from what I have heard you say about your satisfaction, in what you did for the support of that glorious cause, I was at that time led to think something like this," surely, if my father hold on his way, our bread is broken."

Now, dear Father, for your sake, I have been very free and particular with you, that if possible I might recall to your mind the impression things made upon you at that time. Thus you received the word of Jesus Christ's heavenly kingdom with joy, and endured for a while till those impressions cooled and wore off your mind; then you began by degrees to sour upon it; the deceitfulness of riches and lust of other things entered in and

choked the word, so you withered away. The disesteem of the professors, and of such as you thought godly men, was a thing you could not put up with; and though you bore it for a while, you wearied through time, and it overcame you at last. You have need to beware, therefore, that you be not ranked with those who are set forth as an example of profanity of mind in losing the blessing like Esau, who for one poor morsel of meat sold his birthright; and surely all the wealth and esteem we can gain by shifting the cross of Christ is but a sorry exchange for a man's soul, and is but a poor morsel of meat in comparison to the blessed hope that Jesus Christ hath laid up for his blessed people. There is also a very awful consequence of your apostacy with respect to others, for which, according to the Scriptures, you are accountable; for, says Jesus, "Woe unto the world because of offences, for it must needs be that offences come, but woe unto that man by whom the offence cometh." Now, your turning your back upon the truth, which you once professed with us, served to harden others, and made them speak evil of the way of truth, by reason of the bad commendation you gave it; and there were even some that took occasion to say, that if it had been a right way, such a solid Christian, as they took you to be, would not have left it; for the farther you went from that way, you were always reckoned the better Christian, by those sort of Christians who hate the truth, as it stands inseparably connected with the But remember that the esteem that is purchased at this rate from men, makes a man become an abomination in the sight of God, according to Jesus Christ's way of reckoning. Now, seeing your way serves so much to harden men against the Scripture way of following Christ, how will this agree with your so often expressing your earnest desire for the success and thriving of the Gospel, and that souls may get much good under it, and that a work of conversion and regeneration may be carried on, and that a real concern about true religion may abound more in the place where we live? I say, how shall your sincerity in this desire appear, when your way serves so much to lay an offence and stumbling block in the way of the world against the scriptural profession of the name of Christ? This, indeed, carries in it a woe unto the world, but Christ added these fearful words, "Woe unto that man by whom the offence cometh." I know that you are not free from conviction now and then of the evil of your apostacy; but you always find some pretence to remove the blame from yourself, and to lay it upon others, and you sometimes say that, if you had not been so hardly dealt with, you might have continued with us yet. But though the treatment you met with at leaving the church should appear a little too severe, yet your after-conduct, in so readily joining in the whole antichristian

cross.

worship, and with the enemies of this profession in their opposition to it, will only prove that they who dealt with you understood you a little better than you did yourself, and so behoved to take you up a little more sharply than you could then see occasion for; and their way of dealing with you evidently showed this much, that they wanted not yours but you; for if they had the least intention of making anything of you, it is a plain case that they could have made a great deal more of you by flattering you than by dealing with you in the manner they did. Now, I say, your so readily joining with the enemies of this profession, evidently proved that your heart was not with us, even before you left us. For if you had been unjustly put out of that way that you loved to walk in, you would not have chosen so readily to walk in a way so entirely opposite to it, and so heartily joining the national worship and order, which, if ever your conscience was informed about anything, you know to be very opposite to the order wherein Christ calls his people to walk. I know you blinded yourself with such vain pretences as this, that you have seen much of the Lord's presence in the ordinances of the national church, and you fortify yourself with this argument against the words of Christ that we bring to your conviction. But the apostles of Christ assure us that every spirit that does not hear their words is not of God, let it pretend to what it will; and it is certain that the Seceders, or Quakers, or even the Papists, can boast as much this way as you can do. But we are not to believe every spirit that boasts of having Christ's presence, but we are to hearken to the account that Christ himself gives of his presence, and we can only expect it there where he has promised it, and wherever the doctrine of his apostles appears teaching his disciples to observe all things whatsoever he has commanded them, he says, "Lo, I am with you alway, unto the end of the world."

And he tells us, where his disciples are gathered together in his name, with their elders and deacons, according to his institution, "there am I in the midst of them ;" and he says he walks "in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks," that is, you know, churches like the Seven Churches in Asia. I shall not weary you quoting more texts on this head, for the New Testament is everywhere full of them. Beware, therefore, dear Father, of persisting in your apostacy, for the pleasing of any sect of men, or for any worldly consideration whatsoever, for it is written, "if any draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him.”

Before I have done, I shall put you in mind of one thing, which I look upon as one main spring of your apostacy, and as it is a thing that serves to smother the convictions that yet seize your mind at times-that is, your giving more ear to my mother than to the voice of the Son of God in the Scriptures; for however