the same common schools. Even until quite grown up, in many districts they go to school together in the winter season. And yet, how seldom has any evil resulted. There are countries in Europe-it would be invidious to mention them-where such a thing could not be done with safety to their morals, and even where it is thought dangerous to allow large girls to be taught by a male teacher. We have, indeed, enough of the sin of uncleanness to mourn over; and yet, in comparison with the state of many other countries, we have great reason to bless God for the hallowed influences which His Gospel diffuses among us.* If we have many, too many, alas! among us who have not submitted their hearts to these influences, there are, on the other hand, a great many who have, and who are the "salt of the earth," and the "light of the world." people; this is emphatically true of a large portion of our population. And notwithstanding our vices, whether of native or foreign origin, there is among us a vast amount of practical and efficient goodness. We have much to learn, but I trust we shall not be slow to imitate whatever is excellent in the manners or the deeds of other nations. 4. But the last topic which I shall mention, on which we have been the subjects of more misrepresentation and abuse than any other, is slavery. On this difficult and humiliating question I cannot enter into detail. It would require a volume to say all that might be said about it, and even all that ought to be said, in order to make our position to be fully comprehended by foreigners. I can say only a few words. Slavery is an accursed inheritance which the Old World bequeathed to the New. England, France, Spain, and HolWe may be charged, as a people, with land, all contributed their respective shares being rude, and wanting in habitual polite- to its introduction and establishment in ness in our manners. Witlings who visit what is now the United States. Several us to find subjects on which to employ of the colonies remonstrated against the their pens, and with which to garnish their bringing in of slaves among them. But it worthless pages, may accomplish their was all in vain. Slavery was fastened upon ends, and carry home portfolios laden with them for the purpose of promoting the stories respecting the oddities and awk-commerce of the mother-country, Engwardness which they may have remarked among certain classes; but beneath the rough and unpolished exterior of our people there will be found much sincere benevolence, as well as many of those other enduring virtues which conduce to social happiness. We are, comparatively, a new * I have sometimes been amazed to hear the remarks of foreigners who have undertaken to be censors of American morals. A certain visitant from Europe, who has written three or four volumes about America, and has undertaken to represent the American cities as remarkable for the prevalence of prostitution, did, nevertheless, when at the dinnertable of a gentleman in the city of Philadelphia, boast of his having visited half of the houses of infamy in the city of New-York, and declared his intention to visit all the rest upon his return to that city-as a matter of curiosity, as he said! A young gentleman, who resides in a city not one hundred miles from that in which this work was written, lately visited America, and spent two years there. On his return home, he spoke disparagingly of the religious state of the country, and charged the merchants of Philadelphia, and especially those of the respectable body of Friends, with being extremely loose in their morals, and unfaithful to their conjugal relations. And yet this same young man boasts of his having given, when among a tribe of Indians on our borders, a rifle to a chief in exchange for his daughter; and that, after he had lived with her as his wife for three months, he abandoned her! The wickedness of such persons is not so wonderful as their intolerable insolence in undertaking to misrepresent and slander a whole people. But so it ever will be bad men seek to hide their own infamy in charging others with the sins of which they are themselves guilty. † Among other charges brought against the Americans is one which I must not omit to remark upon. It is, that they have no discipline in their families; that their children grow up in insubordination, pride, insolence, and want of respect for old age and parental authority. All this is inferred from the re land. And when the struggle came, by which the colonies were dissevered from Great Britain, slavery was one of the causes which led to that event; and of all the portions of the Declaration of Independence, as it was originally drawn up by Mr. Jefferson, the most severe was that ports of foreigners (who, generally, have had no very good opportunities of knowing the interior life of the families which they may have visited), or from some poor specimens of American families which have gone abroad, or from what they suppose must be the effects of Republican institutions; just as if Republican institutions will not tolerate, or, rather, do not require, due subordination and discipline. Now it is not to be denied that there are weak-minded and foolish parents in America, as well as in other countries, who do not govern well their children, but it is their own fault, and not that of the institutions, religious or political, of the country. On the other hand, we have parents, and not a few, who are as rigid in the government of their children as are the Scotch themselves; we have few teachers who cannot, or who do not, punish their scholars with the rod, if need be; there is not a college in the land that would not, without a moment's hesitation, expel from its halls the sons of the greatest men in the nation, if they deserved it, as I have myself witnessed. In our army, it is true that it is no longer allowed to flog men, save as a commutation for the punishment of death; but other and severe modes of punishing, though less degrading, are permitted. While in our navy, the discipline, I believe, is the most severe in the world. Recently the commandant of a petty brig of war hung up three men for alleged mutiny under the most remarkable circuinstances, one of whom was a son of one of the first officers of the government. This instance was summary in its nature, quite without a parallel; and how was it borne by the nation? The overwhelming majority of the people, including almost the whole of the religious portion of them, approved of the act. Would such things be tolerated in a nation in which there is no domestic government? I think not. which related to the slave-trade.* As opposition was made to it by some of the members, it was stricken out in order to secure entire unanimity. lost upon us. It has given a great impulse to the moral movement which is steadily going on in the community. It is true that, as slavery is by our Constitution left to the government of each state in which it exists, to be managed by it alone, there can be no such action among us as that of England, by which the overthrow of slavery in her dominions was effected at a blow. It is in the midst of us; it is not at a distance. Its destruction with us can be accomplished only by those whose pecuniary interests are at stake for its maintenance. This point foreigners should well comprehend. It is the slaveholders among us, that is, the inhabitants of each slaveholding state, who alone can overthrow it. This it is which makes our position so difficult. The war of independence found slavery existing in all the thirteen colonies. During its progress, or soon after its close, the original four New-England States, Massachusetts, New-Hampshire, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, abolished slavery within their respective limits. Some years later, Pennsylvania, New-Jersey, and New-York followed. In process of time Vermont and Maine, in New-England, and Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan, in the West, were formed into states without slavery. To these we may add the two Territories of Iowa and Wisconsin. On the other hand, the six original slaveholding states, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Caro- I am of opinion that it will require many lina, South Carolina, and Georgia, remain years to efface this dreadful evil and burnsuch to the present day, and to them have ing disgrace from the midst of us. It will been added, in the West and Southwest, require long and persevering efforts on the the States of Kentucky, Tennessee, Ala- part of good men, and a large amount of bama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Missouri, Ar- that "wisdom which cometh down from kansas, and the Territory of Florida. And above." But of one thing I feel very sure : the number of slaves has augmented from it is, that although some may act rashly, about 600,000, at the close of the Revolution, to nearly three millions. How and when the abolition of slavery is to be accomplished in these thirteen states and one territory, is a question which no one can answer. It may not be amiss for me to say, however, that this mighty task will never be effected peaceably but through the influence of Christianity. This has accomplished all that has hitherto been donethe destruction of slavery in seven states, and the prevention of its entrance into six or eight more; the abolition of the slavetrade before any other nation had done anything on the subject, and the declaring of it to be of the nature of piracy, and as meriting the same punishment. And however desperate the struggle may prove to be, she will not shrink from it. The noble example of England in abolishing slavery in her islands will not be * It was in these words:" He (the King of England) has waged cruel war against human nature itself. violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people, who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to more miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where men should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his prerogative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished dye, he is now exciting these very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he also has obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another." and sometimes attempt to promote the cause by unwise measures; and others may be too supine, and, through fear of evil consequences, not come up to its help as they ought; although both these parties may charge each other, and perhaps justly, with so acting as to retard the work, yet there is a growing dissatisfaction with this great evil, a conviction that it ought and must be terminated as speedily as possible, consistently with the true interests of all concerned, which will one day lead to its overthrow. I do not know how it will be brought about, but Christianity will effect it. God-our fathers' God-invoked more and more earnestly, as I am sure he is, will, by his providence, open the way for this great achievement. To this great struggle, which Christians with us must carry on-let it take what course it may-in order to be successful, we are far from wishing our brethren of other lands to be indifferent.* We want to do good among us, when made in the spirit of a * The visits of foreign philanthropists cannot fail great and a good man who lately came to us from England,* who travelled throughout all our states, and "reasoned of righteousness, temperance, and judgment to come," who, though he neglected no opportunity to speak of the wrongs done to the slave, slaveholder, for he spoke words of mingled wisdom was ever heard with respect and attention by the and love. And when he had accomplished his mission and returned to his native land, he addressed a series of letters to one of our most distinguished statesmen on the subject of slavery, and especially on the effects of its abolition in the British West India Islands, which have been widely and attentively the Society of Friends, and who, with his excellent brother * Mr. Gurney, a distinguished member and minister of and sister (Mrs. Elizabeth Fry), is one of the brightest ornaments of humanity. their sympathy and their prayers. We in relation to this subject. Now I have wish them to make a proper allowance no disposition to say that the American for the difficulties of our position; and churches have done all that they ought to while they reprove our delays and stimu- do, that they feel all the solicitude, and late our zeal, we wish them to do it in a distress, and sorrow, which they ought for Christian spirit, not only because it best the continued existence of this great evil. comports with the religion which we both There is nothing more probable in itself profess, but also because of its influence than that our churches should fail of comupon those among us who are slavehold- ing up to their whole duty on this subject, ers, the great majority of whom are not more than on almost any other, when we religious men. It is easy to grow indig- consider how they are situated. I do not nant on this subject, and indulge in hard say this by way of apology, but to state epithets; but the "wrath of man worketh the case truly. But to accuse our churchnot the righteousness of God." There are es throughout the land with approving of those abroad who see no difficulties in our slavery, because, in some parts of the position; to whom the fact that slavery is country, they think they are compelled to entwined about our very vitals, so far at tolerate it as an evil from which circumleast, as one half of the country is con- stances do not at present allow them to cerned, is of no importance; and who extricate themselves (and this is the most vainly imagine that it is enough to de- which can be said against them on this mand that every slaveholder should let his point), is going beyond the bounds of slaves go free. This, indeed, is a very Christian charity. Besides, to charge all simple way of getting rid of the evil; and the American churches, as well as those if it were practicable, it would be well in the fifteen states and territories in which enough. So if all mankind would at once slavery is unknown, as those in the thirof their own accord give up their rebel- teen states, one territory, and one district lion against God and yield a heartfelt obe- in which it does still exist, with the sin of dience to Him, this world might be deliv-"robbery," "man-stealing," etc., is to be ered from sin without the toil of preaching the Gospel, and the employment of so many other instrumentalities which are now found to be necessary. And if all the men in the United States who were engaged in the manufacture and sale of intoxicating liquors twenty years ago had, of their own accord, or upon being simply requested or commanded, abandoned their wicked business; and all who drank such liquors ceased to do so from the same influence, there would have been no need of all the labour and expense which it has cost to promote the cause of Temperance among us. But how vain it is to talk in this way! To overthrow slavery in the United States is a great work-the greatest and most difficult, I hesitate not to say, that ever man undertook to accomplish. And there is nothing but Christianity, employing its blessed influences, LIGHT and LOVE, which can effect it. A good deal of time, and a great deal of patience and prudence will also be required, if we would see this evil come to an end in a peaceful guilty of something more than a mere want of Christian charity. Nor are some other denunciations of a sweeping nature much less unjust or injurious. "Let America," said a distinguished Christian minister whom we all love, at a missionary meeting in one of the great capitals of Europe, a few years ago, "let America wash the stain of slavery from her skirts, and then she will be worthy to come up and join us in the great work of converting the world." Indeed! and must our American churches be compelled to abstain from attempting to obey the command of their risen Saviour-and which may be one of the means of staying, if not averting the divine wrath, which would otherwise overwhelm their guilty country-until their land be freed from slavery? And if they are to be condemned for national sins which they have not been able to overcome, where are the churches which are to cast the first stone at them? Shall it be those of England, or France, or Holland? Blessed be God, our heavenly Father does not use such language towards us. He deigns to bless our humble efforts to make known his Gospel to the heathen nations, notwithstanding our many sins; nor does He forbid our co-operating with those who love his name in other lands to make known this great salvation to all men. Still more, He condescends to visit the churches in all parts of our land with the effusions of His Holy Spirit, without which, indeed, we might well despair of our country. But sympathy, love, prayer, and co-operation better become those who love God in all lands, than crimination and recrim ination. They form one vast brotherhood, England's sweetest religious bard,* with and their trials, their labours, and their which we bring this book to a close : hopes are common. Neither difference of "Come, then, and, added to thy many crowns, language, nor separating oceans, nor diver- Receive yet one, the crown of all the earth, Thou who alone art worthy! It was thine sity of government and of ecclesiastical By ancient covenant, ere Nature's birth; organizations, nor variety of modes of worAnd thou hast made it thine by purchase since, ship, can divide them. They have their And overpaid its value with thy blood. various difficulties to encounter, and their Thy saints proclaim Thee king; and in their hearts respective works to perform. And how Thy title is engraven with a pen they should delight to encourage each other in every good enterprise, rejoice in each other's success, stimulate and reprove each other (when reproof is necessary) with kindness, and not with bitterness; and thus strive to hasten the universal triumph of the kingdom of their common Lord! And how appropriate to them is the prayer of Dipped in the fountain of eternal love. * Cowper-The Task, book vi. America (see North America). Camp-meetings, origin and nature of, 216. Charters of American Colonies, curious character Cheever, Rev. G. B., extract from lecture of, 319. Americans, best method for obtaining correct knowl-Christ-ians, origin and belief of the, 280, 281. American Revolution, effects of the, on religion, 102. 66 66 Tract Society, operations of the, 167. Christianity, happy influence of, on public order, Christianity, only remedy for slavery in the United 265, 269. 66 Prison Discipline Society, 174. the, 140. Churches, evangelical, missionary efforts of the, 317. Home Missionary Society, operations of Church, relation of unconverted men to the, 187. 66 66 union of, with State gradually dissolved, 104. Church edifices, how built in cities and large towns, Church edifices, how built in new settlements, 134. 324. number annually built in United States, 324. Church edifices, average size of congregations in, 324. Atonement, doctrine of, illustrated by American Colonists, religious character of the early, 51, 52. Ballou, Rev. H., work of, on the Atonement alluded Banditti, no organized hordes of, in United States, Colonization Society, history of the, 314. 66 66 66 at Plymouth, account of the, 47–51. Roger Williams not the founder of the, Colony at Plymouth, causes of aversion of, to prel- |