give each other the praise of humanity. But examine their standard. Who is this man of humanity? It is one who, hearing that a fellowcreature has been cruelly and wantonly murdered, goes away satisfied, because he himself has sustained no loss by the murder! An exception may be admitted in favour of a few men of enlightened minds: but the remark applies to the people, to the bulk of the community, whose prejudices are stated by lord Seaforth to be so horribly absurd, as to resist all measures for remedying this dreadful state of things. But not to detain the reader any longer with reasonings on this subject, let us proceed to the third case communicated by lord Seaforth, and which, if possible, is worse than either of the foregoing. 5. A man of the name of Nowell, who lives in St. Andrew's parish, had been in the habit of behaving brutally towards his wife, and one day went so far as to lock her up in a room, and confine her in chains. A negro woman belonging to this man, touched with compassion for her unfortunate mistress, undertook privately to release her. Nowell found it out, and, in order to punish her, obliged her to put her tongue through a hole in a board, to which he fastened it on the opposite side with a fork, and left her in that situation for some time. He afterwards cut out her tongue nearly by the root, in consequence of which she almost instantly died. This story, however, it is said, has been told differently, some affirming that the poor creature is still alive, and others that she is dead. If any thing could add to the horror which the shocking barbarity of Nowell must excite, it is this doubt existing after a lapse of some months, existing too in the minds of the attorney general and the advocate general, as to whether the poor creature was alive or dead. Were there no means of forcing Nowell to produce her? Could no inquest have been instituted to ascertain the truth or falsehood of the reports in circulation? VOL. V. NO. XXVIII. Is the neglect of this obvious duty, by the officers of the crown, to be attributed to the contagious influence of those prejudices, and of that shameless indifference to negro life, which evidently pervade the people at large? Or is it to be ascribed to this, that the laws have taken from them their constitutional power? In either case, our colonial system will stand justly chargeable with the violation, not only of every feeling of humanity, but of every acknowledged principle of justice. It will doubtless be argued, that individual instances of cruelty, like those which have been cited, are no proofs of general inhumanity, any more than the annals of the Old Bailey can be considered as exhibiting a fair view of our national character. There is, however, this very remarkable difference in the two cases, a difference which is fatal to the argument: in this country, when we read of crimes, we read of their being followed by just retribution, by severe and exemplary punishment. In the West Indies, on the contrary, we not only hear of the greatest crimes escaping with impunity, but we find the laws themselves conspiring to shelter criminals from justice: we find the most respectable and enlightened part of the community sanctioning the perpetration even of murder, by their refusal to recognize the commission of it as a felonious act. But it will be said by some West Indians, "granting the case to be in Barbadoes as you have represented it, it is very unfair to extend the charge of inhumanity to the islands generally. The legislatures of all the other islands have, by law, made the murder of a slave felony, and have besides provided various salutary regulations for the protection of slaves, which place them in a situation even of enviable security and comfort." In reply to this reasoning, it will be admitted, that the legislatures of most, if not all, the islands, Barbadoes excepted, have made the murder of a slave felony. It will also be admitted that many 2 regulations have been framed which, had they been carried into execution, must have produced a beneficial result. But so far is this from having been the case, that it may be indisputably proved, that these regulations have been attended with little or no advantage; nay, that they were never intended to be operative. The proof of these assertions will be found in the papers to which so large a reference has already been made. In the course of the last year, earl Cambden addressed letters to the governors of the different islands, requiring answers to certain questions respecting the number of slaves in the islands, the number of negroes imported and exported, and respect ing also the manner in which the different clauses of the acts for the protection of slaves had been exe cuted. To these enquiries no answer appears as yet to have been returned by the governors, either of Jamaica or the Bahama islands. From St. Vincent, Antigua, and Grenada, answers have been promised, but have not yet arrived. Now, it is worthy of remark, that had the different slave acts of these islands been complied with, no difficulty could have arisen in making the desired returns, because nothing more would have been requisite, except ordering a copy of the public records. The cause of the delay that has taken place, in the case of the islands which have been mentioned, will, perhaps, be best explained by the communications made to earl Cambden by governor Prevost, the governor of Dominica. He states, perhaps truly," that the legislature of the island of Dominica is distinguish ed by the laws it has passed for the encouragement, protection, and government of slaves;" but he adds, "I am sorry I cannot say they are as religiously enforced as you could wish; however, the treatment of the negroes depends less on the temper of the master, whose interest in his slaves' well-being is not always a sufficient check" a proposition which directly contradicts the cla morous assertions of the West Indian body. In a subsequent letter, dated the 17th of January, 1805, governor Prevost thus writes: "The act of the legislature, entitled, 'An act for the encouragement, protection, and better government of slaves,' appears to have been considered, from the day it was passed until this hour, as a political measure, to avert the interference of the mother country in the management of slaves. Having said this, your lordship will not be surprised to learn the clause seventh of that bill has been wholly neglected." Here we have honestly disclosed to us the true cause of the enactment of those slave laws which have gained the colonies so much credit for humanity with the mother country, as well as the true cause of their inefficiency. They were enacted to blind the eyes of superficial, but wellmeaning men in England, and to furnish a convenient argument to the enemies of abolition. They have been inefficient, because it was never in the contemplation of those who framed them that they should be executed. It may be fairly questioned, whether a single slave in the island of Dominica knew of those protecting clauses which were so loudly boasted of in England. The third and fourth clauses of the same act require, under pecuniary penalties, that the slaves should be convened every Sunday for divine worship, and that they should be exhorted to be baptized, and, when of mature age, to form christian marriages; and the reason assigned for the enactment is, that "a knowledge of the doctrines, and a due attention to the exercise of the duties of the christian religion, would tend to improve the morals, and to advance the temporal and eternal happiness of the slaves." The reader, however, will see what an impious mockery all this parade of legislation has been, when he learns from governor Prevost that these clauses" are not carried into effect," and that no penal ties have been levied for non-compliance with their provisions. The Rev. John Audain, rector of St. George's, thus writes on the subject: "A very few even of the free coloured people marry; and not one slave since I have been here. Why they do not I readily conceive, particularly the slaves. Their owners do not exhort them to it." Yet the law requires the owner to exhort them to it, and though it is notorious that that law has, in no one instance, been complied with, it is equally notorious that its infraction has, in no one instance, been punished by enforcing the penalty. These facts sufficiently demonstrate, that the laws for the protection of the slaves are perfectly nugatory, and do, in no degree, tend to alleviate the rigours of their unhappy condition, or to place them on a better footing as to "protection" in the other islands than that on which they stand even in Barbadoes. Eighteen years have now passed since the slave trade question was first agitated in England, and since West Indians have been holding out promises of ameliorating the condition of their slaves. These promises, it appears, have proved altogether delusive, and so they will continue until the British parliament shall abolish the slave trade, and thus oblige West Indians to reform their horrid system. For the Literary Magazine. PROGRESS OF VACCINATION IN ASIA. EARLY in the year 1801, governor Duncan, of Bombay, wrote to lord Elgin, the English minister at Constantinople, requesting him to forward a supply of vaccine matter by the way of Bagdad and Bussora; where the matter might be renewed on fresh subjects, and thus have a chance of reaching Bombay in a state capable of communicating the infection. The first supplies failed: but in June, 1802, a successful inoculation was effected at Bombay; and from this first inoculation the matter originally emanated, which has ever since been used in India. The matter sent from Constantinople was renewed by inoculation at Bagdad, and was then conveyed to Bussora, at the distance of from 30 to 35 days' journey, where it was again renewed, before it was transmitted to its final destination at Bombay. It appears that 11,166 persons were inoculated, from the period of the introduction of the cow-pox into India, in June, 1802, to the end of the year 1803. Every effort is made, both by the heads of the government and medical men, to diffuse this practice over every part of the British settlements in the east. Variolous inoculation was regularly practised by the Bramins in Calcutta, in the beginning of every year previous to 1803. They inoculated all who could pay them, regardless how near their patients were to those who either could not from indigence, or would not from principle, be inoculated; by this means spreading on every side a fatal pestilence, which annually pursued its course of misery and death. This practice, however, was at length interdicted by the police, and two seasons have passed over, without bringing with them this dreadful scourge of humanity. The mortality produced by natural smallpox in India is stated, by good authority, to be as one to three; and by the inoculated, as one to sixty or seventy, of children born of European parents. The Bramins acknowledge that they lose one in two hundred of those whom they inoculate, which is probably below the truth: but whatever estimate may be taken, it is evident that the introduction of vaccine inoculation will be the means of saving a great number of lives. Considerable pains have been taken to discover whether there were any traces of cow-pox among the cattle in India; or whether, if there were, its prophylactic powers were applied or understood; but though many are disposed to assert that the disease was known to the Bramins from time immemorial, yet this claim was never advanced till vaccine inoculation had triumphed over all opposition to it. Something more, indeed, than mere assertions was employed to establish this point; for the surgeon of a native regiment, stationed at Bareilly, got possession of a Sanscript manuscript, which contained the following paragraph on the subject: "Taking the matter (puya) of pimples (granthi) which are naturally produced on the udders of Cows, carefully preserve it; and, before the breaking out of the small pox (sitala), making with a small instrument a small puncture, like that made by a gnat, in a child's limb, introduce into the blood as much of that matter as is measured by the fourth part of a racti; thus the wise physician renders the child secure from the breaking out of the small-pox." This passage was suspected to be an interpolation; and the conjecture was proved to be well founded, by collating the manuscript from which it was taken with others. It was hoped that the Hindoos, from the veneration which they bear to the cow, would practise vaccine inoculation with ardour: but the circumstance of the prophylac tic being connected with that animal seems to have operated rather as an objection, than as a recommendation to its adoption. For the Literary Magazine. USE OF BATHING AS NUTRICIOUS. DR. FRANKLIN has advised, when a scarcity of water at sea occurs, that mariners should bathe themselves in tubs of salt water; and that he had observed, that, how ever thirsty he had been before his immersion into water for the amusement of swimming, he never continued so afterwards; and recommends the apparel of sailors being dipped in the sea, with a confidence of there being no danger of catching cold. In a narrative of the loss of a ship from the West Indies bound for Whitehaven, in 1768, the captain, after having related the distress which he and his people had endured, dwells much upon the great advantage received from soaking his clothes twice a day in salt water, and putting them on without wringing. "It was a considerable time," says he, "before I could make the people comply with this measure; though, from seeing the good effects it produced, they afterwards, of their own accord, practised it twice a day. To this discovery I may with jus tice ascribe the preservation of my own life and that of six other persons, who must otherwise have pe rished. "The hint I first gained from a treatise written by Dr. Lind, and which, I think, ought to be recommended to all sea-faring people. "One very remarkable circumstance was, that we daily made the same quantity of urine as if we had drank moderately of any liquid; which must be owing to a quantity of water being absorbed by the pores of the skin. The saline particles remaining in our clothing became encrusted by the heat of our bodies and that of the sun, which cut and wounded us, and rendered sitting very disagreeable. But we found, on washing out the saline particles, and wetting our clothes without wringing, twice a day, the skin became well in a short time: and so very great advantage did we derive from this practice, that the violent thirst went off; the parched tongue was cured in a few minutes after bathing and washing our clothes; at the same time we found ourselves as much refreshed as if we had re ceived some actual nourishment." For the Literary Magazine. THE COCKNEY DIALECT. IN turning over a late British publication, I was much amused to discover, in the peculiarities of the dialect of Londoners, a striking resemblance to those of my native city, Philadelphia. The vulgar people of London are well known by the name of cockneys, and a learned enquirer has taken the trouble to examine their dialect, in which the following examples are the most remarkable. The most striking and most of fensive error in pronunciation among the Londoners lies in the transpositional use of the letters W and V, ever to be heard where there is any possibility of inverting them. Thus they always say, Weal instead of veal; and Winegar instead of vinegar; while, on the other hand, you hear Vicked for wicked; Vig for wig; and a few others. The following little dialogue is said to have passed between a citizen and his servant : Citizen. Villiam, I vants my vig. Citizen. Vy, the vite vig in the vooden vig-box, vitch I vore last Vensday at the westry. To these may be added their use of the letter W, in the place of the letter H, in compound words; for, instead of neighbourhood, widowhood, livelihood, and knighthood, they not only say, but would even write, neighbourwood, widowwood, liveliwood, and knightwood. Nay, they have been caught in the fact; for the last of these words is so spelt in Dr. Fuller's Church History, and and in Rymer's Fœdera. This oversight cannot, however, be charged upon either of those writers; but, as they both lived in or near London, it is most probable that their amanuenses were first-rate cockneys, and that, in collating the transcripts by the ear, allowances had been made for mere pronuncia tion without suspecting error in the orthography. All that can be said upon these unpleasant pronunciations taken together is, that letters of the same organ of speech have been mutually exchanged in several languages. In the province of Gascoigne in France, the natives substitute the letters B and V for each other, which occa sioned Joseph Scaliger to say of them, "Felices populi, quibus bibere est vivere. 66 The London use of redundant negatives, in "I don't know nothing about it," or "worser and more worser;" and "mought" for might; "ax" for ask; "fetch a walk "learn" for teach; "shall us;" "summons'd" for summoned ; dry;" "his-self” for himself, and "their-selves" for themselves; "this here;" "that there;" "because why;" "ourn, yourn, hern, hisn;" a few while;" "com'd" for came 66 e; gone with;" went with ;" .99 66 gone dead;" have more said in their favour than cockneys themselves would suppose; and the sneer of the beau monde is rebutted by the sanction of respectable men, who gave the ton to our great great grandfathers. In some instances, indeed, the cockney appears, without perhaps being conscious of it, to have kept nearer to the true etymology, and to have more closely followed the genius of our language than even the courtier. A courtier will say, “Let him do it himself;" but the cockney has it, "Let him do it his-self." Here the latter comes nearest to the truth, though both he and the courtier are wrong; for the grammatical construction should be "Let he do it his-self," or, by a transposition of words, better and more energetically arranged, “Let he his-self do it." It must be allowed that the Londoner does not use this compounded pronoun, in the mode before us, from any degree of conviction; he has fortunately stumbled upon a part of the truth which the courtier has overleaped. But, |