are recent in the mind of every intelli-gent person; I mean the total destruction of the slave-holders in St. Domingo, and the late nobility and royal family of France: the slave-holders of America, and the West-Indies, may see their future fate in their destruction. Notwithstanding the dreadful severity of their punishment, we see others walking in their footsteps, who destroy the happiness of the many for the ambition and aggrandizement of the few. But an equitable re-action of divine justice is at hand; the present unfortunate generation will one day give back to their cruel oppressors, with interest, the miseries they now endure. The sea is teeming with fish, the land with vegetables and animals, and the air with birds, for the use and accommodation of the human family; but, alas! the few by fraud, rob the many of their portion of these blessings, till they are cloyed with super-abundance, and of course cannot enjoy what they possess; while the poor suffer and die, for want of the necessaries of life. This is far from being speculative reasoning the misfortune is, these assertions are too true. There are millions of children now in Europe, who would joyfully and thankfully receive the food my dog refuses to eat! who are literally starved to death, in order to augment the enormous revenues of royal tyrants, and right honourable villains; while the verdant fields are crimsoned with the blood of their fathers, while fighting to maintain the power and pride of their oppressors as for the population of Asia, it is still more wretched than that of Europe. Hear what a just and judicious traveller relates on this subject. "Happy, thrice happy, would it have been for India, if it had never been visited by the commercial* tyrants of Europe." To relate the many instances of rapine, desolation, and injustice, which a lust of gain has induced them to commit, would require many volumes. Let the following ex * Such commerce is not only popular and fashionable, but counted laudable; but will God always wink at such villains? tract suffice. "Lord Cornwallis, in a letter dated 18th September, 1789, had the following remarkable words: I can safely affirm, that one third of the company's territory in Indostan, is now a jungle inhabited by wild beasts:' and Colonel Dow, a Scotch officer, who had been long in India, and who wrote the history of Indostan, thus describes the effect of their barbarity in that unhappy country. The civil wars, to which our violent desire of creating nabobs gave rise, were attended with tragical events. Bengal was depopulated by every species of public distress. In the space of six years, half the great cities of this opulent kingdom were rendered desolate; the most fertile fields in the world laid waste; and five millions of harmless and industrious people were either killed or destroyed. Want of foresight became more fatal than innate barbarism; and men found themselves wading through blood and ruin, when their only object was spoil.' This is the way the Christians preach the gospel to the Heathens!" God Thus we see how the laws of nature are inverted by those of man. supplies our wants in a thousand different ways, while man uses as many ways to destroy our comforts; God commands even the forests to produce spoutaneous fruits, for our inheritance; the earth nourishing roots for our aliment, the sheep wool to clothe us, the cow milk to nourish us, the generous dog to defend us, the docile horse to carry us, and all the wild beasts of prey to either love or fear us; in addition to which he has crowned us with capacious and comprehensive minds, aud rendered us capable of participating the delight, peculiar to the first-born sons of glory. He gives us the wings of faith, to raise us to heaven; he endues us with a subtile and sublime understanding, by which we ascertain the magnitude and courses of the stars, the periodical revolutions of the planets, as well as the annual and diurnal motion of the earth. And what is all this for? Most assuredly that we may learn from his kindness to us all, to be kind to one another. Alas! no part of the brute creation is so cruel as man! always either the victim, or the tyrant of his fellow worms; yet he alone, of all the creation, knows that God is great in goodness, and good in greatness, and that his justice governs the world; and that beneficence is the happiness of virtue, and that virtue exalts man to heaven. O! what exquisite delight it would be to me, could I convince the sons and daughters of misfortune, that they have a Father in heaven, who suffers them to be oppressed by man, in order to compel them to take refuge in the bosom of God. We see men every where paying the homage due only to God, to their kings and priests; and as a just re-action, we see always those kings and priests oppressing them, both as a punishment for their idolatry, and to bring them back to God, who is delicate in love and cannot endure a divided heart; or, to use the language of Scripture, "He is a jealous God," and will by no means wink at the sin of ingratitude. Oh! that I could prevail upon F |