but it is passing strange that those to whom the precious cause of abolition was so dear, that they only feared the immediatists would harm it, should be driven to such a course. But, after all, how can it be true, that the sympathies of the free states have been at all driven over to the slaveholder, when you shall not meet a man in a million, not even among the profligate editors of the most virulent anti-abolition papers, who will not tell you he is as much opposed to slavery as you are? Let the Christian Spectator answer it. In the mean time, for our own part, we are satisfied with the answer to be gathered from the very paragraph we have extracted. In that very paragraph, there beams out a sympathy for the slaveholder, clear as the sun at noon; but we happen to know that this sympathy is of as long standing as the periodical itself, and that it is much weaker and more restrained by right principle now than it used to be. In this very paragraph, there is a strong desire expressed to recover the name of "abolitionist," and yet the Christian Spectator surely must have taken to itself a good share of those epithets wherewith the "reformers" have "vilified" "the best of men." Here, then, see the fruit of this vilification. The Christian Spectator sympathizes more with the slave, less with the slaveholder, than it used to. In this very article, it swallows, whole, doctrines advanced by Channing, against which it stoutly rebelled when they were uttered, a few years ago, by Garrison. Why, it stands up a living monument of the falsehood of its own assertion, and the absurdity of its own philosophy. We should like to see the man who will admit that he thinks better of southern slavery now than he did five years ago.

Intelligent abolitionists have smiled at the simple ignorance of the great Dr. Channing, when he talks about the system of agitation having "proved signally unsuccessful." The Dr. truly, must have had, magnificent ideas of success, and we wonder in what cause they were ever realized, if, indeed, he had any knowledge whatever of the abolition excitement. But every intelligent observer of human nature must be still more astonished that a distinguished divine could draw the shallow inference from the wrath and bitterness excited at the South by the abolition agitation at the North, that it had "shut every ear and every heart against its arguments." True, it had shut every mouth, but is the

mouth inseparably connected with the "ear and the heart?" The pro-slavery leaders at the South view the matter differently; they have not hesitated to declare that slavery is endangered by the secret operation of the arguments of the agitators upon the hearts of slaveholders. Equally superficial is the inference, that the cause of freedom may be retarded by defences of slavery, sent forth in the spirit of the dark ages. But whatever may be the result of such defences, and of the wrath of the South, the Christian Spectator seems determined that the abolitionists shall not have the sole credit of having called them forth. "Others," says the reviewer, "who discussed the subject of slavery "before the modern doctrine of immediate emancipation was "broached, before the present system of agitation was "dreamed of, found, as Dr. Channing has found since the "publication of this book, that it is not the doctrine of im"mediate abolition only, nor the scheme of northern agita"tion only, nor a fierce denunciatory temper only, nor the "combination of all these things only, that is odious at the "South; but that every discussion of slavery, in whatever "quarter, and whatever form; every proposal for the aboli"tion of slavery, whatever the spirit in which it may be "conceived, and whatever the arguments by which it may "be enforced, is sure, if only it attracts the attention of the "South, to be met by a growl of fanatical defiance." Very true. Hence, we have argued that a certain pretended scheme of abolition, which has been received with favor in some quarters at the South, has really no tendency towards abolition, and would have been opposed no where at the South, had it every where been as well understood as by those who received it.

But we are reminded by this last extract of the Reviewer in the Biblical Repertory. He begins by a pathetic lamentation on this very subject. Most mournfully does he bewail the palmy days of by-gone hypocrisy, when slavery "was spoken of in the slaveholding states as a sad inheritance, fixed upon them by the cupidity of the mother-country, in spite of their repeated remonstrances," when the sentiments of Jefferson could be, and were, repeated in his own native state, when the subject was openly discussed in the legislature of Virginia, (as it would be again if the Southampton affair should be repeated), when Kentucky failed only by a

minority of one vote, to call a convention to amend her constitution in regard to slavery and other subjects, when two northern states instructed their Senators in Congress to vote for abolition in the District of Columbia; and when the inhabitants of the District itself petitioned for its abolition, "How altered," exclaims the reviewer, " is the present "state of the country! Instead of lamentations and ac"knowledgements, we hear from the South the strongest "language of justification. And at the North, opposition "to the proceedings of the anti-slavery societies, seems to "be rapidly producing a public feeling in favor of slavery "itself." So we should think, were we to judge the North by this thoroughly pro-slavery review in the Biblical Repertory. But what have we lost by losing those hypocritical lamentations, which had no reference to repentance and restitution? What have we lost by losing that apathy at the North, under which half a dozen Quakers could get out of any legislature whatever resolutions about abolition in the District they pleased? What have we lost by the rapid development of pro-slavery feeling among the aristocrats of the sea-board, who pocket half the profits of cotton? We have gained by all. The sage of the Christian Spectator half suspects this, and is rather jealous of our glory, while the sorrowful inditer of the Repertory, charges it upon us as a sad mischief. With great comfort we leave these theologians to settle the controversy among themselves, The one asserts that every proposal of abolition, though in the best spirit, has been sure to be met at the South "with "a growl of fanatical defiance." The other says, that, “un"der ordinary circumstances, such arguments as those pre"sented on this subject by Dr. Wayland's Elements of Moral "Science, and in Dr. Channing's recent publication, would "have been received with respect and kindness in every "part of the country." And he bases this upon another assertion, that "the same sentiments, more offensively, and "less ably urged, have hitherto been thus received."

Out of the abundance of his charity and knowledge of the matter, the Princeton reviewer characterizes the antislavery publications as made up, for the most part, of denunciation, vituperation, passionate appeals, and "gross exaggeration of the moral and physical condition of the slaves." He involves even those whose individual course he considers

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unexceptionable, in the same condemnation, because they have made "common cause with the most reckless declaimers." We wish, by the way, this honest verdict of unguarded common sense to be noted, for we shall have occasion to use it by and by. "The wildest ravings of the Liberator," continues the reviewer, "have been constantly lauded; 66 agents have been commissioned, whose great distinction. was a talent for eloquent vituperation; coincidence of "opinion as to the single point of immediate emancipation, "has been sufficient to unite men of the most discordant "character." We do not feel ourselves called upon to go into a defence of the anti-slavery publications against charges so utterly unsustained. Persons who are not as ignorant of those publications, as is probably the reviewer himself, will smile at the brazen assurance with which he copies the senseless slang of the newspaper press. This pious reviewer would doubtless have his elaborate article pass for a very dignified, philosophical, and christian production, totally unlike the "ravings" of those graceless moral Bedlamites, the immediate abolitionists. Well, it is unlike, and the difference is this. The abolitionists, when they charge an opponent, and they not seldom have occasion to do it, with gross exaggeration, reckless declamation, raving, eloquent vituperation, &c., take care to submit something in the shape of proof. They refer to the statements, or the language employed; they do not bring into court an indictment of most damnatory counts, and leave it there to prove itself. If they charge an opponent with falsehood, or, as we are sorry to say the case may be, in plain Saxon, with lying, they honestly undertake to show wherein he has lied; or if with "raving," they show that he has made incredible assertions, without attempting to sustain them. As to the charge of uniting "men of the most discordant character," we have not a word to say, only, that if the abolitionists have discovered a moral cement of so powerful a nature, it might be well for our reviewer to borrow a little of it for the use of the Presbyterian Church, of which we suppose he is a member. There is nothing like a great principle of practical eternal truth to unite discordant elements, and many professedly christian churches, for want of such a principle, come together only to quarrel.

After thus setting forth the character of the anti-slavery

publications, the Reviewer proceeds to show how deluded are the abolitionists in imitating, which he takes it for granted they do," their predecessors in England," in "a course "of measures, which, though rational under one set of cir"cumstances, is the height of infatuation under another." We suppose, on a similar principle, that, with the prophetkillers of Judea, all the prophets were "rational" men, and worthy of everlasting remembrance, except those who happened at that time to speak the truth, and to be alive, who were terribly infatuated and mistaken men! The difference of circumstances, which works so total a change as to the propriety of the means in the two cases, is simply this: in the one case, an Imperial Parliament had absolute power of legislation over slavery in the colonies, and in the other, Congress has no more power to legislate upon slavery in the States, than it has in Russia. Truly, this reviewer may reckon forgetfulness one of the best of his logical faculties, for the strength of his argument depends upon his forgetting the District of Columbia. Over slavery in that District, Congress, though much disposed so to do, has never dared to deny its full constitutional power to legislate. Now, the single object of the abolition of slavery in that ten miles square, is sufficient to warrant all the agitation that the abolitionists have ever practised or proposed. The thing is practicable, and may be carried without a single slaveholding vote. Here, then, we have a perfect parallel with the case of Great Britain, only the slaves are not so numerous, the interests involved in the immediate issue not so great, and of course the enterprise less difficult. But whether more or less difficult, the thing depends solely as it did in Great Britain, on a change in the national sentiment; and till the reviewer can prove that like causes do not produce like effects, he must admit us to be "rational" in imitating our "predecessors in England," and deriving encourage ment from their success.

But supposing that British abolition had depended altogether upon the Colonial Assemblies, and not at all upon Parliament, and supposing that the District of Columbia were not concerned in the question, we are still prepared to contend, that the system pursued by the British abolitionists, and their American "imitators," would be the only and sure road to abolition. What is the problem? To persuade