the latter from the harshness or violence of the former. But will it be believed that these important functionaries are themselves large slaveowners? The very men to whose sympathies the comfort and happiness of the slave population in this extensive colony are entrusted, are rendered liable by this circumstance to have their sympathies engaged against the slaves. Their feelings and interests will be apt to be in unison rather with those of the masters than of the slaves whom it is their office to protect. This is remarkably exemplified in the case of a late fiscal of this same colony.

In November 1815, this gentleman, then acting as the fiscal or criminal judge of the colony, took it upon him to publish in the Gazette of Demerara a letter, containing, among many other things equally objectionable, the following sentiments: "I will venture to state it as my humble opinion, that the authority of the master over his Negroes, being constantly employed in minute details, and being in its nature prompt and of hourly application, is not to be encumbered with official formalities. The sudden exercise of it is indispensably necessary to keep them to obedience and their duty." "It is a power to be exercised by the proprietor as sole chief and magistrate." "It would become entirely impracticable to check and restrain the disorders, which would ripen into serious evils, if the masters were not armed with a powerful coercive force suddenly to apply the remedy. His power cannot without danger be brought into doubt or discussion: it should never be opposed or thwarted by any intermediate authority." This Fiscal goes on to deprecate, in the strongest terms, the interference of public functionaries between master and slave, and intimates that the honour of the planters is a sufficient security for the well-being of the Slaves. And who is it that thus writes? The fiscal, the criminal judge of

the colony; the very man to whom the protection of the Slaves from domestic oppression is officially committed by his Majesty. But if the criminal judge himself, the official guardian of the Slaves, ventures, openly and in the hearing of the community at large, thus to express his sentiments, what may we reasonably expect to be the views and feelings of the mass of those whom he addresses? And would it be surprising if the Slaves of Demerara, thus avowedly abandoned by their legal protector to those who could tolerate the scenes described by Dr. Pinckard, should be goaded to insubordination and revolt?

Whether this Fiscal was himself a planter, we know not: we believe he was. But if he was not, he had obviously still less temptation than he would have had in that case, thus to abandon the proper objects of his appointment. But, whatever he was, we know that the present Fiscals, as well as the Governor, are planters, the proprietors of scores or hundreds of Slaves, whom they may possibly be led to overwork or unduly to punish. What an additional motive must they in this case be apt to feel, in favour of the master and against the complaining slave? The Governor and the two Fiscals-the very individuals, we repeat it, on whose sympathy depend the happiness and comfort of the whole slavepopulation in that colony-are at this moment, and have been for some time past, considerable holders of Slaves.

Now, without pretending to say. that this circumstance has actually been productive of disastrous consequences to the Slaves, every man who is acquainted with human nature would be prepared to expect that it might exercise an injurious influence on their condition. It has been no unfrequent occurrence of late years in Demerara that gangs of Negroes have thought it necessary to repair to the Fiscal to complain, of the exactions or privations they

were enduring from their owners or managers. To such complaints it is most unquestionably the duty of the Fiscal to lend a patient and willing ear. He should be ready at least to sooth the irritation and discontent, arising even from imagined wrongs, instead of aggravating them by a stern and repulsive reception. In many cases, however, this course, we are assured, has not been pursued. The complaints have frequently been pronounced to be unfounded, and the conduct of the complainants has been condemned as contumacious. Redress has been refused; the persons deemed the ringleaders have been severely cartwhipped by an order of the judge; and the whole have been sent back, as offenders, to abide the pleasure of their exasperated superintendant. Even if a patient investigation should have shewn their complaints to have been unfounded, such a procedure as this would be altogether unjustifiable. To persons so completely subjected to the arbitrary power of their owners, or managers, the door, instead of being thus barred against them, should be widely opened by the constituted authorities to the communication of their grievances. Such a course affords to the Slaves their only hope of defence from the abuse of the tremendous power in question; and if that hope be cut off, what remains for them but bitter heart-gnawings, and desperate resolutions of vengeance. We have even been assured that the gangs of some of the very estates which have been implicated in the

recent disturbances, are of the number of those who, during the last three years, have thus complained and have thus been dealt with.

These facts are stated on what appears to be adequate authority. But as the point is of no small importance, we trust that Government will, without delay, call for the records of the proceedings of the Colonial Fiscals in their capacity of guardians and protectors of the Slaves, for the last ten years, in

CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 266.

order that it may be seen what have been during that time the mutual complaints of masters and slaves, and how those complaints have been redressed or punished.

Now, if the above be a faithful representation of the harsh peculiarities of the Demerara system of bondage, shall we affect surprise, as if some strange occurrence had taken place, at hearing of insubordination, or even of insurrection, among the Slaves? The surprise rather is, that human endurance' should be capable of sustaining such a state without convulsive efforts of a far more disastrous and sanguinary character than any which have yet occurred. And when tumult and disorder, and especially when petty plantation brawls take place, we are surely not driven, after all that is stated above, to explore the causes of them in the speeches and pamphlets of Abolitionists, or in the incendiary discourses of Missionaries. Indeed, it ought to be known, that insurrections, so called, and alarms of insurrection have been frequent in Demerara, although it has not always suited the views of the colonists either to shed so much Negro blood, in order to quell them, or to excite so loud a clamour in England respecting them, as they have done on the present occasion. But the field of observation which this remark opens is too wide to be now entered upon. The subject will be resumed in our next paper.

for devotion and for their further instruction. Things of that kind had been formerly practised only among the Puritans and Dissenters: but these were of the Church, and came to their minister to be assisted with forms of prayer and other directions. They were chiefly conducted by Dr. Beveridge and Dr. Horneck. Some disliked this, and were afraid it might be the original of new factions and parties; but wiser and better men thought it was not fit, nor decent, to check a spirit of devotion at such a time. It might have given scandal, and it seemed a discouraging of piety, and might be a mean to drive well-meaning persons over to the Dissenters. After the Revolution these societies grew more numerous; and for a greater encouragement to devotion, they got such collections to be made as maintained many clergymen to read prayers in so many places, and at so many different hours, that devout persons might have that comfort at There were every hour of the day.

constant sacraments every Lord's day in many churches. There were both great numbers and greater appearances of devotion at prayers and sacraments, than had been observed in the memory of man. These

societies resolved to inform the magistrates of swearers, drunkards, profaners of the Lord's day, and of lewd houses; and they threw in the part of the fine given by law to informers into a stock of charity. From this they were called Societies of Reformation. Some good magistrates encouraged them; but others treated them roughly. As soon as Queen Mary heard of this, she did, by her letters and proclamations, encourage these good designs, which were afterwards prosecuted by the late king.

"Other societies set themselves to raise charity-schools, for teaching poor children, for clothing them, and binding them out to trades. Many books were printed and sent over the nation by them to be freely distributed. These were called So

cieties for propagating Christian Knowledge. By this means some thousands of children are now well educated and carefully looked after. In many places of the nation, the clergy met often together, to confer about matters of learning, and they got libraries to be formed for their common use. At last a corporation was created by the late king, for propagating the Gospel among infidels, for settling schools in our plantations, for furnishing the clergy that were sent thither, and for sending missionaries among such of our plantations as were not able to provide pastors for themselves. It was a glorious conclusion of a reign that was begun with preserving our religion, thus to create a corporation for propagating it to the remoter parts of the earth, and among infidels. There were very liberal subscriptions made to it by many of the bishops and clergy, who set about it with great care and zeal. Upon the Queen (Anne)'s accession to the crown, they had all possible assurances of her favour and protection, of which, upon every application, they received very eminent marks."

Tothe Editor of the Christian Observer.

As you do not seem averse to spare an occasional column for discussing the merits and tendencies of that class of publications which, under the title of Religious Novels, are now becoming so numerous, I am induced to offer a few cursory remarks on the subject.

For the sake of perspicuity I shall first consider the lawfulness, and secondly the expediency, of such compositions.

With regard to the former of these points, there is but one ground, so far as I can see, on which religious novels, in the abstract, can be deemed unlawful; and that is, their representing things as really existing and occurring which never did exist or occur. Now I do not apprehend that this objection falls with more

weight upon a tale than upon a fable or a parable. They are all of the same nature, or rather merely different stages and modifications of the same thing; the parable is only an extended fable, the tale an expanded parable; whilst fiction enters proportionably as much into the one as into the other. Therefore, till it be shewn that fiction in a parable has nothing in common with fiction in a tale; or, this being granted, that the employment of fiction, adopted again and again by Divine Wisdom in the sacred Scriptures, cannot be allowed in a disciple of Christ; it does not appear why works of this description, simply as such, should, with one unexcepting sweep, be banished from Christian society. I am aware that other objections have been urged. They however, when closely examined, will be found to refer not to the nature but to the execution of this kind of composition; and, supposing them to be just, they prove only that religious novels may be injudiciously, or even reprehensibly, written; a misfortune common to every production from a human pen.

But it is not sufficient to establish the mere lawfulness of such works; we must proceed to consider their actual expediency; and to do this the more correctly, let us glance at man as an intellectual being. It is, says the Roman moralist, the peculiar characteristic of man to be always desiring to see, to hear, and to learn something new. He has mental faculties, and these are ever requiring objects on which to exercise their powers. But amongst the vast body of mankind there are few who have the means, the talent, the inclination, and the industry to find those objects in the cultivation of abstract science. To the generality of persons such subjects are dry and uninteresting. Their intellectual employments are to form the recreation of their leisure, not the business of their life; and, seeking not so much for knowledge as amusement, they are naturally most

attracted by what affects the passions or strikes the imagination, Hence arises that fondness for narrative, real or fictitious, in prose or in verse, which is found in every age, and in every land. There is not a single nation upon earth, the mental powers of which have been called into any degree of activity, that does not possess its popular local tales. This fact proves at once, that, while man remains the being he is, and has been from the earliest records of his manners and character, narrative, by the generality of the species, will ever be preferred to didactic composition. The latter (to revert to our own times and country) must be more or less argumentative. Now works of argument require mental exertion to be understood, and therefore are little heeded, and can have little influence amongst the numerous classes who are too young, too ignorant, or too indolent to bestow that exertion: whereas works of narrative speak in language intelligible to all, the language of fact: they are consequently read every where and by every body, in the nursery and in the library, in the kitchen and the parlour, in the city and the village. Here, then, is a most effective and a most extensive means of influencing the minds of a whole population: and how has it hitherto been employed? It has been employed in transforming active benevolence into morbid sensibility, and genuine feeling into sickly sentimentalism; in heroising some vices, and palliating almost all; in disseminating infidelity, and perverting Christianity : in a word, through this medium, sophistry, baneful excitement, and the fascinations of adventure have (with some exceptions, but they are indeed only exceptions,) been combined to enlist our sympathies on the side of iniquity, and to destroy every principle of scriptural religion and sound morality. If this be a true statement, (and the nearest circulating library will shew it to be so), surely it behoves every

well-wisher to the spiritual interests of the community, to consider how a remedy may best be provided. For my own part, I can discover no method so feasible in itself, and so likely to succeed, as to turn the battery upon the cause which it has thus far been supporting,-to oppose religious to irreligious novels. Could we so far change popular taste, that argument and precept should henceforth wear the attractions of incident, then indeed we should have little to fear from the seductions of the novelist; but for the present we must be content to adopt such measures as, if not the very best in themselves, are yet the best we are able to employ. Let it be granted that such works, even when dictated by the spirit of true piety, must

address themselves chiefly to the feelings, and can have but little direct dealing with the understanding: still there is a great point secured: the passions and the imagination are won, or at least inclined, to the right side; and this is no trifling matter in the case of a being who is oftener led by the impulses of the heart than by the And let it reasonings of the head. further be remembered, that, whatever advantage Christianity may hence derive, be it small, or be it great, is so much clear gain, obtained not from neutral ground, but from one of the most powerful resources that a crafty adversary has been able to devise, and wicked men to employ.

A Charge delivered to the Clergy of the Diocese of Limerick, at the Primary Visitation in the Cathedral Church of Saint Mary, on Thursday the 19th of June, 1823. By JOHN JEBB, D. D. Bishop of Limerick, Ardfert, and Aghadoe. Dublin: Milliken. London: Cadell. 1823. pp. 56.

It is one of the advantages of the government of the church by bishops, that their visitations in their respective dioceses give them the opportunity of comparing the state of the clergy and of their different parishes together, and of deducing from such comparison the lessons of enlarged and liberal experience. The minister of a parish, it has been well observed, is in some measure an insulated being: his view is confined to the flock over which he presides; and his habits of mind will naturally accommodate themselves to the sphere of its vision. The bishop, on the contrary, from the official documents which are furnished to him by the archdeacons

Λογοφιλοι.

and rural deans, is enabled to take a more extensive range of observation; and consequently to point out defects as well as to suggest improvements. "In the course of his official life, he is able to watch, with a most observant eye, the changes of society, the fluctuations of religious opinion, the tendencies of human passions. In a word, as his name (ETколоç) imports, he is an inspector: and it is his duty to visit, for the purpose of inspection, every part of his diocese, at least once in three years." The result of the experience thus acquired, it is customary to exhibit to the clergy in episcopal charges, containing instruction, exhortation, or admonition, adapted to the varying exigences of the times. Many such charges, not more admirable for the important counsels and cautions which they communicate, than for the impressive language in which they have been conveyed, it has been our happiness to notice in the course of our critical labours.

The Right Reverend prelate, whose