of gunpowder were brought into action, the troops were landed ignobly armed, as we read, with lucifer matches, to ignite the standing remnant of the place; but from behind the smoking ruins they received so murderous a negro fire that, after seventyto the rout three killed, wounded, and missing, they fled to the ship, and got back to Sierra Leone with all possible despatch.

British

troops put

at Binty,

Africa.

Now, from this statement it is abundantly clear that the expedition was rashly, and even unnecessarily undertaken, inadequately provided, cruelly and barbarously conducted, and in every way grossly mismanaged. To negotiate a treaty three ships of war and 500 men were sent; to enforce its provisions one ship and 150 soldiers. Punishment, degenerated into vengeance, was ment dege- pursued with rashness, and fell into a retributive ambuscade. Such were the military errors. any military expedition at all.

Punish

nerated

into

vengeance and fell

into retributive

Unex

ampled

But we can see no grounds for Commerce was in no danger

that is clear: for even after the extreme provocation of the attack ambuscade. upon and the burning of their town, not even when all their pas sions were excited, did the natives offer the least insult or molestation to the English traders in the river; they gratified their anger by barbarous reprisals on two of their prisoners; but though property to the value of £150,000 was at their mercy, they so entirely respected it that the English merchants, immediately after the affray, went in a body to return their thanks to the negro chief whose town had been so barbarously destroyed. This is a pregnant fact, highly illustrative of the friendly spirit generosity of both chief and people, and also strongly suggestive of the and forbear folly and wickedness of the hostile expedition, at once the cause ill-treated and object of so much suffering. Nor, in all probability, will the matter end where the news leaves it; for the mulatto Governor of Sierra Leone has of course sent off to the Commodore for reinforcements, and by next mail we may expect accounts of a new expedition up the Malicaurra; though, to save his people from another assault of the kind, Bamba Mimah Lahi has patriotically abdicated in favour of his brother; and the chief missionary at Sierra Leone, less bellicose than his brethren on the coast generally, had, from the pulpit of "St. George's Cathedral, Freetown," endeavoured to soften the Governor's heart.

ance of an

African

chief.

Baba
Mimah

Lahi an
African
Patriot.

The time has surely come to put an end to all these follies on the western coast of Africa, where gunpowder and philanthropy have too long ruled the roast. At one moment we permit a false sentiment to promote and encourage insubordination,

He

Gold Coast was pre

sided over

by the late

Mr. Mac

irregularities, and disregard of good faith, and then a long period of inaction is followed by measures of precipitate coercive severity. The negrocs are first allowed to get saucy through impunity, and then they are chastised with barbarity. The cause of this is that, with rare exceptions, the right man is never placed in the right place in our African settlements. When the Gold Coast was presided over by the late Mr. When the Maclean, none of those collisions ever occurred there. thoroughly understood the native character, pursued and rectified it through all its phases, won the respect and regard of the tribes around him, made his influence felt at the hostile court of Kumasi, and left the British possessions and the country ment of the generally in a state of prosperity, from which it has since steadily declined, until now the chiefs, teased and tormented by Misappro a poll-tax, the produce of which has been misappropriated the poll-tax by the British authorities, are becoming hostile and dangerous, by the the roads into the interior unsafe, and a new war with Ashantee will surprise no one acquainted with that part of the coast. And just as it is at Cape Coast Castle so we have seen it is at Sierra Leone.-Examiner, July, 1855,

lean, barba

rous treat

natives did not occur.

priation of

British au

thorities at

Cape Coast

Castle.

GAVAZZI ON THE PAPAL INQUISITION.

LAST night Sig. Alessandro Gavazzi delivered a lecture in Falcon-square Chapel, on "The Inquisition, Past and Present," for the benefit of Silver-street Sunday Schools.

Dr. Ben

The chair was occupied by the Rev. Dr. Bennett, pastor of The Roy the church, who briefly introduced the lecturer. He said, we were happily, as a nation, ignorant on the subject of the Inquisition, and we were now about to get our information in a pleasant manner, viz., without experience.

nett's ignorance of there being still an Inquisition in England!

Great King

not reli

Sig. Gavazzi commenced by observing, that the first gift of The first God to man was-not religion, but liberty-liberty to choose gift of the his religion. Where there was most liberty, there would pure to man was religion flourish; but the Church of Rome, which allowed the gion, but least liberty of any church, was, therefore, the least Christian of liberty. any church. If enlightened English Catholics saw, in this country, what was the daily teaching and practice of the Roman Catholic Church in his country-Italy-they would forsake that faith at once. One of the principal oriental scholars of the day had published a book, even with official sanction in Rome, in

Y

Romish pluckers of truth from

the sacred

code, to make it prove Popery.

of Rome not

the true Church of Christ.

Roman
Catholic

clergy with

sition are

which he pointed out 750 vital alterations made by the Roman Catholics in their version of the Bible. These alterations were necessary to make the Bible prove Popery. But, without force, Popery could not stand; it would not last without those penal and compulsory measures of which the Inquisition was the representative. By the use of its inquisitorial powers and punishments the Roman Catholic Church showed itself to be deficient in the most important requisite and qualification for a The Church church-it wanted charity. Christ told his followers that, as the world had persecuted him, so also it would persecute them. The true Church was always persecuted, and never persecuting; the Church of Rome was always persecuting, and never persecuted; the Church of Rome, therefore, was not the true Church of Christ. Protestants, it was true, had persecuted, but it was only with them a temporary affair-with the Church of Rome, however, it had been a ceaseless and changeless system. Christ said, "I send you as sheep amongst wolves "-it was a mission of mercy and of charity; but the Roman Catholic clergy, with their Inquisition, were wolves amongst sheep, and not sheep their Inqui- amongst wolves. They were worse than wolves, they were tigers, hyenas, monsters. The Inquisition had invented and practised fourteen different kinds of torture. The Roman Catholic clergy, who took no part directly in the proceedings of the Inquisition, yet sanctioned them, as tending to purify and strengthen the church. Romances and novels were not necessary, or even desirable, to show what the Inquisition was. He advised them not to use Protestant works in this controversy, because they were of no weight with the Roman Catholics, and because there was a great abundance of evidence in Roman Catholic works which they could not repudiate. He quoted from the Lucerna Inquisitorum, an officially published book in Rome, which gave an account of these fourteen tortures. This was a book written by an old inquisitor, for the instruction of young ones. When Roman Catholic priests came to them with a sanctified look, let them remember that they belonged to a class which was guilty of these atrocities. The first class guilty torture was called "The Queen of Tortures"-it was the torture of the rope. The victim, with 100 lbs. weight attached to his of Tortures, feet, and his hands tied behind him by a rope, was raised with that rope on a pulley, and when hoisted up to the ceiling, he was suddenly let down almost to the floor, which entirely dislocated his arms. This torture had ceased only within his memory.

like unto wolves amongst sheep.

Roman Catholic priests belong to a

of atroci

ties.

The Queen

alias the amusement of the Pope.

and its

He next described the torture of the wheel and the torture of the water. The latter was very horrible-he wished to horrify them, and to induce them to horrify their friends and children, so as to prevent the establishment in this country of a church which could be guilty of such atrocities. The lecturer gave a highly graphic description of the more prominent of these modes of torture, which caused a thrill of horror to pervade the whole assembly. One of them was the dropping of water from the ceiling upon the head. This constant dropping took off first the hair, and then the skin, and then the skull, and then-the first drop which touched the naked brain relieved the poor miserable wretch from his sufferings. The Inquisition was called The "Holy' "Holy." There was an ocean, renowned for its storms, which Inquisition was called the Pacific Ocean-there was a cape, notorious for uses. its shipwrecks, called the Cape of Good Hope-and the Devil himself was called an angel of light. In just this sense was the Inquisition "holy." But some might say, that the Inquisition which had done all these horrible things was not now in existence, as sanctioned by the present amiable Pope. What, however, was the fact? The Inquisition was still in existence, and that "angel," that "father of his people," Pius IX., once Pope every week, as "First Inquisitor," presided over it! Let them Pius IX, not say, that the Inquisition in England was an impossibility! quisitor," The people that could not prevent the Papal hierarchy from of his parcelling out their country, were not likely to prevent their people. doing anything else. In fact, everything was possible to the cunning and perseverance of Rome. The Tractarians were paving the way for the Inquisition; they gradually depressed English the Church of England, and elevated the Church of Rome, and when the two came to a level in the country, they would give to Rome the precedence, on the score of antiquity. If they would not have the Inquisition, therefore, let them crush the snake of Tractarianism in the head. The only remedythe only safety-for England, was the free Bible, and the Bible alone-the Bible in the pulpit, in the school, and at the fireside. Without the Bible they were undone, and he prayed that God might bless them in the study of it. Signor Gavazzi then sat down amidst great applause.

A vote of thanks was unanimously passed to him for his able lecture, and the meeting separated.-Morning Advertiser, 10th April, 1856.

"First In

and father

are paving the way for

Tractarians

the Inquisition.

The snake is to

Tracta

be crushed

in the head.

Patriotic liberality of the guardians of Cosford

A TRUE STORY OF THE CRIMEAN WAR.

(To the Editor of The Times.)

SIR, John Johnson, late a private soldier in the 95th Regiment, received a gun-shot wound at Inkermann, and died in the hospital at Scutari.

His mother, a poor widow, living in the parish of Preston, in the county of Suffolk, was in the receipt of 2s. 6d. per week from the guardians of the poor of the Cosford Union. About a Poor-house. fortnight since the arrears of pay due to her deceased son, amounting to the sum of £1. 12s. 10d., were received by her, immediately upon learning which the guardians of the Cosford Union, in the exercise of their patriotic liberality, stopped the weekly payment to the widow, alleging that she could no longer require their assistance while she had the money referred to in her possession.

Sir, is it thus the wealthy of England should testify their sense of the valour of her lowlier sons?

Your obedient servant,

Lavenham, Suffolk, March 15, 1856.

P. H.

William the

THE BISHOPS' COURTS.

AN APPEAL TO THE BRITISH NATION.

BRETHREN, They were established as a separate and indeConqueror. pendent order of jurisprudence by William the Conqueror, soon after possessing himself of the English throne, as a return in part for the influence the Church of Rome had rendered him in dispossessing the rightful monarch.

Code of

maintained.

They are governed by a code of laws purely their own. The laws of the people of this country had no voice in making them; but they English Inquisition have emanated from popes, councils, or synods. Every one is, however, bound by their authority. Were the clergy alone interested in their continuance or removal, there would be sufficient data to justify their immediate extinction; but all classes of the laity are placed under their baneful influence, and almost daily suffer from the extraordinary powers with which they are armed. The fact that the State has one set of laws