ceedings. Our object in making this extract has been, to furnish our readers with the key to the more plausible and insidious article which appears in the same Number, on the Con'dition of the Negroes in our Colonies,' written by a far superior hand, but yet breathing a kindred spirit, and directed to a common object.

The main position which this Writer aims to establish is, that the statements given to the public and to Parliament by the advocates of abolition are fundamentally erroneous;' that the negroes are not overworked, ill-treated, or oppressed; that many of them are affluent; that, in several instances, a planter has found no difficulty, when pressed to make a payment, in raising a loan among his own negroes; that Mr. Wilberforce and Mr. Buxton, having never seen the West Indies, and Mr. Stephen and Mr. Macauley, not having been there since a remote' period, can know little or nothing about the present state of things in our Colonies, their speeches and publications being applicable only to what existed twenty years ago! What means of information,' then, does this Reviewer possess, which entitle him to take this high ground of superior knowledge? Is he fresh from the West Indies? Let us hear his own account of the sources from which he has derived these marvellous representations.

Much of the information which we at present address to our readers, proceeds from members of the established church, acting as curates or missionaries in the different parishes of Jamaica. In one of these, situated in the east part of the Island, no less than seventeen communion-tables were last Easter filled by people of colour and blacks. Many negroes, says a clergyman writing from the central part of Jamaica in January last, have during the last year been joined in marriage, and many induced to attend regularly at public worship.' p. 506.

These facts, admitting them to be such, will be deemed but a slender foundation for this Writer's broad assertions. If this is a specimen of his peculiar information, he needs not boast of the monopoly. We do not, we must confess, clearly understand, how seventeen communion-tables could be filled in one parish, at one time, according to the customs and order of the Church of England. This one parish must have something peculiar attaching to it. Possibly, the informant is speaking of Methodist communicants, which, from the returns made to the Conference, are ascertained to be, in the Jamaica district alone, nearly 8000. Of this number, however, more than one half are computed to be free persons; and it behoved this clergyman to state, what proportion of slaves were among the

persons who filled these communion-tables. But with regard to the subject of negro marriages, we have but a very unfavourable specimen of clerical evidence, in an intemperate pamphlet recently published in reply' to Mr. Wilberforce, possibly by one of this Reviewer's correspondents,-the Rev. G. W. Bridges, Rector of Manchester in Jamaica. This gentleman boldly meets with a positive contradiction, Mr. Wilberforce's statement, that no attempts have been made to introduce among the slaves the Christian institution of marriage; stating, that he had himself married 187 couples of Negro slaves in his own parish within the last two years, all of whom had been encouraged by their owners to marry. In another parish, St. Thomas's in the East, three times that number are stated to have been married during the incumbency of Mr. Trew, the present rector; and the labours of the clergy in the remaining nineteen parishes are affirmed to have been equally active. This sounds well; and for once, it would seem that Mr. Wilberforce must have been misled, by speaking of things as they were twenty years ago. But the official returns, taken in connexion with the assertions of the Rev. Mr. Bridges, have led to a singular disclosure.

'On looking to the returns recently laid on the table of the House of Commons, from Jamaica, of" marriages legally solemnized between Slaves since the 1st of January 1808," down to 1822 inclusive, we find (p. 130.) that in the parish of Manchester not a single such marriage was celebrated prior to 1820. In 1820 five marriages took place; in 1821, three; and in 1822, none. Mr. Bridges must have written bis "Voice" in April or May 1823. The expression," within the last two years," could therefore have extended no farther back than the beginning of 1821. But the official return of marriages from the beginning of 1821 to the 17th of March 1823, is only three. No less than 184, therefore, of the 187 marriages solemnized by Mr. Bridges between slaves, in his own parish, "within the last two years," must have been subsequent to that date. We may well ask, therefore, with a writer in THE TIMES of the 26th August 1823, who adverts to this very statement in the pamphlet of Mr. Bridges, "What can have given birth to this new and ardent zeal in the extension of marriages? Was it owing to the suggestions of Mr. Wilberforce's pamphlet, which had just then made its appearance in Jamaica? Or were these 184 marriages thus suddenly got up in order to furnish a con venient practical refutation of his statements?" What may have been the" active labours of the clergy" in the other parishes, we have no means of knowing: but we do know that in most instances their labours have been "crowned" with much "the same success" as attended those of Mr. Bridges prior to the appearance of Mr. Wilberforce's Appeal. He was himself rector of St. Dorothy's before he removed to Manchester; but during his incumbency not a

single marriage appears to have taken place. Before 1820 no marriage of Slaves had occurred in that parish, and from 1820 only three. In many of the other parishes the rectors have been equally unsuccessful. From two parishes there are no returns-viz. St. Catherine's and Westmoreland: the returns in fourteen years from some of the others are as follow:

• St. John's Parish............... One Marriage.

St. Thomas in the Vale......... None.

It must be kept in view, that the average slave population of each of these parishes, is upwards of 16,000 souls. On the face of the returns made to the House of Commons, it would appear that, within the last fourteen years, 3,596 legal marriages had been celebrated between slaves in the island of Jamaica. We again avail ourselves of the comment on this statement, supplied in the Appendix to the Debate, the whole of which we cannot too strongly recommend to the attentive perusal of our readers.

The first thing to be observed in this return of marriages is, that, small as is their number (about 250 annually in a population of 340,000), they are almost wholly confined to parishes where the Methodists have formed establishments. Many of the other parishes, and among them some of those where wholesale baptisms have been most numerous (Hanover, for example), have not a single marriage of slaves to exhibit. The authorities, therefore, who furnished this return, ought to have told us how many of these 3,596 marriages were performed by the regular clergy; or whether the whole were Methodist marriages, and of course not legal or binding marriages. At the same time, we are not aware that the mere circumstance of the ceremony having been performed by a clergyman, would make that a legal and binding marriage which has no sanction in law, and no protection from it.

The authorities in the other islands are much more open and explicit in their statements. In Trinidad, the marriages of slaves are said in thirteen years to have been three in Nevis, Tortola, St. Christopher's, Demarara, Berbice, Tobago, Antigua, Montserrat, Barbadoes, St. Vincent's, Grenada, and Dominica, (with the exception of sixty marriages stated to have been celebrated in the Roman

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Catholic church) the return is absolutely none!! Now as in some of these islands, and especially in Tortola, St. Christopher's, St. Vincent's, Antigua, &c. the Methodists have obtained a large number of converts; and as they require of their converts to abstain from polygamy and promiscuous concubinage, and to enter into a solemn engagement to live together as man and wife; if such engagements could have been regarded as legal marriages, we should have had the list of such marriages, instead of being returned nil, boasting a much larger proportion than even Jamaica itself.

The clergymen of Grenada are very candid on this point." The legal solemnization of marriage between slaves in this island," says the Rev. Mr. Nash," is a thing unheard of, (unheard of!); and if I might presume to offer my sentiments, would, in their present state of imperfect civilization, lead to no beneficial result." We should be glad to know from Mr. Nash, in what part of the world, however rude and uncivilized, except in the West Indies, marriage does not prevail, and produce beneficial results. Can he point out any results which could flow from it, which are half so bad as those which attend the present system of brutified concubinage? He thinks he can; for he goes on, in a strain of disgusting sentimentalism (disgusting, when so employed), to give us his reasons for so extraordinary an opinion from the pen of a Christian minister. "Their affection for each other," he says, "if affection it can be called, is capricious and short-lived: restraint would hasten its extinction; and unity without harmony is mutual torment!" These absurd and ludicrous reasons would be equally valid for getting rid of the marriage-tie in England as in the West Indies.

To the other two clergymen of Grenada, Mr. Macmahon and Mr. Webster, no application had ever been made to marry slaves. Neither Mr. Macmahon, during his ministry of thirty-seven years in English colonies, nor Mr. Webster, during his incumbency of twelve years, had ever heard of such a thing. In the opinion of the latter, "the slaves appear to prefer a state of concubinage, from which they disengage themselves at will." Doubtless many even among ourselves would be of the same mind, if the laws would allow them to indulge their natural propensities.

The clergymen of Antigua write in a similar strain. The Rev. Mr. Coull states, that for forty-three years, during which he had been rector of St. George's, no one had ever applied to him to marry slaves but in one instance, and with that application he did not comply. He states incidentally, that there is a penalty of 501. for marrying a free person to a slave. This law should be called for. Mr. Harman, the rector of St. John and St. Paul, observes, that there is not any such occurrence as the marriage of slaves on record in either parish, such marriage "having been invariably considered as illegal."" Nor is it easy," he adds," to conceive how so solemn and binding a contract can possibly be entered into by persons who are not free agents.", Mr. Harman seems not to have been aware that the villeins in England married, and were protected in their connubial rights; and that the Negro slaves in the Portuguese and

Spanish colonies, and the slaves in Malabar-in short, in all parts of the world, with the exception of the West Indies-enjoy the same privileges.

The Rev. W. T. Austen, a minister of the Church of England officiating in Demerara, states that the marriage of slaves is a thing unheard-of in that colony; and "I humbly conceive" (he says)" this holy institution to be altogether incompatible with the state of slavery, under existing laws and regulations." If Mr. Austen be right, not a day should be lost in reforming that state, and abolishing all laws and regulations which are incompatible with marriage. Mr. Elliott, a missionary in the same colony, observes, that he has united many slaves, with a view to promote morality, economy, and domestic happiness yet the marriages solemnized by him are not legal. A similar answer is returned by Mr. Davies, another missionary; and by Mr. Browne, a Presbyterian minister in Demarara.

In the Bahamas, they tell us that the marriages of slaves are solemnized by the Methodist missionaries, after their manner of formally enjoining them to abide by one woman; but they make no return of legal marriages between slaves.

After this general survey of the state of the other West-Indian colonies in respect to marriage, we again return to Jamaica, and ask, whether there is not the utmost reason to believe that the account received thence, and laid on the table of the House of Commons, as "a return of the number of marriages legally solemnized between slaves since the 1st of January 1808, is made up, in great part at least, of marriages that were not legal, in the usual meaning of that We think it incumbent on Parliament to put this point beyond all doubt, by requiring from the Rectors of the different parishes in Jamaica, certified returns from the parochial registries of all marriages legally solemnized in that island since the year 1808; together with a copy of the law by which the 3,596 marriages, which have taken place there, have been rendered legal marriages, as asserted in the return already received. It cannot be that the authorities of Jamaica should have condescended to shelter themselves from obloquy under the wing of the despised and slandered and persecuted Methodists, whose very chapel at Kingston was indicted in 1790 as a nuisance; whose missionaries in 1807 were made liable to a fine of 201. for every slave proved to have been in their houses, chapels, or conventicles, for the purpose of attending their instructions; and even to public floggings, hard labour in the workhouse, and imprisonment in the common gaol (which last punishment three of them actually endured), merely for attempting the instruction of the slaves. "The persecution in Jamaica in 1807, obliged us," says Mr. Gilgras, "to put away 500 innocent slaves from our society; for we were liable to a fine of 201. for each Negro we instructed, and they to punishment for attending. The chapels and meeting-houses were shut, while I and my wife were in the common gaol of Kingston; and when I came out, and began preaching on the restricted plan, I was obliged to appoint six door-keepers to prevent the slaves from entering the chapel and violating the law. They would, however,