An evil full of danger.

In earthquakes and tornadoes on the isles
Of Western India, laying waste their fields,
Dashing their mercenary ships ashore,

Tossing the isles themselves like floating wrecks,
And burying towns alive in one wide grave,
No sooner ope'd but closed, let judgment pass
For once untasted till the general doom,
Can it go well with us while we retain
This cursed thing?

"Will not some daring spirit, born to thoughts
Above his beast-like state, find out the truth
That Africans are "men," and catching fire
From freedom's altar raised before his eyes
With incense burning sweet, in others light
A kindred flame in secret, till a train

Kindled at once, deal death on every side?

'Cease, then, COLUMBIA-for thy safety, cease,

And for thine honour to proclaim the praise

Of thy fair shores of liberty and joy,

While thrice seven hundred thousand wretched slaves
Are held in thine own land!"

Very good, my son, and very appropriate. We are indeed a peculiar people. As a nation we have hitherto enjoyed unexampled prosperity. Our success, I doubt not, is to be attributed, under God, in a great measure to the fact that our institutions, since the Revolution, are based on the principle of moral rectitude and the equal rights of man. But our prosperity will wane-our happiness will be of short duration, unless our practice be a consistent comment on our national declarations and professions. If we abide by our own professed declarations and principles, we may prosper still. But that moral debt which our ancestors contracted when being presented with the forbidden fruit, they took and ate, must be paid by us, their heirs, (I mean the debt we owe to Africa,) or I am satisfied that our country will yet feel the severe scourge of heaven! Slavery must cease, and

The evil must be removed.

we must do what we can to redress the wrongs we have done, or our country is ruined!

'We may have able statesmen, a faithful administration, the physical strength and resources of our country may be our boast, and we may pride ourselves on the valour of our armies and the gallantry of our navy; but without a sacred regard to the immutable principles of justice, all will be of no avail. We have before us the experience of ages-the philosophy of many an experiment and of many a failure, in the history of nations; and we must profit by the instructions of the past, if we would be successful and happy for any length of time: otherwise the period will arrive, when, ere we are aware, this giant republic will be broken, and scattered, and peeled.

'Happy should I be to see in my beloved country a more general regard to that sacred maxim, "RIGHTEOUSNESS EXALTETH A NATION.'

6

'I hope and trust, Pa,' said Caroline, that the kind Providence that has always watched over us for good, will turn the minds of this people to a right course, and thus avert from us so dreadful a calamity.'

'I hope so.'

'You do not think, Pa, that danger is near?'

'I know not at what moment the great Avenger may permit the volcano to burst; but this we all know, that already we have heard its muttering, nor has it been without some transient irruptions. The Southampton tragedy cannot soon be forgotten! The elements of destruction are indeed among Two millions of slaves, and three hundred thousand free blacks, with their rapid increase, in connexion with the

us.

Something must be done.

diversity of feeling and sentiment which exists among ourselves, and the lack of sympathy for our situation among other nations, are, altogether, a tremendous evil.

'We live, too, in a peculiar age. Great changes are taking place in the earth. The ball of revolution is moved.

The age finds all within the vortex drawn,
The strength of current far too great to stem
By feigned indifference.

Something must be done; and the considerate feel and acknowledge the fact. What can be done, or how an end "most devoutly to be wished," shall be effected, is an important, serious, solemn question.'

'I should think, Pa, that there can be but one opinion as to the expediency of attending to the subject, and doing something effectual to remove the evil entirely from among us?'

'And I,' said Henry, 'should think there could be, amongst the discerning, but one opinion in respect to the advantages of colonization.'

6

6

In respect to the means most proper to be employed,' said Mr. L., there is a difference of opinion; but reflecting men generally, as I said before, are beginning to feel, more than ever, that something must be done. No one who looks at the subject with a candid eye can, it seems to me, doubt either the expediency of encouraging the colonization of our coloured population in Africa, or the desirableness of the abolishment of slavery in our land. Connected with this subject are great questions, involving great considerations, requiring the wisdom which is from above, and calling for a spirit of prayer, meekness, and great forbearance. Already are there thrown around the subject difficulties and embarrassments which ought to have been avoided, or rather I

A right spirit needed.

would say, ought never to have been created. A wrong spirit and unwise measures will only increase the evil. So serious and alarming is it now, that very many are actually afraid to look the evil full in the face. What shall be done? is a question which they dare not meet, although all the while they fear that the subject will force itself upon us in a way that shall be most painful. I confess, for my own part, that I have long apprehended that the issue will at length. come in a shape that shall demand tears of anguish for rivers of blood.'

Self-preservation, a law of nature.—A change is taking place.

CONVERSATION VII.

"We are required to devise some means whereby the political evil which we have inherited may be corrected, and a foul, unseemly stain washed from our national escutcheon. Duty to the coloured population of our country calls loudly for it-duty to ourselves demands it."--Gov. Vroom.

"I HAVE been thinking much, through the day,' said Caroline, of our last conversation. Self-preservation, it is sometimes asserted as a maxim incontrovertible, is the first law of nature. It is a law, however, which appears to me to be very little regarded, or there could not, I think, be such apathy in respect to the dangers that surround us. Selfinterest, I should think would furnish to the Southern people most pressing motives to immediate and vigourous action in freeing our land from the very last remnant of slavery.'

6

The public are awakening to the importance of the subject,' replied Mr. L., and begin to feel more than formerly the urgency of the case. Every passing month, the cause of Africa's unhappy children, is finding new and ardent friends who feel that the duty which we owe ourselves, our country, and the world, can only be fulfilled by listening to the cries of the oppressed, and loosing every band that chafes the limbs or the souls of our coloured brethren. A mighty change has taken place, and is still increasing. In this sub