Phar. Why, thou slave !— Thou most ungrateful to thy parent-land; I am not blind to thy design; but where, Where would thy proud ambition lead thy people? More bounteous than our Nile, to which thy spirit, Thy parent was the Nile, thy country, Egypt !- Thy royal home, the arms of Thermutis, Who made thee great in Egypt. Hence with thee, hence! Who is the God, for whom thou darest me thus !— Go-thrust him from my presence-now, take heed Thine own life be secure; come not again Before my face, for in the day thou dost, By Isis, thou shalt die! Moses. The crowned with the sun, circled by fire, Veil'd in thick clouds, through which the lightnings glance His voice the thunder, and a thousand worlds SECTION LXXVII. EXTRACT FROM THE WEST INDIAN CONTROVERSY. Blackwood's Magazine. Mr. Brougham adopts boldly, in the Edinburgh Review, the very simple and satisfactory argument on which Mr. Clarkson rests the whole substance of his late pamphlet. It amounts to this:-Every man has an in-born indefeasible right to the free use of his own bodily strength and exertion, it follows that no man can be kept for one moment in a state of bondage, without the guilt of robbery: therefore the West Indian negroes ought to be set free. This is an argument of very easy comprehension, and the Edinburgh reviewer exclaims, with an air of very well enacted triumph, "Such plain ways of considering the question are, after all, the best!" Ingenious Quaker, and most ingenious reviewer! If this be so, why write pamphlets and reviews full of arguments and details, or pretended details of facts? If every West Indian planter is a thief and a robber, why bother our heads about the propriety, the propriety forsooth, of compelling him to make restitution? If the British nation is guilty as an accessary both before the fact, and in the fact, of theft and robbery, why tell the British nation that they are the most virtuous and religious nation in the world, and that they ought to restore what they have stolen and robbed, because they are so virtuous and so religious? The affair is so base, that it will scarcely bear looking at for one second. What! long prosing discussions about whether we ought to cease to be thieves and robbers, now, or ten years, or a hundred years hence! Was ever such a monstrous perversion of human powers? Sir, that estate is not yours-it is your neighbour's estate, and you have no more right to cultivate it, or any part of it, for your own behoof, than the man in the moon. You must restore this estate to its rightful owner-Immediately? No, not immediately. Your neighbour ought to have the acres, and knows that he ought to have them. They are his right, he has been long deprived of the estate -his father was deprived of it before him. The family have all been brought up in a way quite different from what would have been, had they been in possession of their rights. They have formed habits altogether unlike what those of the proprietors of such an estate ought to be. They have been accustomed to poverty, and they are an ignorant, uneducated family. You must not give up their land immediately. They would be injured in their health and morals, by the immediate possession of their estate. Indeed, it may be doubted whether the present man ought ever to get his land at all. You therefore must, from a regard for the best interests of this family, continue in the meantime, thief and robber of their goods. Let the young men be hedgers and ditchers on your estate, as they have been; let the young women continue at service. But you must improve the parish school, lower the schoolmaster's wages by degrees, so as to let all these young people have an opportunity of picking up some education. By this means, the family will gradually get up their heads a little; and at some future period, it may be found quite safe and proper to give them all their rights. The present people, to be sure, will be dead ere then-but how can you help that? You are not the original thief, you know, you can't answer for all the consequences of a crime, into which you may be said to have been led by your own parents, and by the whole course of your own education. No, no-it would never do to give up the stolen goods at once. As I said before, it would certainly turn the heads of all these poor people-the parish would be kept in a state of hot water by them. Time must be allowed for taming them; they were always a hot-headed family. In due time you ought to desist from your present crimes. Such substantially is-such cannot be denied to be—the "the plain and simple" argument of these gentlemen; and so is it applied by themselves to the subject which, plain and simple as it is, they have taken such huge pains to elucidate. It is upon such arguments that a complete revolution of the whole domestic, as well as political relations, in the whole of these great colonial establishments is demanded; a revolution involving, if we are to listen for a moment to the proprietors of these islands, the absolute ruin of all their possessions; a revolution, the perilous nature of which is confessed by these men themselves in the language-the indescribable, ineffable language-which says to all the world, "This revolution must be: Justice demands itReligion demands it: but we confess, that in spite of justice and religion, it must not be now S SECTION LXXVIII. PROCIDA-MONTALBA-RAIMOND-GUIDO.....Mrs. Hemans. Procida. THE morn lower'd darkly, but the sun hath now, With fierce and angry splendour, through the clouds Burst forth, as if impatient to behold This, our high triumph. Lead the prisoner in. [Enter Raimond. Why, what a bright and fearless brow is here! -Is this man guilty ?-Look on him, Montalba! Montalba. Be firm. Should justice falter at a look? Pro. No, thou say'st well. Her eyes are filletted, Or should be so. Thou that dost call thyself But no! I will not breathe a traitor's name- Raimond. In the bright face of heaven; and your own hearts Have ta'en the stamp of crime, and seem to shrink From the too-searching light. Why, what hath wrought Montalba, speak! There's something chokes my voice-but fear me not. Be it when thou hast made thine own look clear; Most eloquent youth! What answer canst thou make Rai. Too buoyantly the glory and the joy Of my free spirit's whiteness; for e'en now For bards to hymu ! Immortal deeds I look upon his mien, Deem'd him so noble once!-Away, weak thoughts! Pro. That, with thy guilt made manifest, I can scarce (Shows him papers.) Who hath promised here, (Belike to appease the manes of the dead,) At midnight to unfold Palermo's gates, And welcome in the foe?—Who hath done this, Rai. Who hath done this? Pro. (to Mont.) His unaltering cheek |