worthy; but surely this is doing somewhat better than "our brethren of the south" have done.

"In the theater," says Mrs. Child, "it is not possible for respectable colored people to obtain a decent seat. They must either be excluded, or herd with the vicious." In our poor judg ment, it is not possible for respectable white people to obtain a decent seat, in a place so essentially indecent and infamous as an American theater. And if there is any special law or usage which excludes people of color from such places, they and their friends ought to thank God and take courage.

Several pages are filled with stories about the insults and hardships which colored people have encountered in relation to seats in churches, steam-boats and stage-coaches. All these stories lie out of the range of our observation. We have been for years not unobservant of the treatment which colored people meet with in public places; and though we have heard from time to time of such incidents as our author describes, we have never seen any indignity offered to a colored person, either in the house of God, or in the stage-coach, or in the steam-boat. Admitting the correctness of all these anecdotes, as they are set down in the argument, they only prove, what is by no means unlikely, that the labors of those philanthropists, who, since 1831, have made Boston their head-quarters, have had the effect of raising prejudice against the unfortunate blacks to an extraordinary height, in that city and its vicinity.

Before dismissing the subject of riding with colored people, she recites the account of Philip and the Ethiopian, from the Acts of the apostles; and asks, "Where should we now find an apostle, who would ride in the same chariot with an Ethiopian?" Apostles, in the proper meaning of that word, are not easily found among the living in these days; and chariots have been nearly superseded by steam-cars, stage-coaches, barouches, gigs, buggies, and one-horse-wagons; but if apostle' is here used as synonymous with minister of the gospel, and chariot,' as denoting any convenient vehicle for riding, then we have only to call on Mrs. Child, either to point out a single professed minister of the gospel, in good standing, who would scruple to ride in the same carriage with an Ethiopian inquirer after the Savior; or else to take back her insinuation, as a piece of rhetoric unworthy of such a personage as herself.

Another of our author's strange notions is, that "a colored man, however intelligent, is not allowed to pursue any business more lucrative than that of a barber, a shoe-black, or a waiter." Not to raise any questions about the comparative gains of different kinds of business, we ask, what are the lucrative employments from which the colored man of the proper degree of intelligence

is excluded? We are not aware, that the colored shoe-makers, masons, and carpenters, few as they are in this part of the country, are driven out of all employment by the force of prejudice. We have seen colored printers working in the same office with white men. Not fifty rods from the spot where we are writing, a colored man, who, without any pre-eminent intelligence, has acquired property to the amount of some thousands of dollars, has long kept a very respectable boarding-house. Cannot a colored man cultivate the soil, if he pleases? and will not the earth yield her increase to him, as readily as to the white man? If he has the same intelligence, and the same physical strength, can he not earn the same wages as the day-laborer of lighter complexion? Can he not, as many a white man has done, begin with nothing, and by and by purchase a farm with the savings out of his wages? Are there no colored men who have done so, and who are now living in their own houses and cultivating their own acres? Does the wealthy and respected colored man who manufactures axes in one of the eastern counties of Connecticut, find that axes cannot be sold at the market price, if the smith who makes them is black by nature as well as by trade? Is James Fortune, of Philadelphia, "not allowed to pursue any business more lucrative than that of a barber, a shoe-black, or a waiter?" Whatever may be the cause which makes so many colored men shoe-blacks and waiters, it is not the mere prejudice of the white people.

In the same chapter, some statements are made respecting the recent efforts of immediate-abolitionists, which deserve a little notice. "Mr. Garrison was the first person who dared to edit a newspaper, in which slavery was spoken of as altogether wicked and inexcusable." Indeed! And is the "veteran Benjamin Lundy" forgotten," the pioneer," who ten years ago hung out his flag upon the outer wall in Baltimore, and whose "Genius of Universal Emancipation" has fearlessly uttered its oracles so long, in the ears of unbelieving and gainsaying slave-holders? Is he forgotten, who was assaulted and beaten in the streets, whose teeth were stamped out by the heels of ruffian slave-traders, and who appealed in vain to the courts of Maryland for the protection of his person? Is he forgotten, who in his labors for the cause has traversed sea and land, with a zeal hotter than the sun of the Antilles, with a courage not to be daunted by the pestilential vapors or the fanatic fury of the south, and with an enterprise that penetrates the perilous wilds of Texas, and scales the Cordilleras of Mexico? Alas for his renown! Is it that his only qualifications are his unaffected zeal, his daring and his perseverance? Is it, that he, in his simplicity, never undertook to "palter in a double sense," with juggling sophisms about "immediate" abolition? Is it that he never had the impudence to denounce the Coloniza

tion Society as the apologist for slavery, and its most cherished ally? Is it for such deficiencies as these, that abolitionism refuses to number him among her worthies? What can be the meaning of such a declaration, except that Lundy did not come up to the mark of making slavery altogether wicked and inexcusable? Mr. Garrison's priority is this. He, so far as we know, first dared to edit a paper, in which the simple relation of a master to his bondservants was steadily spoken of, as being, under every possible modification, a crime of the blackest dye. He first dared to edit a paper, in which a great benevolent institution was unremittingly assailed, under the guise of a pre-eminent philanthropy, with the coarsest terms of abuse. He first dared to edit a paper, one leading object of which has been generally understood to be, the excitement of a religious hatred in the north against the south. He first dared, by papers, and harangues, and pamphlets, to stimulate the minds of the unfortunate colored people with vain and maddening hopes; to fill them with all malignity against the whites, and especially against their best friends; and finally, to form them into a great party, submissive to the decrees of his liberatorship, and pursuing, as with masonic penalties, the "traitor" who dares to desert their cause. Such are his peculiar merits. On what else can be founded the claim of his priority among abolitionists? How then can any of his friends ever seem to "regret his tendency to use wholesale and unqualified expres sions?" That tendency he himself knows to be the grand cause of his notoriety.

"For this crime," continues Mrs. Child, "the legislature of Georgia have offered five thousand dollars to any one who will 'arrest and prosecute him to conviction, under the laws of that state."" This, we apprehend, is another of her errors in point of fact. The legislature of Georgia, like other legislatures in our country, consists of a senate and a house of representatives, neither of which can legislate without the concurrence of the other. The senate of that state did pass a resolution to offer the reward above mentioned; but for want of a concurrent vote on the part of the house of representatives, the resolution, so mad in respect to the ends aimed at, and so treasonable in respect to the guarantied sovereignty of sister states, failed to become an act of the legislature.

Turning over another leaf, we read, " In this country we have not, until very recently, dared to publish any thing upon the subject [of slavery.] Our books, our reviews, our newspapers, our almanacs, have all been silent, or exerted their influence on the wrong side. The negro's crimes are repeated, but his sufferings are never told. Even in our geographies it is taught, that the colored race must always be degraded." Such is the testimony of Mrs.

Child. There is at this moment lying before us, among other documents of a similar date and description, a pamphlet printed at Charleston, in 1825, and entitled, "A concise view of the critical situation and future prospects of the slave-holding states, in relation to their colored population. By Whitemarsh B. Seabrook, etc., second edition." The "critical situation" depicted in the pamphlet consists in that agitation of the slavery question, which had then been commenced with much interest by the friends of the Colonization Society. "Under the specious plea," says Mr. Whitemarsh B. Seabrook, "of aiding the cause of the free colored population, and of effecting a reformation in the condition of this portion of the community, the pulpit and the bar, the press and the legislative-hall, have vied in the delineation of a picture, around which, like the cross of olden time, the modern crusaders will be invited to rally. From these sources it has been asserted, that slavery contradicts the primary principles of our government; that our slaves are wretched, and their wretchedness ought to be alleviated; that they are dangerous to the community, and this danger ought to be removed; and that, if the evils attendant on the circumstances of our colored population are not speedily eradicated, God in his righteous judgment will raise up a Touissaint, or a Spartacus, or an African Tecumseh, to demand by what authority we hold them in subjection."* This passage is from page fourth of the pamphlet. On page tenth, having treated of the Ohio resolves favorable to colonization; of Mr. King's proposal in the senate, to pledge the proceeds of the public lands to that object; together with Mr. Tucker's cotemporaneous motion in the house of representatives, and of Mr. Wirt's opinion as attorney-general, against the constitutionality of certain laws of South Carolina; and having taken up the memorials of the Colonization Society to congress, asking for pecuniary aid ;-he asks, with great indignation, "Why have they said to congress, 'lend us your aid to strike the fetters from the slave, and to spread the enjoyment of unfettered freedom over the whole of our favored and happy land?" He asks again, "Why have they declared, that our slaves cannot long be kept in ignorance;-that they are surrounded with the memorials of freedom;-that the land which they water with their tears is a land of liberty;-that they are never slow in learning that they are fettered; and that freedom is the birthright of humanity?" Then, having shown that the

"The words and phrases which are marked with italics, occur in an article on colonization, in the Christian Spectator for Oct. 1823; and identify that article as one of the horrible signs of the times, that had glared upon the terrified sight of Mr. Whitemarsh B. Seabrook.

This expression is cited from a speech of G. W. P. Custis, at one of the anniversaries of the Society.

The language of this sentence is from the article in the Christian Spectator, already referred to.

tendency of all these proceedings is to keep the public mind awake to the evils, and sensitive to the wrong of slavery, he considers the dreadful power of the press, and (p. 16,) sums up the then action of the press on slavery, thus: "In the newspapers of the north and east, the question of emancipation is as calmly and soberly discussed, as if it were a subject in the decision of which the interests of a few individuals alone were concerned. There are but few numbers of their numerous periodical works, that have not an article on this copious topic;-scarcely a book whose pages are not sullied by the most distorted representations of the state of domestic servitude at the south. Whatever may be the nature of the subject; whatever the design of the publication, whether to sketch the characters of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, or to instruct the youthful mind in the first rudiments of knowledge; slavery, slavery, slavery is there.* Against the constitutional privileges of the slave-holder, to use the horrible and savage language of the Edinburgh Review, it would seem as if they had declared interminable war,-war for themselves, and for their children, and for their grand-children,-war without peace, -war without truce,-war without quarter.'" Such is Mr. Whitemarsh B. Seabrook's account,-and, for the matter of it, it is a true account,-of the anti-slavery action of the press at the north, long before Mr. Garrison began to

"Trick his beams, and with new-spangled ore,
Flame in the forehead of the morning sky,"

the day-star of abolition,-even in that dark night, when, accor ding to Mrs. Child, we had not " dared to publish any thing on the subject;" and books, reviews, newspapers, and almanacs,

were all silent, or exerted their influence on the wrong side." Such was that agitation of the subject, which the friends of the Colonization Society were helping to keep up, as long ago as when Mrs. Child was writing Hobomok.

"Mr. Garrison has certainly the merit of having first called public attention to a neglected and very important subject!" This is the way in which Mr. Garrison and his party misrepresent and traduce the north, not less wrongfully than in some other ways they misrepresent the south. First they persuade themselves, that whatever seems like disapproval of their spirit or measures, is of course on the side of slavery; and then, on the strength of this conviction, they cry out against the ministers and churches, the

* In a note, the author adds, that he has "read several books for youth, manefactured at Boston and New-York, with a page or two devoted to the description of the borrors and sin of negro slavery." In another note, be refers to many newspapers by name, as eminently obnoxious, and particularly to the Bos ton Recorder.