has, in all respects, and on every subject, been done to Wesley; not so to Whitfield! At the distance of three quarters of a century, according to the deliberate and well-considered judgment of the leading organ of European criticism, "His Life still remains to be written.'

Whitfield's character, however, is the property of his country. He belongs to the universal church. Ecclesiastical history claims him as one of her most illustrious subjects, the splendour of whose gifts and labours it is probable posterity will never surpass; she will doubtless raise up 66 a repairer of the breach" to redress his wrongs, and assign him his proper place in her temple. The time for such an undertaking is, in all respects, fully arrived, although it may be that the master mind and the practised hand, whom the honour awaits, have not yet come into existence. In the fullest sense, a complete Life of Whitfield, which shall satisfy mankind, and render all future attempts at any very great improvement both hopeless and useless, could not have been written at an earlier period. The measure of the essential facts was not full; the results of his diversified movements and operations among the churches of Europe and America, and among mankind at large, were not sufficiently developed. With respect to facts, to instance in a single case, no Life of Whitfield could ever have been other than most defective until the appearance of the interesting and valuable Memoirs of the Countess of Huntingdon. Our complaints, therefore, against our predecessors relate chiefly to facts, not to philosophy; the collection, sifting, and classification of the former, so well exemplified in the Memoir of the Countess, was their province, the disquisitions, and deductions, and lessons of the latter, belonged to their posterity. Of important facts connected with the subject, thousands are lost beyond recovery; but, if much has been lost, much has also been gained. Every succeeding year has every department of English literature been supplying fresh materials for the endeavour. late years, too, other and unlooked-for sources of most important information have been opened up. In so far, therefore, as it respects materials, all things are ready.

Of

In the absence of other legitimate aspirants to this honour, to whom we should gladly have given way, the subject of Whitfield's Life has long occupied our Edinburgh Review, No. 136, July, 1838, p. 506.

thoughts, and to a considerable extent our pens. It is now twelve years since our design was announced to the public, and but for the establishment of the CHRISTIAN WITNESS, the claims of which swallow up those redeemed hours that were dedicated to it, we might by this time have realized our intention. But our purpose is broken off; and it is, therefore, probable this task is now reserved for other, and, we hope, more competent hands. In the event of this, it is not a little gratifying to give currency to the views here expressed, and still more so to have shared, to the extent allotted us, in the rebuilding of those precious monuments to his honour,-the churches of whose formation he was the instrument in the hands of the Spirit of God-monuments which, when removed from the earth, will be re-constructed in the skies, crowned with glory, and lasting as eternity!

MR. FREDERICK DOUGLASS AND

SLAVERY.

We have for some time been anxiously waiting for a moment when the press of home matters might permit the resumption of the subject of American slavery; but an event has just occurred which compels us, despite that pressure, to return to it. Mr. F. Douglass, having finished his mission to England, has returned a free man to the land which was honoured by his birth and degraded by his bondage. It was well he came to England, for here he has widely diffused afflicting truths and great principles, and acquired for himself a high reputation, and many valuable and honourable friendships of men who will remember him with affectionate interest. His private deportment and public appearances in this country have secured for him very general admiration. Moral

philosophers, looking at him as a specimen of his sable brethren, a body amounting to 3,000,000 of men, have inly said, Men of whom this is a sample cannot be held in lasting thraldom. Their freedom is merely a question of time; they will, they must either receive it, or take it, and none can hinder them! If the slave

If

holders are wise, they will be wise for themselves; but if they persevere in their folly, and cruelty, and injustice, they must just take the consequence. society be prostrated and blood shall flow, on their own heads be it! They were warned-they have despised the

warning! In vain, in the day of their calamity, will they look for sympathy to Europe! There, time and circumstances are constantly bringing forth new aggravations of their already enormous guilt. Not satisfied, it would seem, with the exercise of a blood-stained tyranny in their own land, they are extending it to our shores, as the following letter, addressed to the Editor of the Times, by Mr. Douglass, will show :

SIR,-I take up my pen to lay before you a few facts respecting an unjust proscription to which I find myself subjected on board the steam-ship Cambria, to sail from this port at ten o'clock to-morrow morning for Boston, United States.

On the 4th of March last, in company with Mr. George Moxhay, of the Hall of Commerce, London, I called upon Mr. Ford, the London agent of the Cunard line of steamers, for the purpose of securing a passage on board the steam-ship Cambria to Boston, United States. On inquiring the amount of the passage I was told £40 198.; I inquired further if a second class passage could be obtained. He answered, No, there was but one fare, all distinctions having been abolished. I then gave to him £40 198., and received from him in return a ticket entitling me to berth No. 72 on board the steam-ship Cambria, at the same time asking him if my colour would prove any barrier to my enjoying all the rights and privileges enjoyed by other passengers. He said, "No." I then left the office, supposing all well, and thought nothing more of the matter until this morning, when, in company with a few friends, agreeably to public notice, I went on board the Cambria with my luggage, and on inquiring for my berth, found, to my surprise and mortification, that it had been given to another passenger, and was told that the agent in London had acted without authority in selling me the ticket. I expressed my surprise and disappointment to the captain, and inquired what I had better do in the matter. He suggested my accompanying him to the office of the agent in Water-street, Liverpool, for the purpose of ascertaining what could be done. On stating the fact of my having purchased the ticket of the London agent, Mr. M'Iver (the Liverpool agent) answered that the London agent, in selling me the ticket, had acted without authority, and that I should not go on board the ship unless I agreed to take my meals alone, not to mix with the saloon company, and to give up the berth for which I had paid. Being without legal remedy, and anxious to return to the United States, I have felt it due to my own

rights as a man, as well as to the honour and dignity of the British public, to lay these facts before them, sincerely believing that the British public will pronounce a just verdict on such proceedings. I have travelled in this country nineteen months, and have always enjoyed equal rights and privileges with other passengers, and it was not until I turned my face towards America that I met anything like proscription on account of my colour.

Yours respectfully,

FREDERICK DOUGLASS.

Brown's Temperance Hotel, Liverpool,
April 3rd.

Here, then, is a Company partly English and partly American, deriving no small portion of its immense annual revenues, for the conveyance of the English mail, with other more substantial advantages from English connection. To meet the tastes of both parts of the Company, two appropriate agents are selected, one resident in the Metropolis, to represent British feeling, destroying all distinctions both of price, class, and colour; and another at the port, to represent American feeling, preserving the distinction with reference to colour, while the position of this latter agent amounts to a veto, and renders nugatory the proceedings of his Metropolitan coadjutor. Mr. Douglass, after nineteen months' intercourse with all ranks and classes in Great Britain, and just issued from a select assembly, comprising some of our best and wisest citizens, met in London to bid farewell to the interesting stranger,-on board the vessel which he hoped was to carry him in peace and honour to his native land, is reduced to the painful alternative of remaining behind, with the loss of his passage-money, or surrendering his berth, taking his "meals alone," and being excluded from the "saloon company;" in a word, being treated as a being of an inferior order, or as a felon, an outcast, a vagabond! We should like to know the American gentlemen who composed this saloon company, that the British people might judge of their mental and moral superiority to Frederick Douglass; for the probabilities are as a thousand to one that he was incomparably superior to the first man among them. A severer humiliation could scarcely have been devised for them than the descent of a power which should have compelled them in succession to discuss and defend their prejudice with Douglass before a Liverpool assembly. One thing is certain, that

the first functionaries of her Britannic Majesty would have asked, would have endured no such exclusion, nor would have deemed themselves in the least degraded by such society; and we greatly mistake if, before the voyage terminated, the modesty, intelligence, purity, and dignity of Frederick Douglass would not, in their estimation, have commanded for him a preference amounting to personal esteem. It has been our privilege to know a portion of the citizens of the United States, and among them some first-class men, but never did we meet with one personally more agreeable, and certainly with none so specially enriched and adorned by the attributes of moral and intellectual greatness; and while a giant in power, he was in spirit a child, and apparently quite unconscious of his endowments. On these grounds, therefore, if the American portion of the "saloon company" could not associate with him, so be it but let the less give place to the greater; let them retire from the saloon, give up their berths, and take their "meals alone." We remember a case strikingly analogous, told in our hearing by our friend of beloved and imperishable memory, William Knibb. Mr. Knibb stated that when once on board an English ship having a gentleman of colour in the company, they were joined at the island of St. Thomas by an American of the true colour-hating race, who at once clothed himself with airs of republican importance, blustering and swaggering to and fro on the quarterdeck, and protesting that never should he degrade himself by sitting at table with such a fellow." Mr. Knibb, on ascertaining the facts, apprised the captain, who, with the spirit of an Englishman, said, "Never mind; we'll settle that. You have him seated between you and me, and we shall see." The dinnerhour arrived, and there was the man of colour between the captain and the missionary. The American appeared, and fiercely protested against his presence, declaring that either he should leave the table, or he would have his meals on deck. The captain calmly answered, "As you please about remaining; but if you will not come to your meals, your meals shall not go to you." The result was, hunger, which tames the lion, brought the Yankee to his senses after holding out a little he quietly submitted, and so far as we know, without any calamity or deterioration to his physical nature.

We have expressed a wish to know the

names of the American passengers, but we have some anxiety about those of the Englishmen; for sure we are that had they known, which most probably they did not, the circumstances of the case, they would have taken the thing into their own hands, and have insisted on the presence of Mr. Douglass, whoever might be scandalized by it, or to whatever consequences it might have led. Nor, in all probability, would they have left the ship without presenting to the Company a memorial breathing the fullest measure of British indignation at a deed so unjust, an arrangement so inhuman, giving them to understand emphatically that whatever might be deemed due to the citizens of the States, the British people had also their rights-rights of which the chief is not to be forced into a false position, whereby they are rendered instruments of wrong to their fellow-men.

One word as to the origin of this fell hate. Among the multitude of profundities which distinguish the pages of Tacitus, there is not one more sagacious or pertinent to the present case than his declaration, that "men hate those whom they have injured." This is the utmost stretch of philosophy upon the point;-it reaches the bottom at once. The quenchless hatred of the American whites to the man of colour is founded solely in their boundless injuries towards him. fires of their Pandemonian enmity are constantly fed by the remembered cruelties they have perpetrated, and do still perpetrate, on 3,000,000 of men. Walk

The

ing in so fierce an atmosphere of crime, the hearts of evil-doers are reduced to an alternative-they must either burn against themselves or their victims. To allow that the slaves are men is to confess themselves criminals of the deepest dye. So long, therefore, as wrong lasts, hate will last; to destroy the enmity, slavery must be abolished.

This is the proper place to record another instance of infamous truckling to this iniquitous spirit. The volume of Lectures delivered by the late John Foster at Broadmead Chapel, Bristol, and recently published amongst ourselves, has been re-published in America. The subject of one of these lectures, which was delivered in May, 1823, by special request, was on Negro Slavery, as it then existed in the British Colonies. Now will it be credited that this generous, noble, and profoundly philosophic dissertation is actually excluded from the American edition! Was there ever an instance of

greater commercial baseness? Not satisfied with silencing the living, even the voice of the mighty dead may not be heard among men whose sweetest music is the groaning of the prisoner and the clanking of chains! All things are subject to the terrible sceptre of this manhating despotism, which, we have just seen, regulates the passage to Europe, the movements of the printing-press, and, as all the world knows, the arrangements of the railway, of everything social, yea, even of the house of God itself! Surely the cup of its iniquity is well-nigh full. The doom of this hateful dominion is scaled of heaven, and, at a day not very distant, it must be overthrown for ever!

P.S. From accounts received since writing the above, we perceive that the captain, in the spirit of a true English seaman, gave up his own cabin to Mr. Douglass; and one of the Agents of the Company has publicly stated, that it had been offered to return the passage-money, when the ticket was withdrawn. justice to all parties, we state this fact.

In

FACTS FOR THE FRIENDS OF MISSIONS. Ir was stated in a late debate in the American Congress, that England governs 150,000,000 of souls. Yes, a little narrow island on the western coast of Europe gives laws to one-sixth of the whole human race, and holds sovereignty over 3,812,000 square miles-or oneeighth of the whole globe! Let this fact be connected with another. England, beyond any other spot on earth, is the land of perfect freedom, pure religion, true science, and rightly-grounded civilization. Of these great elements of human welfare she has more, far more than all the other kingdoms of the earth combined. Only suppose the power assigned her of God had fallen to France, how disastrous had been the issue to our whole race! Or, proceeding to the other extreme of civilization, suppose it had fallen to Russia, what had been her means of enlightening a dark world? The official journal of St. Petersburgh states that the number of persons in the whole kingdom, Poland excepted, not professing the dominant religion, amounted, at the end of 1843, to 8,634,373. Of these, 2,753,876 were Roman Catholics; 322,626 belonged to the Armenio-Gregorian Church; 16,084 to the Armenio-Catholic Church; 1,669,601 to the Lutheran Church; and 40,691 to

the Reformed Church. At that period there were in the Empire, 2,317,644 Mahometans; 1,763,731 Jews; 233,312 Camaites; and 175,914 worshippers of Feitches. Besides convents, there are 14,098 churches, mosques, synagogues, and other places of worship; of these, 2,009 belong to the Roman Catholic Church; 52 to the Armenio-Catholic; 965 to the Armenio- Gregorian; 885 to the Lutheran; 34 to the Reformed; 619 to Mahometans; 3,052 to Jews; 158 to Camaites; and 265 to worshippers of Feitches.

Such is the sum total of the religion of the empire of the Czar, every particle of which is in every point under his own iron sceptre. Supposing all these to have been evangelical, had it not been impossible for them to have formed a single association for the diffusion of the gospel? That jealous and watchful despotism which extinguished the Bible Society, would instantly visit any attempt at the formation of a Missionary Society with its hottest vengeance. But as it is, the gospel there is only as a grain of mustard-seed. These are facts from which the Christians of England may learn their privileges, duty, and glory! We have been furnished with the following digest of the present state of the work, by a foreign hand, and which though very incorrect as to both the number of the communities engaged, and the fields occupied, is yet a draught far from contemptible, and furnishes matter for profitable meditation during the joyous period of our May Meetings:

The total number of all persons enumerated in the Missionary Church of different denominations, is as follows, viz:

The societies which have occupied this field have been the Wesleyan, the Baptist, the United Brethren, and the London Missionary. Their chief places of effort have been Jamaica, Antigua, the Bahamas, Danish Islands, &c., &c. The Negroes of the West Indies were the chief subjects of Missionary efforts, and the great number of communicants there shows how successful has been this religious enterprise among them. The Wesleyan Missionaries alone have 55,000 communicants in those islands. It must be remembered that most of the slaves of the West Indies were, previous to this effort, positively Heathen. Even yet, great numbers of them adhere to "Devil worship." These Missions to the West Indies were the PREPARATION for the Abolition of Slavery in the British Islands. One of the most distinguished of the Baptist Missionaries there testifies, that unless there had been the twenty years' previous la. bours of the Missionaries, it would have been impossible for Great Britain to have abolished slavery in the West Indies.

The reader will see, by this table, that the Missionary enterprise is in India conducted upon the true method of introducing a new civilization among a people. This is by employing native workers. In India, we see a strong body of native workers employed, whose agency is chiefly in the great number of schools, which show, as above, no less than sixty thousand scholars.

Five-sixths of the India Mission are under the care of the English Missionaries. The result proves them to have been very successful.

sionary and the Wesleyans. In Liberia, the majority of Missionaries are American Methodists.

In America, the Missionaries to the Indian Tribes are all American-chiefly under the care of the American Board.

In review of the facts stated above, it appears that the chief and most successful of the Protestant Missions have been in the West Indies, India, Ceylon, Sandwich Islands, New Zealand, Georgian Islands, South Africa, and Sierra Leone. In the Island of Jamaica, the Sandwich Islands, New Zealand and Hindostan, the success of missions has certainly been equal to and beyond any enterprise, conducted by the same number of persons, in any form of civilization.

The number of persons employed, at one time, are 3,499. The result is 52 Communicants and 36 Scholars to each person in the business of Evangelism! Is the result in Christian countries themselves equal to that? If it be, it certainly does not very greatly exceed it. Unless the "Signs of the Times" are very incorrectly read or interpreted, the greatest and most enlightened paganism of the world-that of Hindostan-is rapidly giving way, before the double attraction of science and Christianity. It must be a faint heart-a sceptical intellectan unprogressive spirit, which sees nothing in the steady advance of Missions and the yet more rapid movement of Governments and conquests over pagan lands, to foreshadow the speedy and permanent triumph of Christianity, both in name and substance, over the old and crumbling civilizations of the world.

They

For any purpose of progress, both Paganism and Mahomedanism have long ceased to exist. The moment the nations which sustained them ceased to be in the advance of physical civilization, they ceased to advance in anything. had nothing spiritual to commend. They are now crumbling out of existence, like the stones of an ancient wall, from which the mortar has dropped away, and on which the water is constantly dropping.

Men may prepare, before another generation has passed away, to see wonderful things. The new civilization will bloom in fresh glory over the wasted fields. The spiritual will take its place in the advance of the new order, and a sublime and triumphant harmony govern Christian civilization.

MORE FACTS FOR THE FRIENDS OF MISSIONS.

IN musing on the foregoing facts, it occurred to us to glance at the British war system, that we might compare the sphere of military with that of missionary service, home and foreign, and see how the two things look side by side. On the 1st of January, 1847, then, we find the army amounted to nearly one hundred and thirty-nine thousand men, distributed over 155 stations, and sustained at a cost of between seven and eight millions sterling! Christians, think of this! The Minister of War gives the general view thus: