poor, or any other specific object, will be appropriated to that object, according to the wish of the donor.

The Committee consists of the Earls of Clarendon and St. Germains; the Bishops of London and Winchester; Sir G. H. Rose; Sir T. D. Acland; Sir Thomas Baring; Sir Robert Inglis; and several other clergymen and gentlemen. Communications may be addressed to the Secretary, the Rev. H. S. Gilly, 2, Tavistock Place, Russell Square, London.

From another address on the subject we copy the following statements.

"When Piedmont was under the late Government of France, the Vaudois were put in full possession of all the privileges common to other subjects; but on the - restoration of the Bourbons, in the year 1814, they were again united to Sardinia; and though they never murmur, they are subjected to the most grievous restrictions for instance, they cannot purchase lands out of the confined limits assigned them; they are obliged to desist from work on the Roman-Catholic festivals, which are almost perpetual, under penalty of fine or imprisonment; they are forbidden to exercise the professions of physician, surgeon, or lawyer; and these people, together with their ministers, are com-pelled to serve as private soldiers, without possibility of advancement; all religious books are prohibited, except the Bible, which is subject to such a high duty as almost to place it beyond their reach. Schools are indeed allowed on the old system; but on Bell and Lancaster's they are not permitted. The Scriptures and Catechisms have sometimes been circulated leaf by leaf, as the only means of ́obtaining a perusal of their pages; they are not allowed to multiply their places of worship, though they may rebuild and enlarge their old ones.

"In the time of Oliver Cromwell, col·lections were made throughout England on behalf of the Vaudois, amounting to 38,2417., which, after affording them considerable relief, left a fund of 16,333., which Charles the Second on his restoration used for his own purposes, assigning as a reason that he was not bound by any of the engagements of an usurper and a tyrant. William and Mary restored the pension; but during the reign of Napoleon, the British government, from political motives, withheld it; and the Vaudois Pastors, thirteen in number, are for the most part living in a state of poverty. Efforts are now making to recover this [ost aid, and thereby enable the Pastors to

surmount their difficulties, to assist in the establishment of schools, and the education of their ministers, and especially in building a hospital among them. His Majesty George the Fourth has presented them with a hundred guineas: several of the Protestant States on the Continent are interesting themselves for these suffering people; and it is hoped that a favourable moment has arrived for their relief."

NATIONAL EDUCATION SO

CIETY.

The thirteenth and fourteenth Reports have just been published together: the former having been postponed with a view to annex to it the returns of sums collected in the several parishes of the kingdom under the royal letter. The Committee advert with great satisfaction to the impulse which has been given to the feelings of the public on the subject of national education, by the circulation of this letter. The increase sf schools during the present year has been going on with great rapidity and vigour. In the thirteenth year, 116 schools were received into union; and, in the fourteenth, 112-making a total of 2095. The total number of scholars, including 50,000 in schools which follow the plan of the Society though not formally united, is estimated at 360,000. We are happy to learn that National Schools have been established in connexion with many of the new churches erected by his Majesty's Commissioners.

In reference to the training department, it is stated, that in the thirteenth year 80 schools, and in the fourteenth 98, were assisted by permanent or temporary mas-ters and mistresses, or by monitors sent out to communicate the knowledge of the system.

The sum of 28,2251. has been received from 9943 parishes in consequence of the king's letter. In the thirteenth year, grants, amounting to 5060l., were made to 54 places; and, in the fourteenth, 73551. to 75 places. These grants varied in amount, from 10 to 8001. The net income of the thirteenth year was 26157.; and its expenditure, 30137. The income of the fourteenth year was 26157.; and its expenditure, 2154.

Circulars having been sent to 530 schools, in order to obtain reports of their state and progress, returns have been received from 330. The Committee remark, that their anticipations of the blessings diffused by the National System derive additional strength, from the communications which they continually receive from all parts of

the country. In particular, they are gratified with learning, on the authority of numbers of the parochial clergy, that the children who are examined for confirmation, in parishes where National Schools have been established, exhibit, in a most marked manner, the good effects of the instruction there received, in the increased measure of religious knowledge which they bring with them for that solemn rite.

FEMALE EDUCATION IN INDIA. We have laid before our readers many interesting details respecting the commencement and progress of female education in India, chiefly, however, in Calcutta and its neighbourhood. We copy the following particulars from the communications of the Church Missionary Society's missionaries in the Madras station, as proofs that the benefit is not confined to one part of India, but that all that is wanted is sufficient funds to extend the boon throughout the whole peninsula. Mr. Schmid thus traces the rise of this promising enterprise:

"As soon as we arrived at Palamcottah, we directed our attention to the object of native-female education; and neglected no opportunity to admonish the natives, especially the native Christians, to care for the education of their daughters: which had the effect that two of our central school-boys requested me, with the consent of their parents, to give them Tamul alphabets and spelling cards, in order to teach their sisters to read. But after it pleased God to bless our labours among our pupils in the seminary to the conversion of many, we were induced to establish at once a similar institution for native girls. The boys induced not less than twenty-five, mostly their own sisters, cousins, and nieces, to wish to come to Palamcottah." A building having been prepared for their reception, Mr. Schmid says "It was a pleasing scene to see our little girls walking to church in great order, cleanly dressed, and with cheerful countenances: many of them are attentive to Divine things, their countenances have such an expression of satisfaction and happiness."

The number was soon increased, as appears from the following appeal, which Mr. Rhenius makes in their behalf: "This female institution is an important undertaking. It will be a new era for this part of India. May Europe not be slack to answer this call upon its bounty! Ladies, I think, must feel particularly interested; and I trust that their hearts will be open to promote it. Let them reflect on the fact in all its bearings, that thirty native females, who were, by the common usage of the country, destined to be slaves to ignorance, superstition, irreligion, and vice-and who would be neither able nor willing to fulfil the important duties of wives and mothers in such a manner as to ensure or promote true happiness-will now be brought up, on the contrary, in the light of the Gospel-will learn to be cleanly and orderly in their persons and in their houses-will receive proper ideas on right and wrong, on God and the Saviour, and on the present and future worlds-will learn to become sober, faithful, and affectionate wives and mothers

will be in the way to receive that change of mind and that true holiness, through the Spirit of God, without which none shall see the Lord. Let, then, our Christian friends in Europe rejoice in this small, though, in its consequences, vast beginning!" The female children are readily susceptible of kind instructions, and these instructions have not been bestowed without an early blessing and reward. Mr. Schmid gives the following pleasing view of the female children :-" Although the evil practices of the natives, and the bad inclinations of the human heart, especially envy, vanity, and covetousness, were often visible in several of our girls, yet the change, which both their exterior and interior have undergone in the short time that they have been with us, is very great. The evil inclinations of many of them disappeared quickly; and their very countenances, formerly so unmeaning and wild, became soon very sweet and lovely, and expressive of the happiness which they enjoyed."

FOREIGN.

FRANCE. We have alluded, in another part of the present Number, to the struggle which is going on in this country between ultra-royalism and religious bi

gotry on the one side, and almost every shade of opinion and party on the other; and have expressed our conviction that the issue must be the triumph of liberal principles, (blended, we fear, in too many

instances, though by no means intrinsically connected with infidel ones,) over the civil and religious despotism which would equally enthral the body and the soul. The events of each successive month increase our expectation of this crisis. We might mention, as an illustration, the tokens of veneration which have just been shewn for the memory of that well-known opposer of ultra-royalism and priestly domination, General Foy, and which seem to have been almost ostentatiously obtruded as an indication of the national sentiment. But a more important proof of the resistance which is likely to be made to the encroachments of bigotry and arbitrary power, is afforded in the acquittal of the conductors of the Constitutionnel and Courier François journals, who have been for some time under a state prosecution for a libel, consisting of a series of articles "tending" to disparage the Jesuits and missionary priests. Our readers are aware that the present administration, at an early period of their power, procured an act which placed the administration of the law of libel not in the hands of juries, but of a court composed of judges removeable at the pleasure of the crown; at the same time extending the definition of libel to a succession or collection of writings, each perhaps innoxious in itself, but tending in their cumulative series to offend the ruling powers. The alleged libel in the present case was, in substance, a charge of disparaging religion by frequent attacks upon the Jesuits and ultra-Catholic clergy. M. Dupin, the advocate of the accused, exposed with great energy the doctrines and practices of the missionary priests; and the judges decided that it was no abuse of religion, or of the press, to oppose the introduction of associations unauthorised by law; or to denounce ultra-montane doctrines, which France had long since indignantly rejected, and which were alike hostile to the public liberties and the independence of the throne. The result of this trial has been hailed with a burst of public acclamation, and we hope indicates the limited range of that bigotry and superstition which the Jesuits in particular were beginning to revive.

RUSSIA. The autocrat of this mighty empire-so well known, and who was so popular in this country for his conduct at the conclusion of the late war, and still more so among the friends of religion and humanity for the plans of benevolence which he patronized, particularly the Bible Society is now no more. His

once well-earned popularity had been long on the wane, and was at length well-nigh extinguished, at least among Englishmen, from his adherence to the arbitrary policy of the mis-named Holy alliance, and the contemporaneous decline of his zeal for religious and beneficent objects. He has been for several years a most formidable opposer of just principles of public liberty; and to him, more than perhaps to any other individual, Spain, Naples, and other parts of the continent, owe their present degradation. In extenuation, however, it must be allowed that, looking at the events of the last five and thirty years, he may have honestly feared the encroachments of a spirit of anarchy, and have honestly, however erroneously, thought he did service to mankind by throwing the weight of his power into the opposite scale. He certainly has done much for the strength and internal improvement of his own empire; though of late he seems to have shrunk from the natural effect of his own measures. What change, if any, his demise may make in the political state of Europe, remains to be seen; but we should hope it will be found to remove a formidable barrier to the extension of those just principles of national happiness, of which our own country is so eminent an example, and which it is so honourably her present line of policy to promote among the great community of nations.

DOMESTIC.

The present month has proved a month of extraordinary agitation, and of peculiar alarm and disaster in the commercial world. Some of the first banking establishments in the metropolis have been driven, by the extreme pressure of the moment, to suspend their payments; and numerous country banks have been reduced to the same painful necessity, spreading dismay, and consternation, and distress around them. The remote cause of this tremendous commercial crisis is doubtless to be found in that rage for speculation, combined with the very low rate to which interest had fallen in the public funds of the country, which led so many persons to embark in schemes connected with foreign loans and foreign adventures, in the hope of adding to their income. To these operations, the liberal issue of bank-notes, for a considerable space of time, afforded great facilities. These facilities, the high state of general credit, and the desire of beneficially placing their deposits, induced many bankers to make advances, in the way of

discount, for far longer periods than had been customary. Besides this, in the course of the last spring, a great and sudden rise having taken place in the price of many articles of very wide and general consumption, speculation was carried to an enormous height; but the rise of price, in some articles at least, proving of short duration, a calamitous re-action took place, and large failures ensued. At the same time the Bank of England is said to have felt such a drain of its gold as made it prudent somewhat to contract its issues. However that may be, the mercantile world began, in the month of October, to experience a change in the state of the money market. Bank notes were obtainable with greater difficulty, the interest of money rose, and the pressure continued gradually to advance until the beginning of the present month, when it threatened to involve a great part of the commercial world in one common ruin. The immediate and proximate cause of this state of things, was, without doubt, a scarcity of bank notes. Not that the bank had materially lessened its circulation, but that those who were anxious to fortify themselves against coming difficulties, were eager to possess a larger quantity of its notes. The apprehension of a run, on the part of the eight hundred banks scattered throughout the country, led to an immense transmission to all parts of the kingdom, both of gold and bank notes, which were necessarily subtracted from the currency of the metropolis; and thus the evil was greatly aggravated. In such a state of things, producing as it did a strong, though unreasonable panic, the policy of the Bank should have been, boldly to have met the pressure by very free issues of their notes, proportioned in some degree to the new and unprecedented demand to which the panic necessarily led. That they might have done this with safety, provided only they took care to obtain valid securities for their issues, is unquestionable, because, during the whole continuance of the alarm, the foreign exchanges were favourable, and bank notes were at a premium as compared with gold; the market price of gold 31. 17s. 6d. being 44d. less than the Mint price. The Bank, we are told, were extremely liberal in their issues. Their liberality, however, came too late. Had it been exercised a fortnight earlier, as it ought to have been, much of the evil that has taken place would, without doubt, have been prevented. At the same time, it would not be fair greatly to blame the directors, if at such a crisis they should have partaken of the panic, and acted on erroneous views

of the subject. Their conduct shews, however, in what a fearful predicament the stability of the whole commercial world is placed, by it being left, as now, to the determination of twenty-four men, acting without public responsibility, whether or not it shall be in the power even of the very wealthiest individuals to make good their pecuniary engagements. The tremendous crisis through which we have passed, must lead, as we apprehend, to some more secure and salutary arrangement than that of our present monetary system; and must have the effect of doing away that monopoly enjoyed by the Bank, which raises its directors, however excellent and worthy they may be in their private capacities, to a situation for which they are wholly unfit, that of being the arbiters of the supply of the very life-blood of our whole immense commercial system.

These are the economical views of the present state of things which have occured to us. To the moral bearings of the question, which are many and important, we cannot now advert.

The meeting of Parliament is prorogued to the second of February. Among the subjects which are likely to excite an early and powerful interest in the proceedings of that august assembly, there is one to which we feel it a duty to direct the early attention of our readers; we mean, the necessity of abolishing colonial slavery. Petitions are already in preparation, and are likely to be poured in in vast numbers, and with an overwhelming mass of signatures, on this great question, of which the public are, we trust, at length beginning to feel the importance. The subject is of such powerful and pressing interest that, though the limits of our present Number are exhausted, we cannot withhold from our readers the statements made in a special Report, at a meeting of the Antislavery Society held on the twenty-first instant, for the purpose of petitioning Parliament for the abolition of colonial slavery, Mr. Wilberforce in the chair. The powerful conviction excited at this meeting, both by the Report and by the addresses delivered, by Sir James Mackintosh, Messrs. Brougham, Buxton, Denman, Lushington, and others, has already led to a most numerous and respectable signature of the petitions intended to be presented to the legislature. We insert the Report entire. It was as follows:

"Since the publication of the Second Report of the Society, made on the 30th April last, a large mass of

most important information, on the subject of Colonial Slavery, has been laid before Parliament. A digest of the most material parts of these parliamentary documents has been published, under the title of the The Slave Colonies of Great Britain, or a Ficture of Negro Slavery drawn by the Colonists themselves. (See Christian Observer for October, p. 655.) As this pamphlet has been largely circulated, it will not be necessary to enter into a detail of the statements which it contains, or of the fresh horrors which it develops. It has admitted us to a near view of the interior of society in one of the slave colonies, Berbice, where the Fiscal had been so attentive to his duty as to preserve some record, though an imperfect one, of the causes of complaint, on the part of the slaves, which came before him. We are not to suppose that the slave system in this colony is marked by features of peculiar atrocity. The presumption, on the contrary, is rather in favour of its comparative lenity, because it is one of the few slave colonies in which the population does not diminish. We have unfortunately no similar disclosures from any other of those colonies. But when we consider what a mass of suffering is laid open to our view in the account which has reached us from this single colony, containing only 23,000 slaves, being about a fortieth part of the whole slave population, how frightfully would that mass have been augmented had we received a similar report of the remaining 800,000! Over their sufferings the veil of oblivion has been drawn. Of them no record has been preserved. We may imagine, indeed, what they must have been, from the glimpse which has been afforded us in the returns from Berbice; but the full amount of their horrors can now be known only to Him whose eye makes inquisition for the blood of the innocent, and by whom not one sigh of the oppressed is disregarded,

"Revolting, in every point of view, as is the delineation, contained in these papers, of the state of British colonial slavery, as it exists in law and in practice, there is at least this advantage attending the melancholy detail, that it serves amply to confirm the view of the nature and effects of that cruel system which has been sanctioned and circulated by this Society, making their statements to appear even cold and tame in the comparison.

"These parliamentary documents are particularly valuable, as exemplifying the unchanged spirit of colonial legislation on the subject of slavery. The local

legislatures have refused, without a single exception, to comply even with the moderate requisitions of his Majesty's Ministers, as these are embodied in the Order in Council for Trinidad; and the colonists, generally, exult in the refusal, encouraging each other to persevere in the same contumacious course. Their tone of secure and triumphant irony is remarkable. "We beg you to observe,' says the editor of one of their newspapers-and we give the passage only as an illustration of the prevailing spirit'We beg you to observe, that not one of the unconquered colonies' (meaning the colonies having legislatures of their own)

have had the civility to comply with Earl Bathurst's wishes, notwithstanding. he informed them, in the most earnest and feeling manner, of the serious extent of the disappointment which his Majesty's Government would experience if they rejected his application. sympathize most sincerely with his Lordship on this unexpected event.'

We

"Attempts, it is true, have been made, by several of the colonial legislatures, to ameliorate their slave codes; and they boast of their new laws as models of wise and beneficent legislation. But it has been shewn, by the digest of these laws already laid before the public, that, vaunted as they have been, they are nevertheless an outrage on every just principle of legislation; and afford, at the very moment they profess to protect the slave, a decisive proof of his utter want of effective protection, and of the depth of his legal degradation. And if such be the character of their recent enactments, deliberately framed in the strange hope of satisfying the expectations of the parliament and people of this country;-if the colonial legislatures can have so egregiously misapprehended the whole current of British principle and feeling, would it not be the height of fatuity to continue to look for any useful reforms from that quarter? The work must be undertaken and executed by the British Parliament. They alone are competent to it. In no other way can a reasonable hope be entertained, either of effectually mitigating the rigours of colonial bondage, or of finally abolishing that opprobrious state of society.

"It cannot be supposed, that, in the hands of the men who framed, and who boast of having framed, such enactments, the administration of the slave laws. should manifest any remarkable traits of lenity and forbearance, or indicate any peculiar respect for Negro life or Negro comfort. On the contrary, the parlia