water for our more honoured and enterprising brethren, our humble labours, feeble and desultory as they are, and ever attended by imperfections by which their efficiency is much impaired, are still a link in the chain of human agency, by which God is pleased to accomplish his purposes of mercy to a fallen world.

With respect to the degree in which the efforts of the missionaries have already been successful, in reference to the spiritual interests of their heathen brethren, they do not expect the harvest, when only beginning to break up the soil. They are aware, also, that, in a subject in which their hopes and fears are so sensibly alive, they are in danger of being misled by very equivocal symptoms: and even where they believe that they discern the fairest promise, they shrink from the idea of blazoning forth to the world, as decisive evidence of conversion, every favourable indication of a change of heart. Still, however, even in this respect, and at this early stage of their exertions, they have the gratification of believing that their labour has not been in vain.

Soon after leaving Brainerd, I crossed the river Tennessee, which here forms the boundary of the Cherokee nation.

Reflections on the state and prospects of the Indians.

I now bade a last adieu to Indian territory; and as I pursued my solitary ride through the woods, I insensibly fell into a train of melancholy reflections on the eventful history of this injured race.

Sovereigns, from time immemorial, of the interminable forests which overshadow this vast continent, they have gradually been driven, by the white usurpers of their soil, within the limits of their present precarious possessions. One after another of their favourite rivers has been reluctantly abandoned, until the range of the hunter is bounded by lines prescribed by his invader, and the independence of the warrior is no more. Even their present territory is partitioned out in reversion; and intersected with the prospective boundaries of surrounding states, which appear in the maps, as if Indian title were actually extinguished, and these ancient warriors were already driven from the land of their fathers.

Of the innumerable tribes, which a few centuries since, roamed fearless and independent, in their native forests, how many have been swept into oblivion, and are with the generations before the flood! Of others, not a trace re

mains but in tradition, or in the person of some solitary wanderer, the last of his tribe, who hovers like a ghost among the sepulchres of his fathers-a spark still faintly glimmering in the ashes of an extinguished race.

From this gloomy review of the past history of these injured tribes, it was refreshing to turn to their future prospects; and to contemplate those missionary labours, which, under the blessing of God, are arresting the progress of that silent waste, by which they were fading rapidly from the map of nations. Partial success, indeed, had followed the occasional efforts of the American Government for the civilization of the Indians, but it was reserved for the perseverance of disinterested christian love, to prove, to the world at large, the practicability of an undertaking which had often been abandoned in despair.

Moral obstacles, which had bid defiance to worldly policy or interested enterprise, are yielding to a simple confidence in the promises of God, and a faithful compliance with the divine commands-" Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature." Christians of different denominations, are sending labourers to the task; and it is animating, indeed, to contemplete the United States in the name, as it were, and as the representative of the various nations who have participated in the wrongs inflicted on this injured race-preparing to offer the noblest compensation in their power, and to diffuse the gospel throughout the aborigines of this western world.

And, surely, if any arguments were necessary in support of missions, in addition to those derived from the force of divine commands, and the suggestions of diffusive charity, we should find them in the history of the early intercourse of christian Europe with Asia, Africa, and America. Or if, viewing the wide range and growing energies of British missions, a deep sense of our defective efforts should at any time be insufficient to repress every feeling of self-complacence, we have but to recollect how large a portion of the past labours of our missionaries has been consumed, in eradicating the vicious habits which we have introduced into some heathen nations, or in dispelling the prejudices which our inconsistent conduct has diffused through others.

It is not in our naval, our military, or our commercial character, that we have as yet appeared generally as a blessing to benighted nations. It is not when we press into the wars of christians, the tomahawk or scalping-knife of the Indians-it is not when, deluging his country with spi

ritous liquors in the prosecution of an unequal traffic, we send forth a moral pestilence, before which the frail virtues of the savage fall, like the dry leaves of his forests in the blasts of autumn-it is not when thus engaged, that we either conciliate his affections, or elevate his moral tone. The men who fertilize the moral wilderness and evangelize the heathen world, are animated by a higher spirit than the desire of conquest, or the lure of gain-by the spirit of our Marsdens, our Careys, our Buchanans, and our Henry Martins. These are the men, who at once the benefactors of their species and the representatives of christian Britain, secure for their native country the veneration of far distant tribes, while preaching on their mountains the glad tidings of salvation, or filling their valleys with hymns of praise.

The time, I hope, will come, when not our missionaries only, but our naval and military commanders, our soldiers, our sailors, and our merchants, will all carry with them to every country where they hoist the British flag, unequivocal demonstrations that they come from a christian land; and it is animating indeed, to regard our colonial establishments, our extended commerce, and our vast marine, as instruments, in the hands of Providence, to prepare paths for our missionaries, and to observe that sacred cause in which they count not even their lives dear.

In that cause, it is scarcely possible to be neutral. The question of missions is now brought home to every breast; and the influence of individual opinion on the social and domestic circle, carries into the most retired situations an awful responsibility, as to the decisions which may be formed, and the sentiments which may be expressed, on a subject so deeply affecting the highest interests of the human

race.

LETTER

TO

M. JEAN-BAPTISTE SAY,

On the Comparative Expense of Free and Slave Labour.

Sir,

It is with much concern that I observe, in your excellent and popular work on Political Economy, the sentiments you express on the subject of the comparative expense of free and slave labour. Accustomed to respect you highly as an enlightened advocate of liberal principles, and to admire the philanthropic spirit which pervades your writings, I cannot but regret deeply, that opinions so calculated to perpetuate slavery, should have the sanction of your authority; and that while you denounce the slave system as unjustifiable, you admit, that, in a pecuniary point of view, it may be the most profitable.

As this subject is of peculiar importance at the present moment, when efforts are making both in this country and in France, to effect the gradual abolition of slavery in the Colonies, I will not apologize for addressing you. The same regard to truth and candour, which secured your reluctant assent to an opinion, little in unison, I am sure, with your feelings, will lead you to examine, with impartiality, any facts or arguments which I may adduce in my attempt to controvert it. Many of them, I am aware, must be familiar to you, but possibly even these may appear in a new light, and derive some additional force, from their connexion with others which have not fallen under your observation.

The expense of slave-labour resolves itself into the annual sum, which, in the average term of the productive years of a slave's life, will liquidate the cost of purchase or rearing, and support in old age, if he attain it, with interest, and the sum annually expended in his maintenance.

If we omit the case of purchased slaves, and suppose

them to be bred on the estate, (and as breeding is now admitted to be, under ordinary circumstances, the cheapest mode of supply, your argument will gain by the supposition,) the expense of free labour will resolve itself into precisely the same elements, since the wages paid to free labourers of every kind, must be such as to enable them, one with another, to bring up a family, and continue their

race.

The

Now it is observed by Adam Smith, "The wear and tear of a free servant, is equally at the expense of his master, and it generally costs him much less than that of a slave. The fund destined for replacing and repairing, if I may say so, the wear and tear of the slave, is commonly managed by a negligent master, or careless overseer. That destined for performing the same office with regard to the freeman, is managed by the freeman himself. disorders which generally prevail in the economy of the rich, naturally introduce themselves into the management of the former; the strict frugality and parsimonious attention of the poor, as naturally establish themselves in that of the latter." The Russian political economist, Storch, who had carefully examined the system of slavery in that extensive empire, makes the same remark almost in the same words. Hume expresses a similar opinion in decided terms; and I have now before me a statement from one of the slave districts in the United States, in which it is estimated that, taking the purchase-money or the expense of rearing a slave, with the cost of his maintenance, at their actual rates, and allowing fifteen years of health and strength, during which to liquidate the first cost, his labour will be at least 25 per cent. dearer than that of the free labourer in the neighbouring districts.

It is observed by a planter, in a letter published by the Hon. Joshua Steele, a member of the council in Barbadoes, under the signature of Philo Xylon; "The truth is, that although we plant much more ground than should be sufficient to produce provisions to feed our labouring slaves, yet the negroes, feeling that they have no direct property in these crops, and that we must buy more to supply them if those crops fall short, the cultivation is negligently performed by them, and the produce is afterwards stolen by the Negro watchmen or their confederates, so that we seldom reap a third part of what should be the natural and probable produce. But if we could depend on their diligence and economy, in cultivating rented tenements, and