effusion,―touching with its brilliant light the pictures of the imagination, and relieving the mind for some new demand on its graver attention, or filling with pleasurable thoughts the intervals of grand emotion. Perhaps there never was an orator so given to erratic flights, and yet possessed of such a sustaining energy. Ever animated and original, he had resources in which he could always confide, and a confidence which seemed to create its own resources. In humorous description of character-in the burlesqued delineation of human follies-in the caustic vivacity that exposes weakness, and the bitter sarcasm that gives its deadly venom to invective, he was never excelled. But he was no less happy in that delicate word, good-natured raillery,—in that fanciful playfulness which enlivens a subject with the most beautiful gleams of intellectual animation, that like the Aurora of thought flit and vanish with endless variety; and in bolder flashes of merriment, even Yorrick could not surpass him :-laughter and the graces were entirely at his command.

With all this, he had the mastery of dark and terrible images, such as fill the mind with gloom, and impress a fearful sensation on the heart. He could paint with the wild pencil of a Salvator, and throw scenery most picturesque and dismal around his subjects, grouped under a preternatural light and shade; but he had also a power of pathetic description, exquisite and touching as that of the delicate-minded Guido, in which there was the light of the finest thought, and the soul of the inmost expression. His stories, though told in a language very different from that of Sterne, were equally capable of exciting sad or mirthful sensations; for though the diction was exceedingly rich, the feeling was never lost in an obscuring redundancy-so that although fancy lavished her flowers in his mournful descriptions, yet they were interwoven with the feeling and blended into the effect, like the garland of Ophelia with her melancholy fortunes.

He was not addicted to metaphysical disquisitions; he did not perplex himself and others with shadowy distinctions and nebulous speculation; but he was fond of applying his ethical knowledge to the enforcement and illustration of his arguments.

His reading appeared to have lain much in that branch of science, and its judicious application gave a moral dignity to his orations, and elevated temporary topics to a connexion with general, immutable principles, and philosophic truth.

But with all these qualities he was not calculated to shine with equal lustre within the walls of the Senate. He was better prepared for the arena of single combat, than the field of disciplined and national encounter. His mind was not of political organization. His faculties could not dwell upon questions of political relations with any close and elaborate power of investigation. He would rather single out men for the exercise of his peculiar talents of humour and invective, than lose individuality in the concern for principles. His fancy and his wit were perpetually drawing him out of his subject to seize ludicrous images, and sketch satirical caricatures. This disposition made him a useful partisan, but never could allow him to become a leader. He could rebuke and ridicule statesmen with effect, but he was not formed to repair their faults or rise upon their ruin.

Slave-trading and Slavery.-Sept. 9, 1839.

[ Although his name is little known in connexion with the abolition of colonial slavery, Mr. Sydney TAYLOR was one of the first-we believe the very first to take up the question in the leading columns of the London Daily Press. He was also the first to expose the real nature of the negroapprenticeship scheme-nor did his efforts cease till the Act was obtained for terminating that delusion. His writings against slavery and the foreign slave-trade are too voluminous for the narrow limits of this Selection: but we must not omit the following article from the Morning Herald of Sept. 9, 1839. And we ought to mention that so far back as 24th Jan. 1826, in the Morning Chronicle, may be seen the report of his Speech at an anti-slavery public meeting, held at Buckingham, where Lord NUGENT presided. ED.]

THE crimes of a single tyrant, invested with the purple of sovereignty, and wielding the sceptre of absolute power, excite abhorrence, but cause no astonishment. Despotism has a natural tendency to deprave both the head and the heart of man, and to make the crowned idol, before whom millions prostrate themselves in slavish worship, fancy himself endowed with the attributes of a god only to perform the acts of a

demon. Power, unlimited by law, is seldom constrained by conscience or virtue within the limits of morality. Hence, under an absolute Sovereign, government is generally but another name for organized oppression; while in wild democracies, liberty is nothing else than popular licentiousness.

But is popular licentiousness-or what some would more tenderly describe as "liberty in excess"-the only evil consequence of democratic government? Look at the history of democracies, from that of classic Sparta down to that of modern America-have not many of them outdone the vilest, and basest, and most remorseless of despotisms, in the love and cultivation of slavery-the slavery which does not consist in the denying or limiting of civil or political rights, but in despoiling its human victims of their natural and personal freedom,-loading them with the yoke (not a figurative one) of the most degrading bondage-and reducing human nature to the level of the brute? Such were the helots of Sparta of old, and such were the bondsmen of Pagan Rome; but were Spartan helots or Roman bondsmen in a worse condition of deplorable servitude, and of mental and moral debasement, (its inevitable consequence,) than the black slaves of democratic America of Christian America-of that America, which the civil wisdom of FRANKLIN and the military genius of WASHINGTON Combined to emancipate?

Two democratic governments in Europe-Spain and Portugal-pursue the traffic in slaves, with all the inhuman activity of a buccaneering ferocity. Both have agreed, by treaty with England, to co-operate in suppressing the abominable traffic, and both have received a large amount of British gold for giving their assent-as it now appears, their fraudulent assent -to the demands of humanity and civilization. The gold obtained by carrying on this piratical warfare against the defenceless children of Africa outweighs, in the scales of democratic morality, the claims of justice, the remonstrances of civilization, and the solemn obligations of national faith. But chiefly does the Government of Portugal, which British treasure and blood assisted to revolutionize, exhibit a profligate and shameless audacity in the pursuit of that pirate-commerce which

desolates Africa by its crimes, and covers the ocean with its cargoes of human merchandise-outraging HEAVEN, and setting man at defiance.

England has suffered this too long. Often, through past years, have we reminded our Government of its great and sacred duty-a duty to which it is pledged in the sight of God and the nations-to put down this infernal nuisance, and sweep the last wreck of the crime-stained traffic from the ocean. Emboldened by the indulgence or forbearance of Great Britain, that den of slave dealers, the Lisbon Cortes, grow valorous in their speech: and their Press-a Press graced with high-sounding mottoes of hypocritical liberty-becomes insolent in defence of the national sin a sin of which torture and murder are the ordinary accompaniments, but whose atrocious immorality is legitimized by gold. England has in her own hands the means of crushing at once the slave-piracy of Portugal. Lisbon lies at the mercy of her maritime power. If the treaties for the suppression of the slave-trade with Portugal and Spain are not enforced, on the heads of our own Government be the responsibility of the crime, the blood, and the misery, which that traffic produces, -and which our rulers, if they please, can doom to speedy destruction by one telegraphic command.

But how is the great transatlantic democracy to be dealt with? It is true the republic of the United States have no external slave-traffic-what is commonly called, a slave-trade. But that republic has a slave-market, and slave-shambles-she breeds slaves for sale, and kills them when she likes. Her liberty-loving people have "Lynch-law" to support slave-law; and one of the "enactments" of that civilized code is, that those who argue to convince the American people that slavery is a national crime, are deserving of death by a summary process of mob trial and strangulation; and that the slaves who listen to their doctrines must be hanged along with them. Thus, in the month of July, 1835, two itinerant "abolition preachers" were seized and hanged in the streets by the inhabitants of Livingston, Mississippi, and seven negroes were hanged along with them, for the enormous crime against Lynch-law of having "listened to their doctrines." Such are the

very words in which that "crime" was described [July 13, 1835,] in the democratic paper called, the New Orleans American a journal that reported those murders with seeming satisfaction; and it ended by making the following announcement:" Warning is given to the abolitionists that they may expect similar treatment all over the south."

Such is the respect that the " fierce democracy" of America pay to the spirit of that Liberty, whose name is inscribed on their banners! They hold slaves to be deserving of death, whose hearts yearn for the freedom of which the hypocritical champions of the "inalienable rights of man" have robbed them, and who dare to obey the instincts of nature, in listening to the accents of the advocates of "universal emancipation." And this is democratic America! This is the land of " light and liberty," whose form of government excites the admiration and praise of certain "philosophic" reformers of the British constitution. This is the model republic-a republic in which slave-breeding, slave-selling, slave-murder, and Lynch-law, go on, hand-in-hand-a republic where, on altars dedicated to freedom, human victims are bound and butchered in horrid sacrifice. ** * *

But those who want to see how that " dignity," which the great CREATOR of the universe stamped on his noblest earthly work when he "made man in his own image," is respected and cultivated in America, have only to read the letter of Mr. Joseph STURGE, addressed to "the members of the British Association for the advancement of science," and which will be found in our columns to-day [Herald of Sept. 9, 1839]. This admonitory epistle of a distinguished advocate of negro freedom tells some plain truths to our convivial savans, that had treated with extraordinary honour a representative of the "dignity" of the American democracy, who, in acknowledging their flattering notice, remarked that "America was allied to England in blood, religion, habits, and associations, and worshipped the same GoD in the same manner." Mr. STURGE disclaims the identity of England and America in "habits and associations," and, in a spirit of honest indignation, denounces the practices -alike abhorrent to religion and humanity-of the slavedealers and slave-breeders of the American union.