flag still flying, went down amidst the cheers of a triumphant majority in Parliament, and a sympathising people; the Slave Trade, now named only among the foul crimes against which the laws of the land have vindicated those of God and of nature, by declaring them felony by statute. The Slave Trade finds no one bold enough now to defend even its memory. And yet, when we hear the Slave Trade reprobated, and slavery defended by the same persons, I must own I think the Slave Trade unfairly treated. The abuse of defunct Slave Trade is a cheap price for the abettor of living slavery to pay by way of compromise. But we cannot allow the Colonial party on these terms to cry truce with us, by stigmatising the Slave Trade. There is not one general principle on which the Slave Trade is to be stigmatised, which does not impeach slavery itself. If Slave Trade is spoliation, the liberty of the man is the spoil, and his fellow man loses his title to the possession. If slavery is more to be authorised on one account than any other, it is because it perpetuates, and always must, a Contraband Slave Trade. The Slave Trade abolition is incomplete, rapine and murder are still carried on, and by English hands too, upon the defenceless shores of Africa, and the murderous horrors of the middle passage still abound, and must abound, while slavery exists. It is with you, it is with the people of England, now to urge Parliament on to its duty. Great objects are in preparation for next Session. But we must look to your Petitions for -support. You have in your cause the gigantic powers of Mr.Brougham, the fascinating eloquence of Sir J. Mackintosh, the indefatigable activity and knowledge of Mr. Buxton and Dr. Lushington, and you have the veteran and honest zeal of Mr. William Smith. 1 would advert to the invaluable assistance out of Parliament, of one of the most distinguished supporters of this great cause, whose name, I trust, we shall be honoured with as a Vice President; but it would be the worst taste in the world of me to speak of him while his son (Mr. Stephen) is at my left hand [hear, hear!] I may however speak; how can we here be silent? on the venerable and glorious example of his immortal kinsman, Mr. Wilberforce. May the calm evening of his pure and illustrious life be cheered and made truly happy by meeting the final consummation of the great cause with which it is identified [cheers]. I glory in the position in which you have just placed me in this society. I only feel shame in the length of time I have trespassed upon you. Yet let me implore in the name of your country, because of freedom,-in the name of Justice and of Right, because of freedom,—in the name of Religion,--of that Being 'whose service' at least' is perfect freedom,' never to relax your efforts until they shall have obtained peace for Africa, liberty for those hundreds of thousands of fellow subjects, who are unrepresented here but by your sympathy, and, though long delayed, the unspeakable glory for your native land, of leading the way before the Old Nations at least of the earth (some parts of the New World have set us a noble example), in that great blessing for the whole of mankind, the full and entire abolition of Slavery.--[This address was received throughout with great applause, which lasted for some time after its conclusion.]

On Wednesday, February 1, a Public Meeting for the same purpose was held at EDINBURGH, the EARL of ROSEBERRY in the Chair.

During the meeting a slight opposition was attempted, but when an opportunity was offered to the opponent to speak, he slunk away. We give the speech of HENRY COCKBURN, Esq. Advocate, who addressed the Noble Chairman as follows.

HENRY COCKBURN, Esq. Advocate: "My Lord, I hold in my hand a Petition, which I propose to submit to this meeting, as proper to be adopted; and after what you have heard, I have little more than to say, that it embodies the Resolutions which have now been passed; and that from the bottom of my heart, I do most sincerely approve of all that this Society has done-of all that it is now doing-and of the great work which I trust it is yet destined to accomplish [applause]. The fact is, my Lord, that we have now come to that stage in the history of this great question at which all doubts as to its material features are removed. I don't say that we have come to the time at which the railer is to be silent, or the selfish man is to avow that he is confuted; but I do say that we are come to that stage in which no person, without plainly professing to resign his understanding, can say, 'I am still a friend of Slavery" [immense applause]. About a year or two ago, his Majesty's Government required the Colonial Authorities to send to Parliament a statement of what they had done for the amelioration of their slaves. They have sent that statement; and we now see, under their own hand-writing, how true their former statements were--and, if we only know them by their own accounts, we should judge more candidly of them. We have it on the official reports of the Local authorities in the West Indies themselves; and the essence of these reports is to be found in a book lately published, the name of which you will all observe, for I beg you will all read it for yourselves: it is entitled, ‘A Picture of Negro Slavery, drawn by the Colonists themselves.' This pamphlet any body may read in the course of about two hours; it consists of about 150 pages, of which I should suppose, upon a guess, not twenty of them are written by any person but the colonists themselves. These pages contain the evidence by the West Indian planters, why Great Britain should no more interfere. These pages contain the proofs that they are going on perfectly well. Now, my Lord, if there be one person in this room, who has not yet read every page of that terrible record, that person has not done-not what charity asks-but what justice demands in behalf of the family of man [applause]. Since the commencement of the long annals of human atrocity, I don't believe that such a picture ever met the human eye. There was an old Italian poet, who had passed through many personal sufferings, and lived in the most troublous era of his country's history, who was possessed of a fertile and gloomy imagination, and who, with the pen of fiction, sat down to embody in words all the terrible conceptions of his soul. This was a cause to exhaust his genius by supposing his enemies and human criminals placed in an aërial region of his own making, and in assigning to them all the dreadful punishments, all the terrible employments, by which he thought that guilt ought to be visited. It has always been imputed to that genius, that it is in some degree absurd, by the extravagance of his fictitious wretchedness.-Gentlemen, I assure you, upon my personal authority-for I have read the book-that all the horrors of the dark fancy of Dante are exceeded by the actual

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horrors which pass every day in our own islands upon those whom we have torn from their country to put them there, protected by what we call our laws-shielded by what we term the charity of our religion— sprung from the same origin with ourselves-partakers of the same common nature-destined to the same immortality [great applause]. I repeat, that if there be a person here who has not read that terrible and affecting record, let him go home, and let him not stay till he has got and read it. I repeat the title again. A Picture of Negro Slavery, drawn by the Colonists themselves,'-what, in this presence, I could not read one word of; and I know that the hardest heart I address, cannot read one page of it without feeling that heart to beat quick; that ere he reads another, his blood will grow cold; and that he will shut the book at last, astonished and confounded at the atrocities which he, by his silence and apathy, should be the means of committing upon those persons [applause]. And I trust that no squeamish delicacy will prevent any man or woman who hears me going through from the beginning to the end of it-you will not spare yourselves the horror and laceration of heart, the sickness which its disgusting details inspirego on to the end-and then refuse to sign this petition if you can [cheers]. The fact is, that contemplating what the colonists themselves have told us is the improved condition of their slaves, it is to my mind one of the most humiliating pictures of the weakness of our nature that we can speak or hear so coolly of such a subject. We are living in the midst of our personal and domestic comforts; we rise in the morning, and the sun shines on our employments; we close the day in the midst of our pleasures, our business and our families. But we consider not during these last twenty-four hours, how many of these slaves have suffered all that tyranny can inflict-all that humanity can endure. We think that because we attend a casual meeting, and sign our name to a petition, we have done enough; and we do no more. And yet we meet every day with the most sensible and amiable persons, possessed of what is called a good heart;-ask them to think of this matter, ask them to come here, they shake their heads, look grave, and give a few sighs for the sufferings of humanity; but they tell us, that they do not like to interfere,—they return to their own selfish pleasures, wrapt up in the complacency of their own minds; though we tell them that we want no more than the expression of their voice, and that by their silence they are increasing the miseries of their fellow-creatures [applause]. Adam Smith, that most accurate analyser of our moral sympathies, puts this case-Suppose a man, of what we reckon generous enough feeling, has some little ailment of his own-some scratch about the edge of his nail-he is as wretched as he can be; and he talks and thinks of nothing else but his scratched nail. Suppose a person were to meet this man, and to tell him, that certain news had been received that the whole empire of China had been swallowed up by a wave, and that three hundred millions of his fellow-creatures had in a moment ceased to live-what does he do? The case the learned Doctor has put with a perfect knowledge of, but with a severe sarcasm on, our nature. He will utter some well turned period on the precariousness of mortal lifelook sad for a little-walk to the end of the division of a street, and then return to his nail [laughter]. Many of us exhibit in our conduct

the fancied case put by this profound philosopher. Here are we, an assembly met for the mitigation and gradual abolition of Slavery; and yet, notwithstanding the acknowledged benevolence of our designs, and notwithstanding the respectability of this Meeting, we cannot muster as a society, more than five hundred contributors, to the extent of five shillings a year. But even with that small sum, what instruction has not been poured upon the minds of these poor benighted creatures! What shocks have not been given to that system of tyranny by which they are oppressed! The mite multiplied becomes a treasure; and if these mites were poured in from one end of the island to the other, how many thousands might we not save from the worst of possible degradations! Why, then, is it withheld? The truth is, it is the magnitude and enormity of the evil which prevents us from seeing it. If it was only a case of individual suffering, how easily would our sympathies be roused by it! for we could then hear every groan, and see every tear, and mark the quivering of every muscle in our fellow-sufferer. It is when we can follow him through his whole tale of family sufferings, that our sympathies become fluttered, and we are all humanity. But, when we attempt to describe the wretchedness endured in distant islands of the ocean, and talk of hundreds, or thousands, or millions of sufferers; then our imagination is baffled by the conception, and we fall back on the generality of our nature, and repose in thought upon the continuance of this evil, as we do upon the continuance of some of those evils in the moral and natural universe, which we cannot account for, and which we know man cannot remove. But could we only see the real circumstances of a single slave for a single day—I cannot tell you of them-how different would be our sensations! Imagination cannot conceive, nor words express, what these sufferings are where every principle of human nature is subverted-where all the extremity of distress is suffered that man can bear, and all the extremity of insolence which power and selfishness can inflict or man sustain-where there is life without the liberty of making the free use of their own limbs-labour without property-families without lawful relations- wrongs without redress punishment without guilt-minds in which memory can remember no early education, fancy anticipate no era of repose [murmurs of applause]. And yet, with all this, we are cold to the prosperity of this Society; and if our funds were allowed to become exhausted, in the next year, as they were in the last, and if our Petition shall be allowed to go forth without the great and united voice of this place, every observation made will apply to every individual who shall be conscious that he has not done what in him lies to forward the objects of that Petition. I know that is a common sentiment among many-and it is a very dangerous one, for it encourages apathy-that we ought not to exert ourselves, for we cannot succeed. Many say, 'What can we do? This system has lasted a hundred years, and Government has done all that is requisite without our interference; we need not disturb ourselves, for we cannot succeed.' My Lord, I have no more doubt of the ultimate success of this measure, than I have of any future moral good. There is nothing I anticipate more confidently in this earth, than that the West Indian Islands will yet become the abode, not merely of the English language, but of the principles of the English Government, and

of English justice, and also of the principles of the Christian Religion [applause]. These islands, favoured with all the bounties of nature, have hitherto been cursed only by the selfishness of man. I will say, that though we were assured we could not succeed, that should not abate one jot our holy ardour in this sacred cause. Success is not to

be commanded by men, but, speaking in a certain sense, all is in the power of man while he governs the world. We ought never to fail in using those means by which success may most probably be obtained. Had mankind always despaired in this manner, where would have been the Reformation? Where the English Revolution [cheers]? Or where the Redemption of this country from the persecution, which Scotland endured a hundred and fifty years ago [immense applause]? We should remember, that even if we fail, there is an elevation of sentiment-an independence of character-a consciousness of the desire of usefulness, which renders failure in such a cause a greater delight than ordinary success without a struggle, and for a useless end [applause]. Let, therefore, no man imagine he does his duty when he sits down at home, with his hands folded before him, and says, there is a place hemmed in from the regions of the earth by a circle of wretchedness, whose people do not bear the same colour with us, they speak not the same language, there is a little interfusion of water between us, we do not hear their groans, we will not attend to them. Let it be remembered, it is only the who does his duty, that can look the sun in the face, person and say, this is not my doing. There is nothing so important in moral life, as to connect great principles with great causes; and there is nothing so utterly heartless and contemptible, as the mind of that creature, who, wrapt up in his own ease, exclaims, I won't succeed; and therefore I won't exert myself.""

The Learned Gentleman concluded his address amid loud and continued plaudits.

Subjoined is a specimen of the disgusting advertisements which continue to occupy a large portion of every weekly Royal Gazette from the Island of Jamaica. If the enormities here exhibited had been sooner held up to the view of the British public; that vile system of slavery, which still perpetuates them without blushing, would not now pollute any territory subject to the British crown. We will not cease to call the attention of our countrymen to these abominations, so long as they are suffered to exist. Here are human beings, whom in their own persons, or in the persons of their parents, British subjects kidnapped or bribed others to kidnap in Africa,-bought and sold like cattle and other chattels, without regard to family ties, in countries absolutely dependent upon Great Britain for protection, and peculiarly favoured by her commercial code, and that to the prejudice of other dependencies where such atrocities are unknown. Here are human beings seized and sold in execution for their master's debts :-others, whether freemen or slaves, apprehended and committed to the nearest workhouse, only because their complexion is dark; and, if unable to produce documents of freedom which may have been stolen from them, and not claimed by any owner,sold after a while to pay the expenses of their committal and confinement! Read these advertisements, British labourers-free though