1831.] Affairs in General. 433 



anxiety for the welfare of the national possessions, add those of his 

 original profession., in the course of which he visited the West Indies. 

 For our part, we totally disbelieve the monstrous stories of cruelty which 

 the Saintly Association have told for the wonder of the European world. 

 The travellers and merchants, the gallant soldier and sailor, who pass 

 their months or years in the midst of the slave population, return to us 

 without any pathetic histories of the satanism of the planters. Hun- 

 dreds of such men return every year, and no men are more ready 

 to speak their minds upon all topics, yet upon this, their only mode of 

 speaking is generally to express their indignation at the flagrant impos- 

 tures which the itinerant preachers of sedition, under the disguise of 

 methodism, or of methodism in the language of sedition, import annually, 

 in time for their annual declarations at the meetings held in every corner 

 of London. The House of Assembly in Jamaica presented by their agent, 

 Mr. Burge, an address, at one of the late levees, to his Majesty, a rational, 

 manly, and loyal document, and which was most graciously received. 



" To the King's Most Excellent Majesty. 

 " The humble Address of the Assembly of Jamaica. 



" We, your Majesty's dutiful and loyal subjects, the Assembly of Jamaica, 

 actuated by correspondent feelings with those universally expressed by your 

 Majesty's other subjects, embrace the earliest opportunity of condoling with 

 your Majesty on the great loss which has been sustained in the demise of our 

 late most gracious Sovereign, your Majesty's Royal Brother. We beg to offer, 

 from principles of duty and affectionate attachment to your royal person, our 

 sincere and cordial congratulations on your Majesty's accession to the throne of 

 your ancestors ; and we devoutly hope that, together with your august consort, 

 your Majesty may be long spared to diffuse over your extensive dominions 

 those blessings which promote domestic happiness, while they secure national 

 prosperity. From your Majesty's personal knowledge of the West India 

 Islands, and their importance to the mother country, we, your Majesty's 

 Assembly of Jamaica, rely with the most implicit confidence on your goodness 

 for that protection which your devoted and suffering subjects in this portion of 

 your empire at present so much require ; and that your Majesty will be the 

 guardian of those rights which were guaranteed to this island by your royal 

 predecessors. That your Majesty may long reign in the hearts and affections 

 of your people, is the ardent prayer of your Majesty's loyal and dutiful sub- 

 jects, The Assembly of Jamaica. 



" Passed the Assembly this 29th day of November, 1830. 



" RICHARD BARRETT, Speaker." 



The English are a nation of naturalists, and there is more money 

 annually spent in girls' schools on botany, zoology, conchology, and all 

 the other ologies, than would provide half the pretty students with a hus- 

 band a-piece. And yet there are hundreds of the most curious things 

 under our eyes, of which no rational account has ever been given. 

 Among the rest, WHITE-BAIT, dear as it is to the souls of aldermen ; the 

 prime attraction of life from May to September to the host of travellers 

 down the domains of Father Thames ; the sole reason to the citizen for 

 knowing that Greenwich exists, until that citizen, in an ambitious hour, 

 turns hero, and comes back to lay his wooden leg and his laurels in the 

 porticoes of the hospital ; white-bait, to this hour, has baffled all the 

 knowledge of the knowing in matters offish. Sir Joseph Banks tried to 

 fathom the mystery, and tried in vain, at the head of a scientific com- 

 mittee of twenty-one, who, after dining a fortnight at the Ship and the 

 Crown alternately, could decide upon nothing but that they had the 



M.M. New Serie*. VOL. XI. No. 04. 3 K 



