414 
To the Editor of the Monthly Magazine. 
Sir: 
HEN at Bath in 1816, my phy- 
sician, the late eminent Dr. Ca- 
leb Parry, father of Captain Parry, of 
nautical celebrity, one day told me that 
he had had for a patient Louris XVIIL., 
then just restored to the throne of his 
ancestors, and now recently deceased. 
The ewiled Louis came to Bath an 
immense size, labouring under a violent 
paroxysm of the gout, and agonizing at 
every pore! Dr, Parry examined every 
symptom of the royal sufferer, and asked 
him “ how his appetite was ?”” His Ma- 
jesty replied, ‘“ Very good—vyery good: 
I eat as much as rour!’” With this 
answer his physician was satisfied. 
Dr. Parry then prescribed a severe 
course of diet and physic, which reduced 
him greatly in bulk; and at the end of 
six weeks, he was completely reco- 
vered. The physician calling to take 
leave, was told by him, that he wanted 
to put an advertisement into the Bath 
papers; which Dr. Parry said very po- 
litely, he would see properly inserted. 
“The advertisement,’ said the king, 
“ shall be short, and may run thus :— 
*Losr ! great part of my belly—(strok- 
ing down his waistccat with a smile). 
Whoever finds it, and brings it back to 
its owner, shall be duly rewarded.’ ” 
The doctor laughed, enjoyed this little 
ebullition of pleasantry, and they parted 
with mutual satisfaction. The French 
monarch doubtless recovered what he 
had lost without the aid of an adver- 
tisement, and, re-indulging his voracious 
appetite, preserved his august rotundity 
to the end of his days ! 
Islington, Oct. 4, 1824. 
———— 
For the Monthly Magazine. 
On the ABotrTIon of SLaveRy. 
[We have taken great liberties of cur- 
tailment, &c. with the following article ; 
- but for the ideas in general, we are in- 
debted to a long neglected communication 
~.of our correspondent, Mr. James Luck- 
cock ; which but for its extreme length 
we conceive would not have been so long 
neglected. ] 
PPRESSION and monopoly must 
needs enlist fraud and prevarica- 
tion into their service, to give the sem- 
blance of justice to their proceedings. 
Let us take the subject of Slavery as a 
case in point; and what a wide field of 
casuisty and benighted wandering is 
presented to our imagination by the 
advocates for its continuance! while 
the public ardour is almost stultified to 
indifference by the unnecessary conces- 
Joun Evans. 
On the Abolition of Slavery. 
[ Dec. I, 
sions of the avowed abolitionists. And 
while, on the one hand, every feeling 
of humanity and religion is made a mat- 
ter of derision ; is it not, on the other, 
too easily admitted, that the question 
may fairly be put into the scale of 
calculation, and pounds, shillings, and 
pence, be the umpires of human misery, 
and of human life! Shame on such 
perversion! Let the appeal be made 
to the principles of humanity and moral 
feeling; and then let the decision be 
pronounced. The unblushing pretence 
for the continuance of this satire upon 
civilization is the necessity for the pre- 
servation of property, acquired by law- 
sanctioned means, and thereforé gua- 
ranteed by public faith. But will any of 
these sticklers for what they choose to 
call property, exhibit a scale of com- 
parison between claims of pecuniary 
profit, and their right in life and limb ? 
You say you have some thousand 
pounds vested in the purchased pro- 
perty of slaves, and you are not to be 
robbed of this with impunity. But 
has not every human being an inherent 
property in his own limbs and faculties, 
inalienable at any rate but by his own 
consent? Which is the better title, 
that which God hath given? or which 
man hath usurped? « Before you at- 
tempt to maintain the difficult position 
in favour of a property in slaves, have 
the goodness to state how much pro- 
perty of the benefit of property to your- 
self shall be considered as an equiva- 
lent to a certain portion of misery to 
others? Will you steal or kill a man 
rather than loose a thousand pounds, 
which cannot be preserved without theft 
or murder? This is bringing the argu- 
ment within comprehension; but who 
does not see that five hundred, or even 
fifty pounds, or even ten, is more to 
one person than a thousand is to ano- 
ther. Why then should it not be justi- 
fiable to secure the fifty or the ten by 
the same principle of act and reason as 
the other? And why not by the kid- 
napping and murder of white men as 
well as black ? 
But after all, does the necessity exist 
for such a monstrous and cruel alterna- 
tive; and has Providence so consti- 
tuted the affairs of mankind, that we 
have no choice between right and 
wrong? or has society fallen into that 
state that there is no such thing as re- 
conciling together the security of pro- 
perty with the principles of justice and 
humanity 2? Would not religion, phi- 
losophy, and common sense, rather 
alike 
