1829.] and tlicir Caliimniettors. 53;} 



able, and ought to be abolished ; but it is an act of the gi'ossest impiety 

 to resort to the holy name of that religion to justify such statements as 

 are put up by the anti-colonists. Mr. Canning was once taunted with a 

 similar reproach, and made a reply, which must be satisfactory to every 

 candid mind ; in the course of which he pointed out that remarkable 

 characteristic of submission and obedience, that contentedness to effect, 

 by its silent and untiring influence, the object of its institution, which 

 has distinguished the Christian religion from the moment of its revelation. 

 " The course of the Christian religion," he said, " has always been to 

 adapt itself to the circumstances of the place and time in which it was 

 seeking to make a progress ; to accommodate itself to all stations of life, 

 to all varieties of ailing or suffering ; restraining the high ; exalting the 

 lowly, by precepts applicable to all diversities of situation ; and alike 

 contributing to the happiness of man, and providing for his welfare, 

 whether connected with his highest destinies, or descending with him to 

 his lowest degradation — whether mounting the throne of the Caesars, or 

 comforting the captive in his cell !" 



If the practices of the colonists are opposed to the doctrines of 

 Christianity, let them fall ! If they do not administer, with hu- 

 manity and kindness to the wants of their slaves, let them be visited 

 as they will deserve to be, by the execration of all mankind ! But 

 if they are found — as it has been proved, to even tedious repetition, 

 that they have been — aiding the progress of religious and other instruction 

 among their slaves, and doing their utmost and best to give effect to 

 those measure for ameliorating the condition of the slave population 

 which have been suggested by this country's government ; and if their 

 only crimes are those of having first trusted the faith of that govern- 

 ment, and next declining to adopt the speculative notions of men who 

 are either their open or covert foes, and which could only end in the 

 destruction of their property, the loss of the Colonies, and the total 

 degradation of the negroes, in whose favour the pretence is made ; — if 

 this be the real statement of the case (and upon this we are content it 

 should stand or fall), is the treatment to which they are exposed, that 

 which they have deserved, or which it is compatible with the honour of 

 the British people to bestow on them ? Do there exist reasons or the 

 shadows of reasons for calling them irreligious and inhuman ? Do 

 there exist reasons why this country should relinquish the advantages 

 she derives from her Colonies ? And in what part of that Christianity, 

 of which they make profession, do the members of the Anti-Slavery 

 Society find an authority for giving over the fields of our Colonies to 

 such devastation as has raged in St. Domingo ; and the bodies of our 

 countrymen, and their wives and daughters, to the butcheries, and even 

 worse horrors which were there committed under an excitement pre- 

 cisely similar to that which they and their satellites are now trying to 

 raise .'' Christianity must change its nature and its divine precepts 

 before it can either need or accept the aid of such a publication as the 

 We.<ilmin.iLer Review ; and the very names of justice, humanity, and 

 compassion, are grossly prostituted when they are associated with 

 the sanguinary cry of the fanatic whom the Anti-Slavery Society 

 have taken into their pay, and whose war-whoop they re-echo. 

 Let the people whom they have deceived learn from the publication 

 they adopt as their own what are their notions of Christianity, and 

 what mercy they, who affect to be full of pity for the negtoes, would 

 shew to their own countrymen ! 



