endearing testimonies of strong affection, than Rowland Hill. A man original in thought, ardent in feeling, unwearied in action, ever devising and ever executing plans of good; a man of prayer, of holy life, and successful in bringing many to Christ; his name will long be numbered among those of England's honored dead, and held in grateful remembrance by the pious of every land.

ART. VI.-MRS. CHILD'S APPEAL IN FAVOR OF THE AFRICANS.

An Appeal in favor of that class of Americans called Africans. By MRS. CHILD, Author of the Mother's Book, the Girl's Own Book, the Frugal Housewife, etc. Boston: 1833. 12mo. pp. 232.

THIS is one of the standard books of the immediate-abolitionists. We have read it with much interest. Though occasionally deformed by a very blamable negligence of style, it is written, for the most part, in an uncommonly pure, simple and nervous diction, and with a great deal of downright, straight-forward, New-England common sense. Some of the most important topics are handled with much eloquence and truth. On other points, though the fair author does not seem to be, like some writers, intentionally uncandid, her statements are exceedingly inaccurate, and her inferences and implications proportionately unjust. And we cannot but remark with censure, that whenever the political bearings of slavery are referred to, and especially when the influence of the southern States in congress comes within the sphere of vision, the mind of the writer seems to be inspired with a most unlady-like political malignity, as if she were writing at the dictation of some sour and quarrelsome politician, whose only hope of distinction depends on getting up a furious anti-southern excitement, the agitation of which may waft him to a seat in congress. Indeed, the book might without much extravagance be entitled, An Appeal to the passions of the north, against the political influence of the south, and against the constitution.

The chapter on the Colonization Society, we notice, only to say, that while the author has fallen into error, by taking at second hand Mr. William Lloyd Garrison's oft-refuted quotations, as a fair exhibition of the principles held up by the Society, in its associated capacity, and of the views commonly entertained by its members as individuals, she is far from adopting the principles on which the anti-colonizationists are now beginning to rally; namely, that colonies, as such, are absolutely and essentially mischievous. On the contrary, as she approaches the close of her remarks on this subject, having made the notable discovery that the Society now principally seeks to direct public attention to the founding

of a colony in Africa," she decides at once that "this may prove beneficial in process of time." Her native good sense gets the better of her inoculated Garrisonism, and she goes on to say, "If the colored emigrants were educated before they went there, such a colony would tend slowly, but certainly, to enlighten Africa, to RAISE THE CHARACTER OF THE NEGROES, to STRENGTHEN THE INCREASING LIBERALITY OF PUBLIC OPINION, and to check the diabolical slave-trade." These tendencies surely will not be more slow, or less certain, if the process of education, prosecuted at home, as far as adverse influences will allow, is carried on and completed in the colony itself.

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The concluding chapter of the book is entitled "Prejudices against people of color, and our duties in relation to this subject." Unpleasant as it is to contradict a lady, we feel ourselves obliged to protest against the general impression which this chapter is fitted to produce. We cannot think, that the prejudices against the people of color are more malignant in Massachusetts than they are in Connecticut; and if they are not, we know that the representations of this author do not exhibit fairly the truth and the whole truth.' We are confident that no where this side of Byram river, the town of Canterbury only excepted, does such a public sentiment exist, as that which Mrs. Child would have us believe is the common sentiment of New-England. The northern feeling, the New-England feeling towards the people of color,-not the feeling which may occasionally be kindled up here and there by some special irritation, but the settled and habitual tone of public sentiment; not the feeling of vulgar and malignant minds, but that which belongs also to the intelligent, the refined, the good,is described in such terms as these. "Let us not flatter ourselves that we are in reality any better than our brethren of the south." "The form of slavery does not exist among us, but the very spirit of the hateful and mischievous thing is here in all its strength." "Our prejudice against colored people is even more inveterate than it is at the south." [No trifling accusation, this! the reader will say to himself, after examining the chapters which describe the treatment of the colored people in the southern states.] "The planter is often attached to his negroes, and lavishes caresses and kind words upon them, as he would on a favorite hound: but our cold-hearted, ignoble prejudice admits of no exception, no intermission." "Those who are kind and liberal on all other subjects, unite with the selfish and the proud in their unrelenting efforts to keep the colored population in the lowest state of degradation."

Now we ask, Are these statements the simple and sober verity? Courteous and christian reader, you know that your feelings towards the colored people are not materially different from the

ings of other "kind and liberal" people around you, or from feelings of the better classes of society generally; say then, is a fair description of your feelings towards the people of color? into that sabbath-school, where the same persons who are ind and liberal on other subjects," are teaching the colored dren and adults, whom they have gathered together in pure evolence ;-approach that bench, where the lily and the rose the sweet face of the young teacher, are set in so striking const with the jetty comeliness of her still younger scholars ;en to the answers, or the questions of those three or four tidy, opy-looking boys, whose honest black faces are turned with so adfast a gaze towards the lips and speaking eyes of that young n, who, in trying to teach them, does not dream that he has de any strange conquest over prejudice, or is performing any usual act of philanthropy ;-proceed from class to class, till you ve counted some three-score or a hundred pupils ;-then enter is separate apartment, where twenty or thirty young women, of nous shades of color, from the deepest black to the lightest yelw, each with her open bible before her, are receiving eloquent struction from an accomplished scholar;-and when you have oked at all this, tell us whether such operations, going forward ithout one whisper of opposition, in every city of New-England here there are black people to be instructed, are consistent with e universal dominion of a "cold-hearted, ignoble prejudice, admitag of no exception, no intermission ;"-tell us whether it is true bat “the kind and the liberal unite with the selfish and the proud, ■ unrelenting efforts to keep the colored population in the lowest tate of degradation."

The author goes into something like an induction of particulars, to justify these sweeping accusations. Her argument is made up partly of sundry alledged facts, most of which may be admitted as true, without admitting that there is any great malignity in the public feeling of New-England towards the colored people; and partly of some general statements and inuendoes, which work themselves in, here and there, to help out the impression that the facts recited are a fair and full illustration of the universal prejudice.

As her first proof of this "tyrannical prejudice," she adduces the existence of an old foolish statute in the commonwealth of Massachusetts, prohibiting marriage between the whites and blacks; or, according to her peculiar ideas of syntax, a law by which marriages between persons of different color is pronounced illegal." Now, without saying one word in vindication of such a law, we must be allowed to profess our inability to see how it operates more oppressively on the blacks than on the whites. A black man and a white woman, let us suppose, and in another instance a white man and a black woman, wish to be joined in mar

riage. The same law which defeats the wishes of the black man who chooses a white wife, and of the black woman who has consented to receive a white husband, bears equally hard on the white man who has given all his heart to some dark daughter of Cush, "walking in beauty like the night," and on the white woman who is willing to become the mother of mulatto children.

The author's next instance of prejudice, is another law in the old statute-book of Massachusetts, by which it is provided that no African or negro, other than a citizen of the United States, shall be allowed to continue within that commonwealth longer than two months. This law, however, she freely admits, could not probably "be carried into execution, under any circumstances." It might be oppressive in some cases, "unless public opinion rendered it a mere dead letter." Certainly we have not found as yet any killing evidence of that malignant prejudice which she charges upon all New-England.

Next we are told, "There is among the colored people an increasing desire for information, and a laudable ambition to be respectable in manners and appearance." And the question is solemnly put, "Are we not foolish as well as sinful, in trying to repress a tendency so salutary to themselves, and so beneficial to the community?" Undoubtedly, we answer, it is very foolish and very sinful in any person, to "try to repress" the laudable ambition and manly desires of our colored brethren. But for ourselves personally, we have no such guilt or shame to acknowledge. Whatever may have been our faults, the fatuity and crime of trying to discourage or embarrass the people of color, in their struggles after knowledge and respectability, is not one of them. If Mrs. Child has any confessions to make, very well; only let her confessions be followed by amendment; and let her not attempt to impute the same guilt to the public sentiment of NewEngland. She proceeds: "In the public schools, colored children are subject to many discouragements and difficulties." How far does this fall short of the intimation, that we are trying to repress the tendency of the colored people to acquire knowledge! How very far is it from that fearful declaration, that we are no better in this respect than our brethren of the south! The children of the colored people have a right, a legal right, to all the blessings of the glorious common-school system of New-England; only, as the colonizationists long since testified and lamented," they are subject to many discouragements and difficulties." But, "into the private schools they cannot gain admission." Such at least is the inference which Mrs. Child would have us draw from the story of a colored girl, who, " on account of her complexion," was resolutely repulsed from a certain private school, in which her mother was extremely desirous to place her. The story, as Mrs. Child

has set it down, may be accurately told, or it may be stated as erroneously as some other things which she has elsewhere narrated, after a fashion almost as remote from the exact truth, as black is from white. If it is true, it is a sufficient answer to say, that children of the writer of this article have attended a private school, into which a young black woman, black enough for any body's taste, was admitted, without the least objection from any quarter. One story may fairly enough be set off against the other. In this connection, the author very naturally adverts to the war waged by the chivalry of Canterbury, against the heroic and immortal Miss Prudence Crandall. And, as if the truth in the case was either not bad enough for her argument, or not notorious enough to come within the range of her acquisitions, she tells us, that the State of Connecticut has made a law, forbidding any African school" to admit individuals not residing in the town where said school is established." The simple truth is this: the legislature of Connecticut, at their session in 1833, enacted, that, excepting in colleges and incorporated academies, and in the district and other schools, established by school societies under the laws. of the state, "colored persons not inhabitants of the state," shall not be instructed or educated in any school or literary institution, without the written consent of the selectmen and civil authority of the town in which the school or institution is situated. Such a law, though undoubtedly bad enough, is far from being so bad as Mrs. Child's representation of it; and certainly it is very far from being as bad as the legislation of some of the southern states against the instruction of colored people. The law is dishonorable to the state; and still more so is that popular passion under which it was enacted. Yet neither that gust of popular passion, nor the law to which it gave being, ought to be taken as a fair criterion of the ordinary state of feeling in Connecticut. Peculiar, and we trust temporary causes, to which we will, in the sequel, allude more distinctly, have created in some parts of New-England, within the past three years, a state of feeling in respect to the rights of colored people, which should by no means be represented as the settled and habitual temper of the public mind.

After speaking of the opposition which arose against the proposal to establish an African college in New-Haven, and describing the difficulties which, if she has been rightly informed, a young man of color encountered in the Wesleyan University at Middletown, she finds fault with the city of Boston, because, though the public authorities there support three primary schools and a grammar-school for colored people, there is no building for that grammarschool provided at the public expense; and because the teacher of that school is a white man. These things may be very blameVOL. VI. 57