voice which rebukes the presumption of the individual by the challenge, "What hast thou that thou hast not received?"—in describing the position of Britain, as shadowed forth in that of Tyre-"thy borders are in the midst of the seas, thy builders have perfected thy beauty," hath added, "and I have set thee so." Shall it be imagined, that the responsibility of an individual rises in proportion to his ability; to whom much is given, of him much shall be required; and that a principle so just, so equitable, so necessary, shall not extend to a country? The principle cannot be controverted; let it then be brought to bear on this highly important subject.

It is not territorial extent abstractedly that presents itself; our Colonies are not barren tracts, or occupied by a population thinly scattered over a wide surface of country. In India alone, one hundred millions of subjects have been added to the parent state; and this is but one, although the greatest, of her present dependencies. I have said her present dependencies; because Australia is opening her bosom, as a new world, to receive her redundant population, who are winning cultivation from the waste, and from the wild, from the forest, and from the mountain, and driving the savages from the precincts of civilization, perpetually advancing, deeper into his native fields. It were superfluous here to recount the names and localities of her dominions; but it is of importance to call to mind, that the Colonial territory of Britain has put under her responsibility, not only so many more bodies, but so many more souls ; that it is not over inert matter, but over spirit and life, that she rules; that a population vastly surpassing her own, is of equal value with her own; that one immortal spirit of all these millions, is of more worth than the material universe, and must remain indestructible, in happiness or misery, when the heavens are no more; and that the present all-fluctuating, transient, uncertain existence, is the only period to fix its destiny irreversibly and for ever.

Her responsibility is heightened by the moral condition of that vast extent of territory over which she rules; and which, participating the depravity of a fallen nature, common to all, presents peculiarities of corruption or of destitution, characteristic of the particular states in which they are respectively placed. The African, violently torn up from his native soil, or still rooted there, his faculties unraised or uncultivated, or repressed and debased, sunk in gnorance, and abandoned to barbarism, discloses the fermentation of corrupt passions, in forms of corresponding degradation. The Hindoo, in possession of civilization, in the pride and boast of philosophy, has refined upon every thing, even upon sensuality, and supplied cultivation, to produce greater abominations than the unprompted depravity, even of fallen nature, would suggest; while he is involved by a superstition, imposing more terrible bondage upon a large class of society, than the tyranny of abused civil power ever inflicted. The wrongs of the Negro vanish before those of the Sudra: depending upon the station in which he was born, and left without hope and without remedy; taken, as it is imagined, from the feet of Bramah, he was created a slave, to whom no master can give emancipation, and to whose condition no alleviation can be offered. The very writings which are held to be sacred, he must not hear; and the attempt to listen to that in which he believes his salvation to consist, incurs the infliction of torture, or even of death. Thus by unparalleled criminality, exercised not as a punishment of a crime, but as the infliction upon a condition, unexampled in other countries, the body is necessarily enslaved, and the soul abandoned to perish.

Where is the covering cherub? Shall not the outcast of India find shelter under the wings of Britain, and, robbed by the arbitrary distinction of caste, be restored to the dignity of man, and elevated to the hope of the Christian? This is to be effected, not by physical force, but by moral influence; by imparting the knowledge of that system, in which there is neither Jew nor Greek, barbarian nor Scythian, bond nor free, but in Jesus Christ a new creature. And this shall be done when the nation wakes to a sense of her responsibility, and with united effort scatters the blessings committed to her trust, in dependence upon His grace by whom they were bestowed upon herself; and like the angel flying in the midst of heaven, having the everlasting Gospel to preach to them that dwell on the earth, and to every nation, and kindred, and tongue, and people, shall carry the boon to the remotest corner of the most distant provinces of the empire.

The mode of colonization argues a considerable degree of responsibility, when it is considered in its strict usages, in reference to the body of the people transferred from the parent state, to some distant possession. It usually commences in the transportation of criminals, unfitted to be allowed in civilized societies, whose laws they have broken, whose peace they have violated, whose order they have disturbed, and whose protection they have forfeited; and these generally not incipient offenders, but hardened in guilt, and irreclaimable by milder modes of correction; carrying with them, superadded to all their vices, the brand of infamy. Powerful restraints must be necessary where former discipline has proved abortive; and not in pity only to themselves, but in especial reference to those with whom they must come in contact, an imperative duty arises, to apply the most effective means to remove the contagion from among themselves, and to prevent the contamination of others. For not only the original inheritors of the soil are there, to receive every baneful impression, but the overflowing of a redundant population pour in upon them by spontaneous emigration from the mother country. And the state of society in which are necessarily commingled the precious and the vile, the respectable and the debased, the virtuous and the vicious, the innocent and the crimina., requires no common guard, is to be influenced by no ordinary principles, and imposes upon the parent state no small responsibility. Thus the religious claims are as urgent as they are indisputable; and to meet this, is to supp.y every essential want, and to furnish every necessary guard to a population so constituted; and nothing else will do it.

If there be a doubt of the power and sufficiency of religion for so noble and mighty a purpose, we may well waive arguments to substitute facts; and an example is before you, in one of the greatest and most prosperous countries on the face of the earth, emanating from ourselves—it is to be seen in the United States of America. To her shores were banished the violators of the laws of God and of man; and in her were to be found outcasts whom their native land had disowned. But persecutions arose at home, and there went forth a holy seed, voluntary exiles from the temples and the sepulchres of their fathers, that they might hold fast faith and a good conscience; these they carried, with their Bibles, their consistency, their righteous examples, their enlightened instructions, their inextinguishable love for civil and religious liberty, to a community so abandoned, and planted them in a soil so unpromising. Religion effected every thing; the moral waste became a spiritual garden; the wilderness and the solitary place were glad, because of them, and the desert rejoiced and blossomed

as the rose instead of the thorn came up the fir-tree, and instead of the brier came up the myrtle-tree: it hath been to the Lord for a name, and shall be for an everlasting sign which shall not be cut off.

I have understood the term "Colony," and employed it, in its most comprehensive sense; as including territorial acquisitions and commercial settlements, as well as planting new lands with an exuberant population, emigrating from the parent country. I have done this advisedly and intentionally, for the purpose of demonstrating, from the power and dominion of Britain, the force of her obligations, and the extent of her responsibilities, without losing sight eventually of that particular object held in view primarily, and that branch of duty intended to be especially enforced by the appointment of the subject of this day.

In stating the religious claims of our British Colonies, another argument arises, thirdly, THE REPARATION DUE FROM HER OPPRESSORS. Iniquity was found in thee. By the multitude of thy merchandize they have filled the midst of thee with violence, and thou hast sinned." Ambition has been charged, and justly charged, with trampling upon the rights and liberties of mankind, turning the fruitful land into barrenness, beating down with unsparing force and cruelty whatever withstood its advance, outraging every principle, if expediency required its sacrifice, wasting human life remorselessly in furtherance of its plans, and deluging the earth with blood. What has Commerce to say, in answer to the accusation, should every one of these imputations be alleged against her? Have her crimes been fewer? Have the injuries inflicted upon society been less aggravated, and has the love of money been less powerful than the love of fame? Has the lust of dominion been more persevering and reckless than the cupidity of accumulation? Let the Colonies of Britain, even Christian Britain, stand forth and give their testimony, in vindication of the sentiment of the text. The cries of the burning widows in India, the shrieks of the victims crushed under the car of Juggernaut, testify. These have been tolerated, if not encouraged; until lately, if not even still, a revenue has accrued from the licence of these accursed rites, and she has taken, what even the chief priests did not dare to take-the price of blood.

It will be said, this is but the toleration of existing evils, not the infliction of new ones. Well, then, the participation of the crime being, at least, admitted, we will pass on to the violence which was employed to win, and the cruelty which has been often exercised in keeping, these territorial acquisitions. The enormities perpetrated, the flagrant injustice committed, the extortions practised, are not the reports of enemies, but the subject of judicial inquiries which have come before the public, when the plunderers of the East have been cited in the face of their country. Fortunes and families have been made; provinces and colonies have been pillaged. When the charge of oppression is alleged, Africa demands to be heard; the West has accusations to bring against the violence of her merchandize; and it stands connected with those Colonies which have recently excited so much attention, and which awaken at this moment so lively an interest. These possessions have been, hitherto, cultivated upon a system of slavery, revolting to British feeling, upon the abstract principle; aggravated by repeated excesses in labour, in treatment, in the whole management of this colonial department. New and fearful combinations were formed in the commercial relations of this great and free city-" the merchandize of gold and silver, æru precious stones, and of pearls, and fine linen, and purple,

and silk, and scarlet, and all manner of vessels of ivory, and all manner of vessels of precious wood, and of brass, and iron, and marble, and cinnamon, and odours, and ointments, and frankincense, and wine, and oil, and fine flour, and wheat, and beasts, and sheep, and horses, and chariots, and slaves, and souls of men."

We can afford to concede much, without weakening the argument; and, to suppose for a moment what never can be established in the fact, we will imagine that the condition of these poor captives was as insufferable as it has been represented in their desert country; that the roaming savage sent his miserable captives to the market; that their native bondage was carried to every possible extent of severity; that the prisoners of war, if not thus disposed of, were subjected to death under the most terrible forms of torture; that they were almost constantly in a state of warfare, involving these atrocious consequences. We will not now pause to ask, whether the power which now interposed to tear them from their country, was dictated by benevolence or by avaricewhether the power which broke the yoke of wood did not impose a yoke of iron-whether the whip from which they fled was not supplanted by a scourge of scorpions-nor even whether the supply demanded by the Colonies was not more frequently furnished by the man-stealer, against whom the law of God has pronounced sentence of death, lurking in the bushes until night afforded an opportunity to fire the village, and to drag the overpowered and surprised victims, male and female, manhood, youth, and infancy, to the floating prison. We will suppose their condition in the Colonies, thus supplied, to be such as the friends of slavery could wish to represent; and to admit of as much comfort, to have been met with as much humane consideration as, in many distinguished instances, did occur. We will shut our ears against the sound of the lash, the brutal language, the still more atrocious actions, of those who overlooked them, in other manifold admitted cases. We will waive now all discussion of the right by which man assumes authority over man, to make him the slave of his caprice, if not the victim of his cruelty-the principle so utterly indefensible of any being subjected to the contingency of disposition on the part of others, and the still greater contingency, that the power over them and their children is transmitted from generation to generation, while the same tide of life flows equally in the veins of both, and the same God made both equally free. We pass by all this, to fix upon the link connecting the capture with the sale: the undeniable and undenied horrors of the middle passage, are more than sufficient, in the long-endured, long-encouraged slave-trade, the crime of centuries, to impress the brand of indelible infamy upon the parties engaged in it, and leave an ineffaceable stain of national transgression on the country which so long suffered and countenanced it. Wrongs were inflicted, on which we cannot endure to think. The steams of pestilence arose from the hold of the slave-ship, where an immoveable compression mingled the living with the dead. The blood which flowed on the deck, the torture inflicted on the sullen and unsubdued captive, the yells of despair, the cries of pain, the groans of the sick, the still more fearful silence which succeeded, and the frequent plunge into the deep-the owner meanwhile, sitting down coolly to calculate how many he could afford to lose, and yet gain by his voyage-presents altogether an aggregate of atrocity, which we with difficulty associate even with the semblance of humanity. This terrible record is sufficient; we want no other, as we can have no greater, instance of oppression; when in the midst of the ocean the sea-monsters gambolled around

the execrable bark, in expectation of the feast provided for them, and, as she approached the shores, the vulture snuffed the tainted atmosphere, and scented the prey from afar.

When all this is viewed, when principle is opposed to cupidity, right to expediency, justice to oppression, equity to power-whatever parties may be accused or implicated, whatever instrument may have been employed or suffered, whatever participants in the wrong or in the spoil may have been admitted; we cannot conceal from ourselves that the crime has been national, and that the restitution ought to be so likewise. Whoever spread the toils, and hunted down the prey, the country battened on the quarry, and divided the plunder. Long had the cry gone up to heaven before Britain would listen: long had the wail been poured into her ears before she would regard it; long had she conceded the validity of the principle before she would relinquish the graspings of interest. She created a property, founded upon violence, holding out large returns of profit, in which she allured others to embark widely, sharing the pillage, and compelling its continuance afterwards on the plea of state necessity. We leave the statesman to digest the disorder which the national plan had created, to calculate and appease claims which centuries had changed into inheritance. We contend for such reparation of these wrongs as alone are available to the depth of their character and the breadth of their extent, and call for national atonement for the national guilt, and a prompt and corresponding attention to the religious claims of the Colonies. It is true much is without remedy: the early victims of oppression are out of the reach of the oppressor; even a nation's repentance cannot recall a single departed spirit from its dreadful abode: but the children are in the place of the fathers A debt of crime is incurred which the consecrated energies of the nation alone can repay let the inheritors of the wrongs of their ancestors remove and redress all their grievances in the ample compensation which the parent state has it yet in her power to effect, in sending to them the glad tidings of salvation. The slave trade has been abolished in vain, and in vain are you now proclaiming liberty to the captive, if this great obligation be neglected. You have not given freedom to the slave thoroughly, until you have given him the Gospel; heavier, invisible, infrangible chains remain when you have taken the yoke from his shoulders and struck the fetters from his limbs. The slave and his master are equally in bondage by nature; sold under sin, led captive of Satan at his will: heaven alone can furnish the emancipation.

"He is the freeman whom the truth makes free,

And all are slaves beside."

But if the Lord shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed. And the precious deposit is lodged in the hands of Britain, pre-eminently, as if to give her opportunity to heal the wounds which she has inflicted, and which admit of no cure, and no alleviation besides.

Another consideration bearing on this subject is, fourthly, THE SENTENCE PRONOUNCED AGAINST NATIONAL GUILT. "I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God: and I will destroy thee, O covering cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire." This judgment proceeds on two principles: The one is a personal degradation: "I will cast thee as profane out of the mountain of God. It is national irreligion. The privileges of the Gospel have been