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inland, and on the coast. When these men are employed by us, as canoemen, they perform their duty with cheerfulness; and if encouraged, will go through a vast deal of labour: but they must be treated with exactness and punctuality. When they call for any customary allowance, or for payment, they do not like to be put off; they expect that their labour should meet with its instant reward. If they be not punctually attended to, they become neglectful and inattentive to the interest of their employer. They are much addicted to that vice (theft) which prevails in almost every part of the world, and, indeed, are very expert in the practice of it, particularly as to small articles, which they can easily conceal.

Men who follow an agricultural life, and who chiefly inhabit the inland parts, will be found more uniform in their conduct than the traders or fishermen. They are divested of that low cunning and deceitful artifice known and practised by those who gain a livelihood by a more intimate connection with Europeans. They possess no small share of honesty, sincerity, and benevolence; and are strangers to the corrupt and licentious conduct plainly to be seen among the inhabitants of the water-side, particularly among the Fantees, a people who bear the most unfavourable characters any of the inhabitants of the Gold Coast. The natives of the sea-coast, from a more immediate connection with Europeans, we should suppose, are more inclined to industry than those inland; but it will be found that real industry prevails more uniformly inland, and vice is less encouraged. Every person on the coast appears very diligent in acquiring the profits of his occupation; but profligacy, drunkenness, and debauchery are practised to a pernicious extent.' pp. 21-23.

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Borman's account is far less favourable in many respects; nor does he appear to allow them a strong idea of the harmony of sound,' when he tells us that their drums and horns. afford the most charming asses music that can be imagined: to help out this they always set a little boy to strike upon a hollow piece of iron with a piece of wood; which alone makes a noise more detestable than the drums and horns together.' He however allows that yet it is not so horrid as to require a whole bale of cotton annually to stop one's ears, as Focquenbrog has it.'

The notices of the animals and of the vegetable productions, are vague and defective. The laws according both to Mr. Meredith and Borman are particularly strict, and during the continuance of the slave trade the punishment inflicted was almost uniformly that of slavery. Trials for witchcraft appear to have been very frequent, but,

'Since the abolition of the slave trade, (says Mr. M.) we have heard of no conviction of this sort; and we may suppose that the severity of the laws, as they regard trifling and imaginary offences, will be mitigated, if not absolutely altered, in consequence of that humane act.'

The chapter on the customs and superstitions of the natives is more concise than we could have wished, though Mr. M. makes up its deficiencies in some degree when treating of the

separate states. In general it accords with Borman's account. The cautions given to new-comers are such as most persons of sense would be able to prescribe to themselves.

After having finished these general remarks, our author proceeds to a more minute description of the different settlements of Europeans and states of the natives, but our limits do not allow us to give even an extract from his remarks. The account of the attack of the Ashantee forces on the town of Annamboe which they destroyed, massacring eight thousand of its inhabitants, and of the resistance made to the victorious army by the British fort with a garrison of less than thirty men, including officers and artificers, for several successive days, affords a good idea of the desperate courage of the natives and the great ascendancy of European arms and discipline. This war took place in the year 1807, and was terminated by a peace negociated by the English.

From the short history of the African company annexed to the volume, we learn that the Company of Royal Adventurers of England was established by letters patent under the great seal in 1662, in order to defend the trade on the coast, from the rapacity of the Dutch who esteemed themselves lords of the territory. The measure was not, however, found efficient; and ten years after, the late Royal African Company of England was incorporated, to which the Royal Adventurers ceded their possessions. Since the passing of the act of parliament of 1697, the trade has continued free, but the Company were at the expence of keeping their works in repair till 1730, when they obtained a grant from parliament of 10,000l. per annum for this purpose. This aid they continued to receive till the year 1752, when they ceased to be a company; and their forts, castles, and all other possessions in Africa were vested in the new company of merchants trading to Africa, who were allowed from 10 to 15,000l. per annum for the support of their fortifications, a sum which, since the abolition of the slave trade, has been raised to 23,0001.

From the above account of Mr. Meredith's work it will be sufficiently evident to our readers, that it contains a considerable quantity of instruction: but we cannot say much in praise of the manner in which it is brought forward. Evident traces of carelessness and haste appear every where, and many passages have been suffered to stand, which a friendly editor ought to have erased from Mr. Meredith's manuscript. However, where novel and authentic information is to be gained from a book, we are always ready to overlook the want of embellishment; and believing that the work before us has this claim upon our indulgence, we dismiss it with our recom

mendation.

Art. IX. Select Remains of the late Ebenezer White, of Chester. To which are prefixed Memoirs of his Life, and Extracts from his Correspondence, By Joseph Fletcher, A. M. With a Preface and a short obituary of Mr. White's mother, By the Rev. W. B. Collyer, D, D. 12mo. pp. 236. Price 5s 6d. boards. Gale and Co. 1812.

STRONGLY as the human mind is diversified, we can hardly conceive it to be so diametrically contrasted, as that any reader of this slender volume should not, in some measure, sympathize with the very interesting character which it faithfully pourtrays. Mr. White was evidently possessed of genius and piety; but so constituted in body and mind, as to be always in action or in affliction, and usually in both. He seems to have been continually agitated, and sometimes carried away, by the torrent of his natural feelings, which, at the same time, were of that delicate and tender cast, which excites commiseration unmingled with disgust. Dissatisfied with himself, discouraged by the insensibility or indelicacy of others, but gratefully partial to his friends, he retained his early attachments, while he relinquished, one after another, situations in which he had prematurely flattered himself with durable comfort and usefulness. To a disposition like his, religion was the only preservative from despair and ruin: and it happily prevailed, throughout the greater part of his limited course, to restrict the excess(8 of his feelings, and to direct his talents and energies to the most important purposes.

Such was the subject of the publication before us; of which the greater proportion is occupied by Mr. White's "Remains"-consisting of letters, devotional and theological extracts, and poems: and of these, the epistolary and poetical pieces are almost equally biographical, with the introductory additions of his affectionate friends-one of whom was his fellow student, and the other a member of the first Christian Society of which he accepted the pastoral charge.

Mr. White was born in 1771, and haying the advantage of a religious education, he discovered, it seems, so remarkable a progress both in parts and piety, as, at ten years of age, to officiate as the chaplain of the family circle' when his father was absent. No great sagacity was requisite to foresee, that such a youth, if he lived to maturity, and retained the proper effects of early instruction, would become a preacher: But he had to pass through the ordeal of au apprenticeship in London; and few, perhaps, who know the shares of such a situation, would have been very sanguine or confident in their predictions. This portion of his life, too, VOL. VIII.

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was thrown upon troublesome times. How could a susceptible youth, panting for freedom," resist the infatuating splendour of the French Revolution? Approaching the expiration of his servitude, he called on his young companions :

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‹ With social mirth, serene and gay,
Come celebrate with me,

The welcome, memorable day,

That sets a bond-man free....
Come break the yoke, and burst the bands,
And let us hope to see

Freedom extend to distant lands,

As it extends to ME!' pp. 173, 174.

A yet more dangerous delusion coincided with this. Paine's miscalled Age of Reason derived its fatal success from the political ferment which ushered it into public notice. It was but a step farther, to regard infidelity in the light of emancipation from prejudice and priestcraft. Mr. White's religion seems to have been rather that of the affections, than of the understanding: and although his early impressions and habits happily guarded him, amidst seductions which have slain their tens of thousands, against every kind of licentiousness, their force had been so much diminished during his apprenticeship, that his principles were easily shaken by the popular apostle of Deism. Add to this, that he had undergone a preparatory seduction from "pure and undefiled religion," by an unhappy predilection for the ministry of the notorious Huntington. "Many a time," says he, "when a boyish dupe, have I run sweating to Huntington's, to be amused, or surprized, when my conscience might have been more effectually searched, and my mind edified at White Row." p. 17. He afterwards laboured strenuously to detect and efface those antinomian errors, to the propagation of which the labours of that celebrated personage appear to be devoted; though it may be doubted, perhaps, whether their effects were ever completely eradicated from his own mind. Be this as it may, the young speculator had discernment enough to discover that the pulpiteer's rejection of the moral law as a rule of conduct, was a much less consistent, and a less effectual mode of exemption from restraint of the natural inclinations, than Paine's complete rejection of divine revelation

I was once,' says he, very nearly an infidel. Paine's Age of Reason opened an amazing scene to my view. Till then I never dreamed

that the scriptures or the writers of them were ever suspected of forgery. Paine's arguments mightily shook my implicit faith in the Bible. I happened too, at that time, to fall into the company of some injudicious christians, whose credulity and cant filled me with unutterable disgust. Their weakness joined with the impiety of my own heart, had nearly driven me from the little profession which I then made. It is remarkable that many late freethinkers, in the lower and middle ranks of society, were such as once professed religion. Perhaps by reading a good deal of polemic divinity, they lost that simplicity and gentleness of disposition, so essential to the Christian character. They then gave up one -point of Christian doctrine after another; perhaps they met with infidel acquaintances, who advised them to read such authors as Chubb, Tyndal, Morgan, Collins, Shaftsbury, Voltaire, &c. From being rational Christians, they become Christian deists. They next become philosophical deists, treat Christ as an impostor, and end in absolute scepticism. I once thought a sensible man might go as far as Deism, and there stop; that is, that he might believe in God, Providence, the obligations of mutual justice and virtue, and a future state, and give up all the rest as nonsense and knavery. But I am now confident that we must believe the whole of Christianity; and that a deist is within one degree of an atheist. Infidelity in fact is nothing but an apology for vice; it is the attempt of wicked hearts to throw off the restraints which the awful sanctions of religion would lay upon their lusts and passions.' pp. 39, 40.

With feelings so susceptible he must have been unutterably wretched, had he become wholly the victim of infidelity; and his course to a still more dreadful eternity would doubtless have been rapid and short. But,' says Mr. F.,

his mind did not long remain under the influence of these unrea sonable suspicions, and his faith became stronger by the conflict he had endured. Often during his apprenticeship he had entertained serious thoughts of devoting himself to the work of the ministry; and he found a kind and intelligent friend in the late Rev. John Olding, of Deptford, who encouraged his serious and studious inclination, and directed him in his reading. When his engagements with Mr. Butler expired, his anxiety about the important question, whether or not he should become a candidate for the ministry, was so urgent and distressing, that he resolved to state ingenuously all his feelings and impressions to some Christian friend; and at length, by the special recommendation of the late Rev. John Reynolds, of Camomile Street, he offered himself as a probationer for the ministry, to the directors of Hoxton Academy.' pp. 3, 4.

We refer to Mr. White's own language in verse and prose, those of our readers who wish to peep into the arcana of dissenting academies and congregations: but we would warn them against the influence of quick feelings on some points of the delineation. Mr. W.'s constitutional melancholy, indeed, unfitted him for the trials that await a dissenting minister, almost as much as those of Cowper (the object of his delight and imitation) disqualified him for the post of a barrister. His choice, also, of situations (for his talents and character ensured him a copious selection) was unfortunately injudicious. He

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