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abolished, not merely in this country, but in the Christian world.1 Nor will true Christian respect be violated by the addition that, in proportion to the power of doing good, is the responsibility for omitting it.

THE POWER OF NON-RESISTANCE.

The Americans thought that it was best for the general welfare that they should be independent; but England persisted in imposing a tax. Imagine, then, America to have acted upon Christian principles, and to have refused to pay it, but without those acts of exasperation and violence which they committed. England might have sent a fleet and an army. To what purpose? Still no one paid the tax. The soldiery perhaps sometimes committed outrages, and they seized goods instead of the impost; still the tax could not be collected except by a system of universal distraint. Does any man, who employs his reason, believe that England would have overcome such a people? does he believe that any government or any army would have gone on destroying them? especially does he believe this, if the Americans continually reasoned coolly and honorably with the other party, and manifested, by the unequivocal language of conduct, that they were actuated by reason and by Christian rectitude? No nation exists which would go on slaughtering such a people. It is not in human nature to do such things; and I am persuaded not only that American independence would have been secured, but that very far fewer of the Americans would have been destroyed, that very much less of devastation and misery would have been occasioned, if they had acted upon these principles instead of upon the vulgar system of exasperation and violence. In a word, they would have attained the same advantage, with more virtue, and at less cost. With respect to those voluble reasoners who tell us of meanness of spirit, of pusillanimous submission, of base crouching before tyranny, and the like, it may be observed that they do not know what mental greatness is. Courage is not indicated most unequivocally by wearing swords, or by wielding them. Many who have courage enough to take up arms against a bad government have not courage enough to resist it by the unbending firmness of the mind, to maintain a tranquil fidelity to virtue in

What, then, shall be said of those parties in our land who nominate duellists as candidates for the highest offices, and of those professing Christians who vote for them?

opposition to power, or to endure with serenity the consequences which may follow.

The Reformation prospered more by the resolute non-compliance of its supporters than if all of them had provided themselves with swords and pistols. The most severely persecuted body of Christians which this country has in later ages seen was a body who never raised the arm of resistance. They wore out that iron rod of oppression which the attrition of violence might have whetted into a weapon that would have cut them off from the earth; and they now reap the fair fruit of their principles in the enjoyment of privileges from which others are still debarred.

SLAVERY.

To him who examines slavery by the standard to which all questions of human duty should be referred, the task of deciding, we say, is short. Whether it is consistent with the Christian law for one man to keep another in bondage without his consent, and to compel him to labor for that other's advantage, admits of no more doubt than whether two and two make four. It were humiliating, then, to set about the proof that the slave system is incompatible with Christianity; because no man questions its incompatibility who knows what Christianity is, and what it requires.

The distinctions which are made between the original robbery in Africa, and the purchase, the inheritance, or the "breeding" of slaves in the colonies, do not at all respect the kind of immorality that attaches to the whole system. They respect nothing but the degree. The man who wounds and robs another on the highway is a more atrocious offender than he who plunders a hen-roost; but he is not more truly an offender, he is not more certainly a violator of the law. And so with the slave system. He who drags a wretched man from his family in Africa is a more flagitious transgressor than he who merely compels the African to labor for his own advantage; but the transgression, the immorality, is as real and certain in one case as in the other. He who had no right to steal the African can have none to sell him. From him who is known to have no right to sell, another can have no right to buy or to possess. Sale, or gift, or legacy imparts no right to me, because the seller, or giver, or bequeather had none himself. The sufferer has just as valid a claim to liberty at my hands, as at the hands of the ruffian who first drag

ged him from his home. Every hour of every day, the present possessor is guilty of injustice. Nor is the case altered with respect to those who are born on a man's estate. The parents were never the landholder's property, and therefore the child is not. Nay, if the parents had been rightfully slaves, it would not justify me in making slaves of their children. No man has a right to make a child a slave but himself. What are our sentiments upon kindred subjects? What do we think of the justice of the Persian system, by which, when a state offender is put to death, his brothers and his children are killed or mutilated too? Or, to come nearer to the point, as well as nearer home, what should we say of a law which enacted that of every criminal who was sentenced to labor for life, all the children should be sentenced so to labor also? And yet, if there is any comparison of reasonableness, it seems to be in one respect in favor of the culprit. He is condemned to slavery for his crimes; the African for another man's profit.

That any human being, who has not forfeited his liberty by his crimes, has a right to be free, and that whosoever forcibly withholds liberty from an innocent man, robs him of his right, and violates the moral law, are truths which no man would dispute or doubt, if custom had not obscured our perceptions, or if wickedness did not prompt us to close our eyes.

Although it could be shown that the slave system is expedient, it would not affect the question whether it ought to be maintained; yet it is remarkable that it is shown to be impolitic as well as bad. We are not violating the moral law because it fills our pockets. We injure ourselves by our own transgressions. The slave system is a costly iniquity, both to the nation and to individual men. It is matter of great satisfaction that this is known and proved; and yet it is just what, antecedently to inquiry, we should have reason to expect. The truth furnishes one addition to the many evidences, that, even with respect to temporal affairs, that which is right is commonly politie; and it ought, therefore, to furnish additional inducements to a fearless conformity of conduct, private and public, to the moral law.

It is quite evident that our slave system will be abolished,1 and that its supporters will hereafter be regarded with the same public feelings as he who was an advocate of the slave-trade is now. How is it that legislators or that public men are so indifferent to their fame? Who would now be willing that biography should

This was, of course, written before the glorious act of Great Britain-the emancipation of the slaves in all her colonies in 1834.

1820-1830.]

HAZLITT.

record of him-This man defended the slave-trade? The time will come when the record-This man opposed the abolition of slavery-will occasion a great deduction from the public estimate of worth of character. When both these atrocities are abolished, and, but for the page of history, forgotten, that page will make a wide difference between those who aided the abolition and those who obstructed it. The one will be ranked among the Howards that are departed, and the other among those who, in ignorance or in guilt, have employed their little day in inflicting misery upon mankind.

WILLIAM HAZLITT, 1750-1830.

WILLIAM HAZLITT, a distinguished critic and miscellaneous writer, was the son of a Unitarian clergyman of Shropshire, and was born about the year 1750. After having received his academical education at the college in Hackney, in Middlesex, he commenced life as a painter, and by this means he gained an accurate knowledge of the principles of the arts. He, however, soon quit the pencil for the pen, and, instead of painting pictures, it became his delight to criticise them. After having made various contributions to the periodical journals, he published an essay on the "Principles of Human Action," a work in which he displayed considerable ingenuity and acuteness. This was followed, in 1808, by two volumes in octavo, under the title of "The Eloquence of the British Senate," a selection of the best parliamentary speeches since the time of Charles I., with notes.

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In 1810, appeared his "New and Improved English Grammar, for the use of Schools," in which the discoveries of Mr. Horne Tooke, and other modern writers on the formation of language, are incorporated. In 1817, was published "The Round Table," a collection of Essays on Men, Literature, and Manners, which had previously appeared in the periodical called "The Examiner." These were subsequently succeeded by his "Characters of Shakspeare's Plays," a "View of the English Stage," and 'Lectures on English Poetry," which he delivered at the Surrey Institution. After this appeared, from time to time, his contributions to various periodicals, under the titles of "Table Talk," the "Spirit of the Age," the "Plain Speaker," and the "Literature of the Elizabethan Age." His largest and most elaborate work is his "Life of Napoleon," in four volumes, which appeared in 1828, a production which has raised him to a very high rank among the philosophers and historians of the present age. Mr. Hazlitt also contributed many articles to the "Edinburgh Review," some of which possess extraordinary merit. He continued to write and publish till the year of his death, which took place on the 18th of September, 1830.

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The writings of Mr. Hazlitt display much originality and genius, united with great critical acuteness and brilliancy of fancy. In the fine arts, the drama, and dramatic literature, he was considered one of the ablest critics of the day. His essays are full of wisdom, and it is almost impossible to rise from a perusal of them without having gained some original and striking ideas, and most valuable thoughts. His "Characters of Shakspeare's Plays," and his "Lectures on the Dramatic Literature of the Age of Elizabeth," are among the most interesting and instructive books in English literature. His admiration for the writers of that period was intense, and he descants upon their beauties with the most eloquent and joyous enthusiasm. An able and discriminating writer' thus speaks of him: "His mind resembles the rich strande' which Spenser has so nobly described, and to which he has himself likened the age of Elizabeth, where treasures of every description lie, without order, in inexhaustible profusion. Noble masses of exquisite marble are there, which might be fashioned to support a glorious temple; and gems of peerless lustre, which would adorn the holiest shrine. He has no lack of the deepest feeling, the profoundest sentiments of humanity, or the loftiest aspirations after ideal good. But there are no great leading principles of taste to give singleness to his aims, nor any central points in his mind, around which his feelings may revolve, and his imaginations cluster." Allowing this to be true, there yet remains enough to constitute him one of the most tasteful, discriminating, and genial critics in the English language.2

THE LITERATURE OF THE AGE OF ELIZABETH.

The age of Elizabeth was distinguished beyond, perhaps, any other in our history, by a number of great men, famous in different ways, and whose names have come down to us with unblemished honors-statesmen, warriors, divines, scholars, poets, and philosophers: Raleigh, Drake, Coke, Hooker, and higher and more sounding still, and still more frequent in our mouths, Shakspeare, Spenser, Sydney, Bacon, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletchermen whom fame has eternized in her long and lasting scroll, and who, by their words and acts, were benefactors of their country, and ornaments of human nature. Their attainments of different kinds bore the same general stamp, and it was sterling: what they did had the mark of their age and country upon it. Perhaps the genius of Great Britain (if I may so speak without offence or flattery) never shone out fuller or brighter, or looked more like itself, than at this period.

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"Edinburgh Review," vol. xxxiv. p. 440.

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Read "Literary Remains of Mr. Hazlitt," &c., by E. L. Bulwer, 2 vols.: also articles upon his various works in the " Edinburgh Review," vol. xxvii. p. 72, and vol. lxiv. p. 395; and in the "London Quarterly," vol. xvii. p. 174, vol. xix. p. 424, and vol. xxvi. p. 103.

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