exist throughout the extensive Russian empire, from the polar regions of the Ural Mountains and the White Sea to the Crimea and the Black Sea, and can be abolished there; and slavery could have prevailed throughout New England and the northwest as well as in the southern states, and can be abolished in the latter as safely as it has been in the former.

The propriety of seizing upon the present emergency to abolish slavery, may be considered in a threefold light: as a political right, as a military necessity, and as a moral duty.

It is a political right; for in a time of rebellion traitors have no claim to a particular and unstable privilege, granted to them in time of peace to secure their friendship or alliance. It may be proper for Great Britain in time of peace to guarantee to her subjects in India the privileges of caste and idolatrous worship. But in the Sepoy rebellion were the British under obligation so to carry on the war as not to violate the Hindoo laws of caste? The first duty of a nation, as of a man, is to preserve itself. Rebels have no claim to constitutional rights. "Inter arma silent leges." They have a claim to show, if possible, that they are not rebels. This can only be done by laying down their arms, and asking for the protection of the law. When that is done their claims should be carefully and conscientiously considered.

Emancipation is a military necessity. Six millions of men, inhabiting a large country, could never be conquered if they were planted firmly upon right, and free from internal defection. Their internal social privileges should not and could not be wrested from them. Even leagued together in defense of a wrong, it would be an almost unparalleled enterprise to subdue them. The nation attempting to accomplish such an enterprise would be foolish, in a military point of view, not to seize upon any element of internal weakness on their part to overcome them. Now, confessedly, slavery is the most vulnerable part of the rebel states. This is the opening in their coat of mail through which the sword can be thrust. The slaves of the South are the natural allies of the nation when fighting for selfpreservation, provided that liberty be promised to them. However weak they may be, however ignorant and deluded, they should be invited and urged and entreated to enroll themselves with loyal men. All their strength should be secured for the nation. If they raise cotton and corn, it should be for the

nation, and not for rebels. If they dig trenches and bear arms, it should be for. the nation.

But "what shall we do with four millions of emancipated slaves ?" "Aye, what shall we do with them?" This is the triumphant question that has been rung in our ears by the defenders of slavery from the beginning. It comes mostly from men incapable of consecutive thought. The most ignorant people vociferate it the loudest. It is a prejudice, born without reason and without observation, and therefore it will not yield to reason or to fact. Can the objector point to a single instance in which there was any difficulty in finding out what to do with men and women after giving them their rights? If so, there might be some reason for the inquiry. We answer the oftrepeated question thus: Let the emancipated slaves live where they choose, which will be mostly where they do now. The only difference will be that they will, on the average, be more industrious, more thrifty, mingle their blood less with the white race, and contribute more to the honor and strength of the nation than now. One half of the colored population of Maryland is free, and that half is in every respect more valuable to the state than the other half. How much better would it be if all were free! The evils of slavery are real; the evils of emancipation are only imaginary.

We have no sympathy with the idea that it would be humiliating to the pride of the loyal states to ask the assistance of the enslaved. We are not fighting to display prowess, but to save the republic. We are fighting for peace. If we fail now, there will be a succession of wars in this country that will shed the best white blood for several generations to come, and make the preponderance of the white race over the black much less than now. While the white men fight, the black men stay at home and multiply, toiling mostly, through our infatuation and apathy, for the rebels. Our pride gives the enemy half of his power and all of his success. We are ashamed to ask, or even allow, our allies to bear their part of the burden.

Emancipation is also a moral duty. Having been driven into this war by a rebellion the object of which is to substantiate and perpetuate slavery, it is our duty to annihilate that practice which has so demented the nation, and which if allowed to exist will hatch more deadly broods in time to come. Slavery

is essentially immoral. A healthy conscience never spontaneously approved it. Its laws, both Roman and Americanespecially the latter-are the vilest statutes ever wrought into language. Law, whose proper object is to protect innocence and punish vice, has been, in behalf of slavery, perverted to promote crime, perpetuate ignorance, and suppress a virtuous ambition. No literature can surpass in baseness and wickedness the statutes of the southern states on slavery. A century hence they will be read as the most astonishingly wicked productions of Christian states. American slavery of the nineteenth cen tury and the Inquisition of the dark ages will be alike marvelThese laws grew out of practices, and were effects, not causes. It is the duty of the nation to declare them null and void. Let the stain be washed away, and the sore burnt out that caused it.

ous.

From these considerations we give our hearty approval to the United States government for striking at this rebellion legally; by abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia, the capital of the nation; by forbidding it in all of the common territory of the nation; and by authorizing the emancipation of the slaves of rebels and the employment of them to suppress the rebellion. Action as yet under this last law is too halting and feeble. We are still under the influence of our chronic palsy and infatuation. Our only hope is in more vigor and zeal. It is "never or now." Let liberty to all the people be proclaimed, and God will certainly sustain us.

We have presented the opinions of intelligent foreigners, inasmuch as when free from hostility to America they occupy the most favorable position for an impartial survey of our duty. Among the best books called forth by this crisis of free institutions are the two works of Count de Gasparin: "Uprising of a Great People," and "America before Europe." The latter book is especially practical and impartial. It indicates the great shrewdness of the author, and at the same time tends to confirm our confidence in the wisdom of President Lincoln, that this work, though written before the late steps toward emancipation were taken, recommends a course nearly identical with the one actually pursued. The following extract was prophetic, in part at least; let us hope it will be entirely fulfilled:

FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XIV.--43

What is there to prevent the adoption, at this moment, of a series of resolutions, designed definitively to settle the fate of slavery? To abrogate the Fugitive Slave Law; to suppress slavery in the District of Columbia; to interdict domestic slave-trade; to decide that no new slave state shall be henceforth admitted, and that all the territories shall belong to freedom; to offer, lastly, an indemnity to such states as, within a given time, shall decree progressive abolition; all this is strictly constitutional.-America before Europe, p. 359.

Nearly all of the above has already been directly done, and more, by the adoption of the principle of the emancipation of the slaves of rebels. The following expresses good and hopeful thought:

Enterprises like this succeed only by going on to the end. There, there alone are encountered beneficial solutions; there all becomes simple, because all has become just. The difficulties will fall one after the other from the day that Christian and liberal America accepts all the consequences of her principle; from the day that she consents to say, "We are about to apply henceforth, restricting it in nothing, the fundamental dogma of our Constitution: the time must come when none but freemen shall be found among us, and when all freemen shall be truly equal. We have not to trouble ourselves to know how the free negro race, which will soon be affranchised, will be distributed over our territory. Perhaps it will accumulate in certain regions, perhaps it will be gradually effaced before the waves of European immigration; in going where it suits it to go, in doing what it suits it to do, it will make use of its right. The respect of right will be now our policy."

There is but one saving policy: it is that which accomplishes the decrees of justice. It is in vain to cry, "On to Richmond!" unless you cry at the same time, "On to justice!" Supported by these three great measures-progressive abolition, voluntarily decreed, indemnity accorded to the masters, and equality secured to the affranchised negroes-America will confound its calumniators, and gain for all humanity the greatest liberal contest of our times. To all of this we give our hearty approval.

We do not look for a speedy reconciliation with the rebel states. Enterprises of this magnitude are not easily completed. Our children will have other burdens to bear than their portion of the expense of this war. The nation cannot be suddenly converted with such a thoroughness as to be in no danger of a relapse. The evils of slavery will entail a long series of trying duties and heavy burdens upon the nation. It has ever been our fear, and will long be our weakness. There is to be a great social revolution in the North and South. Many of the improve

ments will be gradually adopted after much experimentation and many failures. It will be a long time before the idea of colonization will be generally abandoned, and before climatic influences and the peculiarities of races will have led to permanent results. What they will be none but the Omniscient knows whether several of the states shall be peopled mostly with the colored race, whether the negro shall become extinct as a separate people-these and kindred hypotheses can be tested only by time. Our duty is now clear. Not "On to Richmond," but "On to justice," should be our motto. With that we cannot fail, for justice never fails.

ART. IX.—FOREIGN RELIGIOUS INTELLIGENCE.

PROTESTANTISM.

GREAT BRITAIN.

The

THE ESSAYS AND REVIEWS AND THEIR FRIENDS.-On June 25 judgment was delivered by Dr. Lushington, in the Court of Arches, on the "Essays and Reviews," or at least upon two of the compositions in that volume-the essays of Dr. Williams and the Rev. H. K. Wilson. judge refused to go into the meaning of Scripture, or the opinions of divines, but confined himself to a legal construction of the Articles of the Church of England, and to the consideration how far the opinions of Dr. Williams and Mr. Wilson impugned those Articles. Acting on this principle, he rejected a great many articles of accusation-that is to say, he acquitted the writers of heresy in holding them that relating, for instance, to the authorship of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Second Epistle of Peter, the Book of Daniel, the interpretation of the prophecies, etc., on which he said the writers might be right or wrong, sound or unsound, but in which they did not contradict any of the Articles of the Church. In the case of Dr. Williams, the general allegation, that "the tendency, object, and design of the whole essay is to inculcate a disbelief of the divine inspiration and orthodoxy of the Holy Scriptures, to deny the truth of parts thereof, and to deny the doctrines of

original sin, justification by faith, atonement, propitiation, and the incarnation," is rejected by the court as unprecedented, and as contrary to the fair rule established by the judicial committee, that the words or writings of the person accused must be pleaded; that the meaning which they are alleged by the prosecution to convey must be pleaded; and that the particular articles of religion, or parts of them, asserted to be contravened, must be pleaded also. But the judge finds the declaration, that "the Bible is an expression of devout reason," inconsistent with the twentieth Article, in which it is denominated "God's written word." "Devout reason," says Dr. Lushington, "belongs to the acts and doings of men, and not to the works of the Almighty." This passage, therefore, he condemns. The declaration that "the Bible is the written voice of the congregation," although it is admitted to be "not a denial that the Bible is inspired," is declared to be contrary to the sixth and seventh Articles. The doctrine of propitiation put forward by Dr. Williams, according to which a merely subjective change, and not a new relation brought about by a mediatorial act is signified, is condemned as contrary to the thirty-first Article; and similarly his doctrine of justification is declared to violate the eleventh Article. In the case of Dr. Wilson, the doctrine specified in