last few years not merely taken place in the United States, but have been tolerated, have passed without the visitations of an authoritative reproof, have actually been made the theme of newspaper proclamation, defence, and bravado. No farther back than the June of 1842, the Natchez Free Trader reports, as we now quote, of the execution of the Negro Joseph, on the 5th of that month:

The body was taken and chained to a tree immediately on the bank of the Mississippi on what is called Union Point. The torches were lighted and placed in the pile. He watched unmoved the curling flame as it grew, until it began to entwine itself around and feed upon his body: then he sent forth cries of agony painful to the ear, begging some one to blow his brains out: at the same time surging with almost superhuman strength, until the staple with which the chain was fastened to the tree, not being well secured, drew out and he leaped from the burning pile. At that moment the sharp ring of several rifles was heard, and the body of the negro fell a corpse to the ground. He was picked up by two or three and again thrown into the fire and consumed.

But burnings of the blacks at the stake and by slow fires, are things that are not only perpetrated in the slave-holding states, but the murder of whites, should they give reins to the tongue,-uttering the language of humanity, condemning Lynch-law, and speaking in terms perfectly consistent with the proclaimed, the professed, and the theoretic institutions of the country, present to those who are intimately acquainted with the slave-system and its reign of terror, blots of blood in American recent annals; no effectual effort having been made to wash them out, or to prevent similar atrocities. Instead, however, of going into any of these white cases, we cite passages from different newspapers, in order to show the animus of the writers, and of the people for whom the sentiments are penned; and when the only alleged offence is a man's giving expression to his feelings regarding a frightful and prevalent evil. Are not the phrases, "liberty of the press,' ""freedom of sincere speech," "independence of thought," and such like, mere mockeries in the mouths and the statute-books of the American people, so long as language of the following description meets with countenance and cordial acquiescence in the districts where it is circulated? Says a Georgian paper, "The cry of the whole south should be death, instant death to the abolitionist wherever he is found." "Let us declare through the public journals of our country," exclaims the Columbian Telescope, "that the question of slavery is not and shall not be open to discussion; that the system is too deep-rooted among us, and must remain for ever; that the very moment any private individual attempts to lecture us upon its evils and immorality, in the same moment his tongue shall be cut out and cast upon the dunghill." The Norfolk Beacon of Virginia records as an "awful but just punishment," the

following event:-"We learn, by the arrival of the steam-boat Kentucky last evening from Richmond, that Robinson, the Englishman mentioned in the Beacon of Saturday, as being in the vicinity of Lynchburg, was taken about fifteen miles from that town, and hanged on the spot for exciting the slaves to insurrection." Trial by jury, or by any regularly appointed person or body, is not required; although self-constituted committees have, under a show of authority, but in violation of the constitution and independently of the laws, committed many outrages; just as on other occasions, the Lynch process has been overlooked and encouraged.

A longer extract than any we have yet introduced will illustrate how the privilege of liberty of thought and expression is regarded in parts of America, should the truth happen to be unsavoury. account is taken from the Anti-Slavery Reporter, published at New

York:

On the 1st of August, 1842, an interesting address was delivered in Massachusetts, by the late Dr Channing, in relation to West India emancipation, embracing, as was natural and proper, reflections on American slavery. This address was copied into a New York weekly paper, and the number containing it was offered for sale as usual by the agent of the periodical in Charleston. Instantly the agent was persecuted by the South Carolina Association, and was held to bail in the sum of 1,000 dollars, to answer for his CRIME. Presently after, this same agent received for sale a supply of "Dickens' Notes on the United States," but having before his eyes the fear of the slaveholders, he gave notice in the newspapers, that the book would "be submitted to highly intelligent members of the South Carolina Assoctation for inspection, and IF the sale is approved by them it will be for sale-if not, not." And so the population of one of the largest cities of the slave region were not permitted to read a book they were all burning with impatience to see, till the volume had been first inspected by a self-constituted body of censors! slaveholders, however, were in this instance afraid to put their power to the test-the people might have rebelled if forbidden to read the "Notes," and hence one of the most powerful, effective anti-slavery tracts yet issued from the press was permitted to be circulated, because people would read what Dickens had written. Surely, fellow-citizens, you will not accuse us of slander when we say that the slaveholders have abolished among you the liberty of the press. Remember the assertion of the editor of the Missouri Argus: "Abolition editors in the slave states will not dare to avow their opinions: it would be INSTANT DEATH to them."

The

It is impossible to produce any extended or particular account of the condition, manners, and conduct of the negroes and coloured people in the United States, without being strongly impressed with the evidences of their morally degraded state, and also of the constantly accruing force of the danger which they threaten to their masters and the whole of the white race among and around them. Another and an inseparable circumstance will arrest the reader's atten

tion it is this, that the whites live in continual dread of the blacks, and find themselves driven to the most horrid efforts both against abolitionists and slaves, in order to arrest the terrible danger that menaces, and to prolong what they must perceive is a doomed system and dying cause. How solemn is Mr. Longfellow's prediction, prompted as it is by the voice of history, and filled with the forebodings of our oracular being!

There is a poor blind Sampson in this land,

Shorn of his strength and bound in bonds of steel,

Who may in some grim revel raise his hand

And shake the pillars of this common weal,

Till the vast temple of our liberties

A shapeless mass of wreck and rubbish lies.

The observations now offered, and the passages cited from the American newspapers, we trust, will not be considered very foreign to the present article. Certainly, they are suggestive in the direction contemplated by Mr. Longfellow, and may prepare the mind to receive with due appreciation the pictures which he presents, and to welcome the sympathies which he kindles. Surely the muse was never more worthily inspired than when painting in the colours and pleading in the strain of our poet. Let him tell us of "The Slave's Dream.

Beside the ungathered rice he lay,
His sickle in his hand;

His breast was bare, his matted hair
Was buried in the sand.

Again, in the mist and shadow of sleep,
He saw his Native Land.

Wide through the landscape of his dreams
The lordly Niger flowed;

Beneath the palm-trees on the plain

Once more a king he strode;
And heard the tinkling caravans
Descend the mountain-road.

He saw once more his dark-eyed-queen
Among her children stand;

They clasped his neck, they kissed his cheeks,

They held him by the hand!-

A tear burst from the sleeper's lids

And fell into the sand.

And then at furious speed he rode

Along the Niger's bank;

His bridle-reins were golden chains,

And, with a martial clank,

At cach leap he could feel his scabbard of steel

Smiting his stallion's flank.

Before him, like a blood-red flag,

The bright flamingoes flew ;

From morn till night he followed their flight,
O'er plains where the tamarind grew,
Till he saw the roof of Caffre huts,

And the ocean rose to view.

At night he heard the lion roar,
And the hyæna scream,

And the river-horse, as he crushed the reeds
Beside some hidden stream;

And it passed, like a glorious roll of drums,
Through the triumph of his dream.

The forests, with their myriad tongues,
Shouted of liberty;

And the Blast of the Desert cried aloud,
With a voice so wild and free,

That he started in his sleep and smiled
At their tempestuous glee.

He did not feel the driver's whip,

Nor the burning heat of day;

For Death had illumined the Land of Sleep,

And his lifeless body lay

A worn-out fetter, that the soul

Had broken and thrown away!

Here is a companion story,-"The Slave Singing at Midnight."

Loud he sang the psalm of David!

He, a Negro and enslaved,

Sang of Israel's victory,

Sang of Zion, bright and free.

In that hour, when night is calmest,
Sang he from the Hebrew Psalmist,
In a voice so sweet and clear
That I could not choose but hear.

Songs of triumph, and ascriptions,
Such as reached the swarth Egyptians,
When upon the Red Sea coast
Perished Pharoah and his host.

And the voice of his devotion
Filled my soul with strange emotion;
For its tones by turns were glad,
Sweetly solemn, wildly sad.

Paul and Silas, in their prison,
Sang of Christ, the Lord arisen,
And an earthquake's arm of might
Broke their dungeon-gates at night.

But, alas what holy angel

Brings the Slave this glad evangel?
And what earthquake's arm of might
Breaks his dungeon-gates at night?

"The Quadroon girl" gives us the fate of one still more melancholy and miserable than that of the negro.

The Slaver in the broad lagoon
Lay moored with idle sail:
He waited for the rising moon,
And for the evening gale.

Under the shore his boat was tied,
And all her listless crew
Watched the grey alligator slide
Into the still bayou.

Odours of orange-flowers and spice
Reached them from time to time,
Like airs that breathe from Paradise
Upon a world of crime.

The Planter, under his roof of thatch,
Smoked thoughtfully and slow;
The Slaver's thumb was on the latch,
He seemed in haste to go.

He said, "My ship at anchor rides
In yonder broad lagoon;

I only wait the evening tides,

And the rising of the moon."

Before them, with their face upraised,
In timid attitude,

Like one half curious, half amazed,
A Quadroon maiden stood.

Her eyes were, like a falcon's, grey,
Her arms and neck were bare;
No garment she wore save a kirtle gay,
And her own long, raven hair.