184 the Hindoos, I was induced to attend the self-immolation of a Hindoo widow at Collyghaut yesterday. The preparatory ceremonies, if any, must have taken place previously to my arrival at the ghaut; for I found the unhappy victim of their idolatry in a state of perfect insensibility. Though I was aware that her husband died at so late an hour as twelve o'clock on Saturday night, I laid aside all idea that grief for his loss was the actuating cause of her immolation; and I am not disposed to think I was wrong in so doing, from the circumstances attending this barbarous custom. It was about twenty minutes past eleven when I arrived: the Brahmins were washing the body of the corpse of the husband in the river, and a few paces from them sat the apparently unconscious victim-the widow. She was twenty-one years of age, to my conception by far the most beautiful of any native female I have ever seen. The interference of those who witnessed the sacrifice would, I believe, have proved ineffectual to prevent her dissolution, and that speedily; for, judging from her appearance, she was in a state of stupefaction. I spoke to several Brahmins, (and among them I found men intelligently delivering their sentiments, and, except in acquiescing in the detestable custom, men with whom I should have thought our enlightened views of Christianity might be pressed with success,) who said it was her fate; and added, that if she were prevented or persuaded from her purpose, she would die before three o'clock. "Upon this intimation I was led to attend more minutely to her situation. She was sitting on the ground near the river, supported by two men, and, as I said, in a state of insensibility: her eyes were open, but apparently beyond the power of recognizing surrounding objects: here she remained until a paper was signed by several Brahmins, who eagerly pressed upon the person in whose possession it was. While this was going forward, the Thannadar asked her the usual questions ▾ of her sacrifice being voluntary, to which, in a feeble voice, she replied affirmatively; the pen was then presented to her, with which the Brahmins had previously signed the paper, and she was made to touch it, being laid upon the funeral pile, she was as significant of her approval. The corpse raised from the ground and supported to the river, and after being bathed (for to bathe herself was beyond her power), she was dressed by the attending Brahmins in a red scarf and ornamented with flowers, and her head painted with red where her hair parted: she was then led up to the pile, and performed, merely and solely by the assistance of others, the required ceremonies; she was supported round the pile her task, her head fell on the shoulder of seven times, and after having performed of ten minutes she was to my idea in a the man on her left hand, and for upwards satisfied that the drugs that had been swoon: but in the sequel I was well given her had begun effectually to operate. The attendants waited this time, I suppose, in hopes of her reviving, and being able to shew somewhat of voluntary action in the sight of the seven European gentlethis they were disappointed, for she remen who happened to be present; but in mained perfectly insensible to every object, And now commenced a scene so horrible, so revolting to every common principle of humanity, that one's blood shudders at the recital. They lifted her up,. the pile: she had not the power, when on more dead than alive, and placed her on her deceased husband; but this was quickly it, even to lay her arm over the body of done for her, as well as placing his head on her bosom. This was enough for me, clarations of the Brahmins that she would and I left the scene of murder. The denot survive three o'clock, was a satisfactory conclusion to my mind, that the drugs that might have been administered to her would be well if Government would interwere of the most destructive nature. It fere, in a similar case of self-immolation, to postpone the ceremony beyond the time at which the death of the victim was prophecied; and, if it occurred, to subject the body to the investigation of surgeons, in order to discover the fact of murder or not. In the instance I speak of, the woman was perfectly insensible; and no part of this abominable ceremony could be said to have had her consent.” LIST OF NEW PUBLICATIONS. THEOLOGY. Vindication of the Church and Clergy of England against the Edinburgh Review; by a Beneficed Clergyman. 8vo. rical Provident Fund; by a Rector. 8vo. 1813.] Relig. Intell.-Anti-Slavery Societies. Review of the Prize Essay on the Scriptural Doctrines on Adultery and Divorce; by H. Tebbs, Proctor in Doctors' Com mons. A Letter to Lord Liverpool, on the Catholic Question, Clerical Residence, and the State of Ordination; by the Rev. R. Mitchell, D. D. 8vo. Ís. A Sabbath among the Mountains; a Poem. Sequel to an unfinished Manuscript of H. K. 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Whitmore, Esq. pointing out some of the erroneous Statements in Mr. Marryat's Reply to Pamphlets on the Equalization of the Duties on Sugars; by the Author of a Pamphlet, entitled East and West India Sugar. RELIGIOUS INTELLIGENCE. ANTI-SLAVERY SOCIETIES. of humanity, policy, and Christian dutythe mitigation and gradual abolition of the state of Slavery throughout the British dominions, and ultimately, we would earnestly hope, throughout the whole world. As we shall have occasion to recur to the topic in our View of Public Affairs, we shall content ourselves at present with announcing the formation of several societies for effecting this great object, and with annexing a circular issued by one of them, which will shew the intentions of the benevolent individuals engaged in calling public attention and sympathy to the measure, and the grounds upon which they urge its claims to be solemnly heard and decided. Liverpool, so long the focus of the abhorred and inhuman Slave Trade, and which since its abolition has sprung up to gigantic greatness on its ruins, by a bloodless and honourable commerce, has had the distinguished privilege of being the first spot in the British dominions in which a society has been formed for the abolition of Slavery. A similar institution has since been founded in the metropolis; and greatly do we deceive ourselves if a spirit has not gone abroad, which, by the blessing of God, will before very long lead to a safe and effectual extinction of this foul blot from the whole face of the British dominions. But, be the struggle long or short, the duty of assisting in it stands on the broad principle of religious obligation, and will not fail to bring its reward to all who embark in it upon the sacred principle of love to God, and to mankind for God's sake, without distinction of clime or colour, as members of one common family, united in one common guilt, and purchased by the blood of one common Saviour. We have not space at present to make any extracts from the highly valuable and judicious papers issued by the Liverpool Society, or from some other pamphlets which have been published on the subject; which, however, deserve a large measure of public attention, particularly Mr. Wilberforce's "Appeal to the Religion, Justice, and Humanity of the British Empire, in behalf of the Negro Slaves in the West Indies *." Animated and eloquent as are this revered senator's speeches and publications, we should be at a loss to point out any thing from his lips or pen more animated and eloquent, and we will add more sober, more statesman-like, more Christian, and more con Another pamphlet, entitled "Negro Slavery," gives a most appalling picture of the present state of that state of society, in the British West Indies: we wish it could be read by every man and woman in the kingdom. vincing, than this seasonable "Appeal to all the Inhabitants of the British Empire who value the favour of God, or are alive to the interests or honour of their country; to all who have any respect for justice, or any feelings of humanity." We rejoice to find that the pamphlet has been already widely circulated; and we earnestly recommend it to the perusal of our readers. The motto is strikingly appropriate : "Woe unto him that buildeth his house by unrighteousness, and his chambers by wrong; that useth his neighbour's service without wages, and giveth him not for his work." And may we not add, without meaning any reflection upon individuals whose misfortune it may have been to be Slave-proprietors, that the present dilapidated state of our Slave-colonies is a monitory example of the fulfilment of this woe by an equitable retributive Providence? The London Anti-Slavery Society's circular, above alluded to, is as follows. "Among the manifold evils to which man is liable, there is not perhaps one more extensively productive of wretchedness than PERSONAL SLAVERY. "Slavery may, without exaggeration, be described as inflicting on the unhappy subjects of it almost every injury which law, even in its rudest state, was intended to prevent. Is property an object of solicitude? The Slave, generally speaking, can neither acquire nor securely enjoy it. Is exemption from personal wrong indispensable to comfort? The Slave is liable to indignity and insult, to restraint and punishment, at the mere caprice of another. He may be harassed and rendered miserable in a thousand ways, which, so far from admitting of the proof that would be requisite to obtain legal redress (even where any legal redress is ostensibly provided), can perhaps with difficulty be distinguished from such exercise of a master's power as admits of no regulation or controul. Even life itself may, with impunity, be wantonly sported with: it may be abridged by insufficient sustenance; it may be wasted by excessive labour; nay,' it may be sacrificed by brutal violence, without any proportionate risk of adequate punishment. "In short, the Slave can have no security for property, comfort, or life; because he himself is not his own: he belongs to another, who, with or without the offer of a reason or pretence, can at once sepa-. rate all from him, and him from all which gives value to existence. Again: What sense of moral obligation can he be expected to possess who is 1823.] shackled with respect to every action and purpose, and is scarcely dealt with as an accountable being? Will the man, for example, whose testimony is rejected with scorn, be solicitous to establish a character for veracity? Will those who are treated as cattle, be taught thereby to restrain those natural appetites which they possess in common with their fellow-labourers in the team? Or will women be prepared for the due performance of domestic and maternal duties by being refused the connubial tie, or by being led to regard prostitution to their owner, or his representative, as the most honourable distinction to which they can aspire? "From this source of Slavery, then,flows every species of personal suffering and moral degradation, until its wretched victim is sunk almost to the level of the brute; with this farther disadvantage, that not being wholly irrational, he is capable of inspiring greater degrees of terror, resentment, and aversion, and will therefore seem to his owner to require and to justify severer measures of coercion. "And let it not be forgotten, that Slavery is itself not merely the effect, it is also the very cause, of the Slave Trade; of that system of fraud and violence by which Slaves are procured. If Slavery were extinct, the Slave Trade must cease. But while it is suffered to exist, that murderous traffic will still find a fatal incentive in the solicitude of the Slaveholder to supply the waste of life which his cupidity and cruel ty have occasioned. Thus, in every point of view, is Slavery productive of the worst consequences to all the parties concerned. Besides all the direct and wide-wasting injuries which it inflicts on its immediate victims, it substitutes for the otherwise peaceful merchant a blood-thirsty pirate trading in human flesh; and by ministering to pride, avarice, and sensuality, by exciting the angry passions, and hardening the heart against the best feelings of our nature, it ends to convert the owner of Slaves into a merciless tyrant. "The Society, be it remembered, are not now endeavouring to rouse indignation against particular acts of extraordinary cruelty, or to hold up to merited reprehension individuals notorious for their crimes. They are only exhibiting a just picture of the nature and obvious tendencies of Slavery itself, wheresoever, and by whomsoever practised. They are very far from asserting, or supposing, that every one of the enormities to which they have alluded will be found to co-exist in all their horrors in every place where Slaves may be some found: but they know that in suchplaces they Jove fix'd it certain, that whatever day away.' And this might be shewn to be the concurrent testimony of all ages. "The enemies of Negro freedom, in our own age and country, were so sensible of this truth, that with great shrewdness they disputed the claim of the Negro race to be regarded as men. They doubtless felt, with Montesquieu, that if Negroes were allowed to be men, a doubt might arise whether their masters could be Christians." This position, however, has been abandoned as untenable; and we may therefore indulge a sanguine hope of at length recovering for them the indubitable rights of humanity, so long and so cruelly withheld by the strong arm of oppression. "Some persons, however, may here be disposed to ask, how it is possible, if Slavery were an evil so enormous as it has now been represented to be, that it should not only have been tolerated, but recognized and established as a legal condition of society, by so many polished, and even Christian nations, up to this very day. The Society admit, that, to a humane and considerate mind, nothing can seem more extraordinary than that this and other enormities, the removal of which lies obviously within the compass of human ability, should yet continue to torment manBut our past sukind from age to age. pineness in no degree weakens the obligation we are under to attempt their removal when their real nature has been detected and exposed. Nor will the plea of pre scription and antiquity, or of previous connivance, justify the prolongation of prac tices which both religion and natural justice condemn as crimes. The African Slave Trade, with all the abominations accompanying its every stage, had been carried on for centuries, without attracting observation; and, even after it had excited the attention of a few benevolent individuals, it cost many a laborious effort and many a painful disappointment, before a conviction of its inherent turpitude and criminality became general, and its condemnation was sealed in this country. In the exultation produced by this victory it was perhaps too readily believed that the Colonial Slavery which had been fed by the Slave Trade, would, when all foreign supply was stopped, undergo a gradual, but rapid mitigation, until it had ceased to reproach our free institutions and our Christian profession, and was no longer known but as a foul blot in our past history. It was this hope, joined to a liberal confidence in the enlarged and benevolent purposes of the colonial proprietary, which prevented the immediate prosecution of such further parliamentary measures as should have at once placed the unhappy Slave under the protection of the law, and have prepared the way for his restoration to those sacred and inalienable rights of humanity, of which he had been unjustly dispossessed. But if, as is the fact, every such hope has proved illusory, and all such confidence has only served to render their disappointment more bitter and mortifying, shall the friends of the African race be now reproached for waiting no longer, when the real ground of reproach is, that they should have waited so long? They place themselves then on the immoveable ground of Christian principle, while they invoke the interference of Parliament, and of the country at large, to effect the immediate mitigation, with a view to the gradual and final extinction, in all parts of the British dominions, of a system which is at war with every principle of religion and morality, and outrages every benevolent feeling. And they entertain the fullest conviction that the same spirit of justice and humanity which has already achieved so signal a victory, will again display itself in all its energy, nor relax its efforts until it shall have consummated its triumphs. "The objects of this Society cannot be more clearly and comprehensively defined than in the following resolutions which were unanimously adopted at its first meeting. "That the individuals composing the present meeting are deeply impressed with the magnitude and number of the evils attached to the system of Slavery which prevails in many of the colonies of Great Britain; a system which appears to them so be opposed to the spirit and precepts of Christianity, as well as repugnant to every dictate of natural humanity and justice. "That they long indulged a hope, that the great measure of the abolition of the Slave Trade, for which an Act of the Legislature was passed in 1807 after a struggle of twenty years, would have tended rapidly to the mitigation and gradual extinction of Negro bondage in the British colonies; but that in this hope they have been painfully disappointed; and after a lapse of sixteen years, they have still to deplore the almost undiminished prevalence of the very evils which it was one great object of the abolition to remedy. "That under these circumstances they feel themselves called upon by the most binding considerations of their duty as Christians, by their best sympathies as men, and by their solicitude to maintain unimpaired the high reputation and the solid prosperity of their country, to exert themselves, in their separate and collective capacities, in furthering this most important object, and in endeavouring by all prudent and lawful means to mitigate, and eventually to abolish, the Slavery existing in our Colonial possessions. "That an Association be now formed, to be called The London Society for mitigating and gradually abolishing the State of Slavery throughout the British Dominions;' and that a subscription be entered into for that purpose. "With respect to the means of carrying these objects into effect, they must, in some measure depend on circumstances. For such as are more obvious, particularly the obtaining and diffusing of inform ation, considerable funds will be required; and it will therefore be necessary to promote subscriptions not only in the metropolis, but in all parts of the kingdom.” Subscriptions will be received by the Treasurer, Samuel Hoare, jun., Esq., at Messrs. Hoare, Barnett, and Co.'s, Lombard Street; and by Messrs. Drummonds, Charing Cross. We subjoin a list of publications, containing important information on the subject of Slavery, namely;Ramsay's Essay on the Treatment and Conversion of African Slaves in the British Sugar Colonies, 1784. |