us," he says, " and soon I heard nothing but the clanging of chains, the sound of the whip, and the cries of my fellow prisoners." In this dreadful situation he was carried to Grenada, and sold into Slavery.

Cugoano was indebted to the generosity of Lord Hoth, who liberated him and carried him to England, where, in 1788, he was in the service of Cosway, the first painter to the Prince of Wales. Piatoli, an Italian author, who, during a long residence in London, was particularly acquainted with Cugoano, then about forty years of age, and whose wife was an English woman, praises this African highly; he speaks in strong terms of his piety, his mildness of character, modesty, integrity, and talents.

Like Othello, Cugoano has described in an affecting manner, the heart-rending spectacle of those unfortunate Africans, who are forced to bid an eternal adieu to their native country-to fathers and mothers, husbands, brothers and children, invoking heaven and earth, throwing themselves, bathed in tears, into each other's arms asunder! "This spectacle," says he, "calculated to move the hearts of monsters, does not that of the Slave dealer." At Grenada, he saw Negroes lacerated by the whip, because, instead of working, they went to church on the Sabbath. He saw others have their teeth broken, because they dared to suck the sugar cane.

Cugoano published his reflections on the Slave Trade, and the Slavery of Negroes, in English; and it was also translated into French. He raised his voice to spread abroad the spirit of religion, and prove from the Scriptures, that the stealing, sale, and purchase of men, and their detention in a state of Slavery, are crimes of the deepest die. His writings are not very methodical, but they speak the language of a feeling heart. There are repetitions, because grief is verbose. An individual deeply affected, is always afraid of not having said enough-of not being sufficiently understood.

After some observations on the cause of difference of colour in the human species, as climate, soil, regimen, &c., he asks, whether colour or bodily form give a right to enslave men. "The Negroes," he observes, "have never crossed the seas to steal White Men." "Europeans," he says, "complain of the barbarism of the Negroes, while their conduct towards Negroes is horribly barbarous. To steal men, to rob them of their liberty, is worse than to plunder them of their goods. On national crimes," he adds, "heaven sometimes inflicts national punishments. Besides, injustice is sooner or later fatal to its author." This idea is conformable to the great plan of religion; and ought to be indelibly impressed on every human heart.

Cugoano makes a striking comparison between ancient and modern Slavery; and proves that the last, which prevails among professing Christians, is worse than that among Pagans, and also worse than that among the Hebrews, who did not steal men to enslave them, nor sell them without their consent; and who put no fine on the head of a fugitive. In Deuteronomy, it is formally said: "Thou shalt not deliver up to his master a fugitive Slave, who in thy house has sought an asylum." He passes from the Old to the New Testament, and states the inconsistency of Slavery with Christ's command, to "do to others as we would they should do to us."

In Cugoano, we may behold talents without much literary cultivation, to which a good education would have given great advantage.

WILLIAM HAMILTON

Was originally a Slave on the Bog Estate, near Hopeton, in Jamaica. His sufferings during the last years of Slavery in that Island, were given in evidence before the Apprenticeship Committee of the House of Commons.

Hamilton was the only Slave on the estate who dared

to attend a place of worship; the only one of upwards of 400 Negroes who dared to live with his partner in marriage. For these offences he was degraded from being a first-rate mechanic and copper-smith, to the rank of a common field labourer, and sent to a swampy estate, 30 miles distant from his wife and family, where he narrowly escaped with his life. He had learned to read and write when a boy, by stealth, and during his banishment he kept a journal, which, though it is chiefly the record of his spiritual conflicts and his religious labours among the neglected heathen Negroes with whom his lot was cast, yet contains many incidental allusions to the sufferings of himself and his fellow Slaves. It affords an interior picture of Slavery, which exceeds perhaps, any that the world has yet seen; it lifts a veil that conceals the true lineaments of Slavery, which forcibly impress the mind with the conviction, that the worst features of that horrible state of society, neither have been, nor can be, laid open to public view.

William Hamilton, soon after the introduction of the Apprenticeship system, purchased his freedom by valuation, for £209; and has since been employed as the overseer of the Lenox estate. He has also purchased 70 acres of land for himself. 66 Though self educated," say Sturge and Harvey, "he is evidently a person of an intelligent and reflecting mind, which has been improved by reading and disciplined by a life of adversity, such as rarely falls to the lot of a Slave."

PHILLIS WHEATLEY.

Although the state of Massachusetts was never so deeply involved in the African Slave Trade as most of the other states of America, previous to their separation from Great Britain, many Negroes were brought into its ports, and sold for Slaves.

In 1761, Mrs. John Wheatley, of Boston, went to the

Slave-market, to select, from the crowd of unfortunates there offered for sale, a Negro girl, whom she might train, by gentle usage, to serve as an attendant during her old age. Amongst a group of more robust and healthy children just imported from Africa, the lady observed one, slenderly formed, and suffering apparently from change of climate and the miseries of the voyage. The interesting countenance and humble modesty of the poor little stranger, induced Mrs. Wheatley to overlook the disadvantage of a weak state of health, and Phillis, as the young Slave was subsequently named, was purchased in preference to her healthier companions, and taken home to the abode of her mistress. The child was almost in a state of perfect nakedness, her only covering being a strip of dirty carpet. These things were soon remedied by the attention of the lady into whose hands the young African had been thrown, and in a short time the effects of comfortable clothing and food were visible in her returning health.

Phillis, at the time of her purchase, was between seven and eight years old, and the intention of Mrs. Wheatley was to train her up to the common occupations of a menial servant. But the marks of extraordinary intelligence which the young Negress soon evinced, induced her mistress's daughter to teach her to read; and such was the rapidity with which this was effected, that in sixteen months from the time of her arrival in the family, the African child had so mastered the English language, to which she was an utter stranger before, as to read with ease the most difficult parts of Scripture. This uncommon docility altered the intentions of the family regarding Phillis, and in future she was kept constantly about the person of her mistress, whose affections she entirely won by her amiable disposition and propriety of demeanour. All her knowledge was obtained without any instruction, except what was given her in the family; and the art of writing she acquired entirely from her own exertion and industry. In the short period

of four years from the time of her being stolen from Africa, and when only 12 years of age, she was capable of writing letters to her friends on various subjects. In 1765, she wrote to Samson Occum, the Indian minister, while he was in London.

The young Negress soon became an object of very general attention and astonishment, and in a few years she corresponded with several persons in high stations. At this period neither in the mother country nor in the colonies was much attention bestowed on the education of the labouring classes of the Whites themselves, and much less, it may be supposed, was expended on the mental cultivation of the Slave population. It is scarcely possible to suppose that any care should have been expended on the mind of the young Negress before her abduction from her native land; and indeed her tender years almost precluded the possibility even of such culture as Africa could afford. Of her infancy, spent in that unhappy land, Phillis had but one solitary recollection, but that is an interesting one. She remembered that every morning her mother poured out water before the rising sun-a religious rite, doubtless, of the district from which the child was carried away. Thus, every morning, when the day broke over the land and the home which fate had bestowed on her, was Phillis reminded of the tender mother who had watched over her infancy, but had been unable to protect her from the hand of the merciless breakers-up of all domestic and social ties. The young Negro girl, however, regarded her abduction with no feelings of regret, but with thankfulness, as having been the means of bringing her to a land where a light, unknown in her far-off home, shone as a guide to the feet and a lamp to the path.

As Phillis grew up to womanhood, her progress and attainments kept pace with the promise of her earlier years. She attracted the notice of the literary characters of the place, who supplied her with books, and encouraged the