Thy lips have shed instruction as the dew,

Taught me what path to shun, and what pursue.,
Farewell my former joys! I sigh no more
For Africa's once-loved, benighted shore:
Serving a benefactor I am free;

At my best home, if not exil'd from thee!'

'One thing is quite certain,—that if you had first been the most remorseless man-stealer on the coast of Africa, and afterwards the most bloody driver in Jamaica, your character would not have weighed an atom either against the truth or the falsehood of the abstract argument. We have all our opinion about the conquests of Mexico and Peru; utterly uninfluenced by any thing which Cortez and Pizarro might have alleged in their own defence, or confessed to their own disgrace.

Either

The thing lies in a very narrow compass. you have told a true story, or a false one. If the former, the objector's mouth is stopped at once. If you are a deceiver, let the objector bring his counterevidence.'

APPENDIX.

UPWARDS of thirty-three years since, Mr. Edwards-all my quotations from whom refer to his second edition, 1794 said, that the custom of branding was growing into disuse (ii. 130); but the subjoined extracts from recent Gazettes will illustrate the progress, in this relation, of colonial reform.

ROWLEY: marked apparently E O on the breasts, and mark not plain on the shoulders; has a mark of an old sore on the outer part of his left leg, and the second toe of his right foot is lost. -WILLIAM: marked apparently D B D on left shoulder; has lick marks on his back, and his teeth are filed.HARDANY: has a small scar on his left cheek, blister marks on his back. HYSLOP LAWRENCE: has lost some of his lower front teeth, scars on shin of his left leg, which is swoln; marked not plain, apparently on both shoulders.GIFT: a Creole, marks of flogging on her back. -MARIA: has a mark of a cut on her forehead, lost the use of her right side.SARAH: marked IB on shoulders, lost the second and third toes of her left foot, and also one of her lower front teeth.JAMES: marked W R in one, on different parts of his shoulders, a part of the second and fifth toes of his left foot are lost, and has a large scar on the left side of his head.- -SPENCER: marked MAC on left shoulder; the right little toe is lost, and the small of the left arm is withered and much reduced from its natural size.-LEWIS SWABY: marked RB, heart on top, as well as marks of chops on left shoulder.- -GRANT: marked apparently J G on shoulder, also a cutlass mark.- -GEORGE: marked T W on right shoulder, and the ball of his left eye is injured.- -GEORGE: marked RS on right, and IM on left shoulder.-GEORGE REEVES: marked PL, diamond between, on the left shoulder.-GEORGE JAMES: marked SP or R on left shoulder.-FRANK: marked A ML, the ML in one, on shoulders.BELLA: a Creole, her right upper front tooth is lost, and blister marks on her right cheek and temple,-AARON: has a scar between his eyes and over the left eye-brow. THOMAS: marked apparently RS on

shoulders.- -ROBERT: marked W N, diamond between, ou right shoulder.WILLIAM BULLOCK: marked TS, heart on top, on left shoulder -MARY: marked FB on shoulders, and has several scars on her back.- -JOHN EDWARDS: marked N on breasts and shoulders, has a small blotched mark on left jaw, and mark of flogging on his back.- -JOHN PHILIPS: marked LH on right, and ICD left shoulder, has a blotched mark on the pit of stomach, a cut mark on the back of his right hand, and two small scars on forehead.-WILLIAM M'Cook: has marks of severe punishment on his shoulders and back.'

These citations from the advertisements in the Jamaica Royal Gazette exhibit, besides the brand-marks, proofs of various other stigmata inflicted under the slave system. In one Gazette, of October 7, 1826, occurs an advertisement describing, as a run-away, a female slave marked NELSON on her breasts, and I O on her right shoulder!

II.-page 4.

A full account of the practice of Obeah may be found in Edwards (ii. 90-101); and in Stewart, 276.-It is the African form of the sorcery which, under various names, has been found in all unenlightened nations; and is essentially the same with the influence possessed by the priesthood in countries under the absolute dominion of the Roman-Catholic superstition. Traces of Protestant obi are also sufficiently discoverable in the blind confidence sometimes reposed in the opus operatum of the Christian sacraments; especially in the administration of the Eucharist to sick persons, and to felons before their execution.

,

I am afraid that the subjoined statement is also a direct illustration of Obeah practice under the forms of Christianity. It appears that the Rev. G. W. Bridges had represented (1823) his pastoral success as follows: During my residence in the parish, I have actually baptized 9,413 slaves. Now, when he stated this, he had been only two or three years Rector of Manchester; in which no church had been opened till after his appointment.'Nothing,' says Mr. Barham, himself a large West-India proprietor, could be easier than to introduce Christianity in name; as, for the most insignificant reward the Negroes would universally accept baptism.'-Sir George Rose, another large pro prietor, states, that, with respect to baptism, we ought to put it entirely out of our calculation, where it has not been attended by Christian instruction, and the amendment of the neophyte. On the largest and best of his estates in Jamaica, his slaves, though they had been baptized, he found to be ' UTTERLY without religion, ignorant, disorderly, and dishonest.'.