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They touch our country, and their shackles fall.
That's noble, and bespeaks a nation proud
And jealous of the blessing. Spread it then,
And let it circulate through every vein
Of all your empire; that, where Britain's
Is felt, mankind may feel her mercy too.

power

LESSON LXXVII.

The Same Subject.-MONTGOMERY.

THE broken heart, which kindness never heals,
The home-sick passion which the negro feels,
When toiling, fainting in the land of canes,
His spirit wanders to his native plains;
His little lovely dwelling there he sees,
Beneath the shade of his paternal trees,
The home of comfort :-then before his eyes
The terrours of captivity arise.

'Twas night :-his babes around him lay at rest, Their mother slumbered on their father's breast: A yell of murder rang around their bed;

They woke; their cottage blazed; the victims fled;
Forth sprang the ambush'd ruffians on their prey,
They caught, they bound, they drove them far away;
The white man bought them at the mart of blood;
In pestilential barks they cross'd the flood;
Then were the wretched ones asunder torn,
To distant isles, to separate bondage borne,
Denied, though sought with tears, the sad relief
That misery loves,-the fellowship of grief.

The negro, spoiled of all that nature gave-
The freeborn man, thus shrunk into a slave;
His passive limbs to measured tasks confined,
Obeyed the impulse of another mind;

A silent, secret, terrible control,

That ruled his sinews, and repress'd his soul.
Not for himself he waked at morning-light,
Toil'd the long day, and sought repose at night;
His rest, his labour, pastime, strength, and health,
Were only portions of a master's wealth;
His love-O, name not love, where Britons doom
The fruit of love to slavery from the womb.-

Thus spurned, degraded, trampled, and oppress'd,
The negro-exile languished in the west,
With nothing left of life but hated breath,
And not a hope except the hope in death,
To fly for ever from the Creole-strand,
And dwell a freeman in his father's land.
Lives there a savage ruder than the slave?
-Cruel as death, insatiate as the grave,
False as the winds that round his vessel blow,
Remorseless as the gulf that yawns below,
Is he who toils upon the wafting flood,

A Christian broker in the trade of blood:
Boisterous in speech, in action prompt and bold,
He buys, he sells, he steals, he kills, for gold.
At noon, when sky and ocean, calm and clear,
Bend round his bark, one blue unbroken sphere;
When dancing dolphins sparkle through the brine,
And sunbeam circles o'er the waters shine;
He sees no beauty in the heaven serene,
No soul-enchanting sweetness in the scene,
But, darkly scowling at the glorious day,
Curses the winds that loiter on their way.
When swoln with hurricanes the billows rise,
To meet the lightning midway from the skies;
When from the unburthen'd hold his shrieking slaves
Are cast, at midnight, to the hungry waves;
Not for his victims strangled in the deeps,
Not for his crimes the harden'd pirate weeps,
But, grimly smiling, when the storm is o'er,.
Counts his sure gains, and hurries back for more.

LESSON LXXVIII.

The Slave Trade.-Extract from a Discourse delivered at Plymouth, Mass. Dec. 22. 1820, in commemoration of the first settlement of New-England.-By DANIEL WEBSTER.

Ir the blessings of our political and social condition have not now been too highly estimated, we cannot well over-rate the responsibility which they impose upon us. We hold these institutions of government, religion, and learning, to be • transmitted as well as enjoyed. We are in the line of conveyance through which whatever has been obtained by the

spirit and efforts of our ancestors, is to be communicated to our children.

We are bound to maintain publick liberty, and, by the exam ple of our own systems, to convince the world, that order, and law, religion and morality, the rights of conscience, the rights of persons, and the rights of property, may all be preserved and secured, in the most perfect manner, by a government entirely and purely elective. If we fail in this, our disaster will be signal, and will furnish an argument, stronger than has yet been found, in support of those opinions, which maintain that government can rest safely on nothing but power and coercion. As far as experience may show errours in our establishments, we are bound to correct them; and if any practices exist, contrary to the principles of justice and humanity, within the reach of our laws or our influence, we are inexcusable if we do not exert ourselves to restrain and abolish them.

I deem it my duty, on this occasion, to suggest, that the land is not yet wholly free from the contamination of a traffick, at which every feeling of humanity must revōlt—I mean the African slave trade. Neither publick sentiment, nor the law, has yet been able entirely to put an end to this odious and abominable trade. At the moment when God, in his mercy, has blessed the world with a universal peace, there is reason to fear, that, to the disgrace of the christian name and character, new efforts are making for the extension of this trade, by subjects and citizens of christian states, in whose hearts no sentiment of justice inhabits, and over whom neither the fear of God nor the fear of man exercises a control. In the sight of our law, the African slave trader is a pirate and a felon; and in the sight of heaven, an offender far beyond the ordinary depth of human guilt. There is no brighter part of our history, than that which records the measures which have been adopted by the government, at an early day, and at different times since, for the suppression of this traffick; and I would call upon all the true sons of New-England, to cooperate with the laws of man, and the justice of heaven.

If there be, within the extent of our knowledge or influence, any participation in this traffick, let us pledge ourselves here, upon the Rock of Plymouth, to extirpate and destroy it. It is not fit that the land of the pilgrims should bear the shame longer. I hear the sound of the hammerI see the smoke of the furnaces where manacles and fetters

are still forged for human limbs. I see the visages of those, who by stealth, and at midnight, labour in this work of hell, foul and dark, as may become the artificers of such instruments of misery and torture. Let that spot be purified, or let it cease to be of New-England. Let it be purified, or let it be set aside from the christian world; let it be put out of the circle of human sympathies and human regards; and let civilized man henceforth have no communion with it.

I would invoke those who fill the seats of justice, and all who minister at her altar, that they execute the wholesome and necessary severity of the law. I invoke the ministers of our religion that they proclaim its denunciation of these crimes, and add its solemn sanctions to the authority of human laws. If the pulpit be silent, whenever, or wherever there may be a sinner, bloody with this guilt, within the hearing of its voice, the pulpit is false to its trust.

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I call on the fair merchant, who has reaped his harvest upon the seas, that he assist in scourging from those seas the worst pirates that ever infested them. That ocean which seems to wave with a gentle magnificence, to waft the burdens of an honest commerce, and to roll its treasures with a conscious pride; that ocean which hardy industry regards, even when the winds have ruffled its surface, as a field of grateful toil; what is it to the victim of this oppression when he is brought to its shores, and looks forth upon it for the first time, from beneath chains, and bleeding with stripes?-What is it to him, but a wide spread prospect of suffering, anguish, and death? Nor do the skies smile longer; nor is the air fragrant to him. The sun is cast down from heaven. An inhuman and cursed traffick has cut him off in his manhood, or in his youth, from every enjoyment belonging to his being, and every blessing which his Creator intended for him.

LESSON LXXIX.

Report of an adjudged case, not to be found in any of the books.
-COWPER.

BETWEEN Nose and Eyes a strange contest arose;
The spectacles set them unhappily wrong;
The point in dispute was, as all the world knows,
To which the said spectacles ought to belong.

So Tongue was the lawyer, and argued the cause,
With a great deal of skill, and a wig full of learning,
While chief baron Ear sat to balance the laws,

So famed for his talent in nicely discerning.
"In behalf of the Nose, it will quickly appear,
And your lordship" he said "will undoubtedly find,
That the Nose has had spectacles always to wear,
Which amounts to possession time out of mind."
Then holding the spectacles up to the court-
"Your lordship observes they are made with a straddle,
As wide as the ridge of the Nose is! in short,
Designed to sit close to it, just like a saddle.

"Again, would your worship a moment suppose
("Tis a case that has happened, and may be again).
That the visage or countenance had not a Nose
Pray, who would, or who could, wear spectacles then?
"On the whole it appears, and my argument shows
With a reasoning the court will never condemn,
That the spectacles plainly were made for the Nose,
And the Nose was as plainly intended for them."
Then, shifting his side, (as a lawyer knows how)
He pleaded again in behalf of the Eyes:
But what were his arguments few people know,
For the court did not think they were equally wise.
So his lordship decreed, with a grave, solemn tone,
Decisive and clear, without one if or but
That whenever the Nose put his spectacles on,
By day-light or candle-light,-Eyes should be shut!

LESSON LXXX.

Song of Rebecca, the Jewess.-AUTHOR OF IVANHOE.

When Israel, of the Lord beloved,
Out from the land of bondage came,
Her father's God before her moved,
An awful guide in smoke and flame.

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