United States. We wait with some interest to see what will be the nature of its reception in this country. The late Mr. Cappe put forth, many years ago, similar expositions of Scripture, leading to a not dissimilar result. His views, however, as emanating from an heretical quarter, have had influence on only a small circle of free-thinking minds. Dr. Bush will have a far wider audience, and produce very different results. The particular dogma in dispute is not in itself unimportant, for the orthodox view of it has unchristianised many, but far more important is the general question thus put with a firm hand before the whole religious world, on a topic of universal concern, what in truth are the relations in which the Bible stands to science? We thank Dr. Bush for the manly and intrepid spirit which he has displayed, with obviously the prospect before his eyes, of incurring no small portion of odium. We receive with pleasure this new contribution to our theological stores from our transatlantic brethren, and we conclude by a statement which is highly honourable to so young a country as the United States, namely, that the theologians of America give many signs that they are entering with an active and healthy spirit on a highly useful career of theological inquiry.

III. The Catholic Series. John Chapman: Newgate Street, London.

This is to be a series of works, all written in a kindred spirit of freedom and catholicity, but embracing the widest range of subjects. Catholicity of spirit is to be found in each number, Catholicity of form to be the result of the whole Series. This will require a long duration, and the best thing we can wish for the Series is, that it may never be completed, but have encouragement to go on, from year to year, perfecting its form.

The Work is very neatly printed, and it is an obvious advantage to have in uniform volumes, publications of great value and interest, but which are often too small for an independent existence. The works which have already appeared are, "The Log Cabin, or the World before You," by the author of "Three Experiments of Living;" "Self

Culture," by Dr. Channing; "Historical Sketches of the Old Painters," by the author of "The Log Cabin ;" "Essays by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Second Series;" "Christianity, or Europe," from the German of Novalis; and "The Emancipation of the Negroes of the British West Indies. An address delivered on the 1st August 1844. By R. W. Emerson."

It is really purifying to be able to turn, at this moment, to any thing righteous and generous from an American on Slavery and Great Britain, so as to be relieved from the scorn and loathing produced by Mr. Calhoun's Letter to the American Minister at Paris. Nations, like individuals, generally disguise their crimes; America alone, if her Cabinet represents her, is not ashamed, before the civilized world, openly to discuss the greatest questions of Human Rights, on grounds purely sordid, and in a spirit, out of which every thing righteous is consumed and burned by jealous hatred of England. That bad-hearted and lowminded Letter, at once false and mean, we venture to say, the basest State-Paper that any Minister, of any time, of his own accord, ignorant of the disgrace with which it must overwhelm him, ever published to the world, we yet hope that America will disown. Meanwhile, since Channing is no more, it is a satisfaction that there is one man in America of a potential voice, who can utter these words of Reproof to his Country, of Justice to Great Britain :

"These considerations, I doubt not, had their weight, the interest of trade, the interest of the revenue, and, moreover, the good fame of the action. It was inevitable that men should feel these motives. But they do not appear to have had an excessive or unreasonable weight. On reviewing this history, I think the whole transaction reflects infinite honour on the people and Parliament of England. It was a stately spectacle, to see the cause of human rights argued with so much patience and generosity, and with such a mass of evidence before that powerful people. It is a creditable incident in the history, that when, in 1789, the first privy-council report of evidence on the trade, a bulky folio, (embodying all the facts which the London Committee had been engaged for years in collecting, and all the examinations before the council,) was presented to the House of Commons, a late day being named for the discussion, in order to give members time,-Mr. Wilberforce, Mr. Pitt, the Prime Minister, and other gentlemen, took advantage of the postponement, to retire into the country, to read the report. For

months and years the bill was debated, with some consciousness of the extent of its relations by the first citizens of England, the foremost men of the earth; every argument was weighed, every particle of evidence sifted and laid in the scale; and, at last, the right triumphed, the poor man was vindicated, and the oppressor was flung out. I know that England has the advantage of trying the question at a wide distance from the spot where the nuisance exists; the planters are not, excepting in rare examples, members of the legislature. The extent of the empire, and the magnitude and number of other questions crowding into court, keep this one in balance, and prevent it from obtaining that ascendancy, and being urged with that intemperance, which a question of property tends to acquire. There are causes in the composition of the British legislature, and the relation of its leaders to the country and to Europe, which exclude much that is pitiful and injurious in other legislative assemblies. From these reasons, the question was discussed with a rare independence and magnanimity. It was not narrowed down to a paltry electioneering trap, and, I must say, a delight in justice, an honest tenderness for the poor negro, for man suffering these wrongs, combined with the national pride, which refused to give the support of English soil, or the protection of the English flag, to these disgusting violations of nature.

"Forgive me, fellow-citizens, if I own to you, that in the last few days that my attention has been occupied with this history, I have not been able to read a page of it, without the most painful comparisons. Whilst I have read of England, I have thought of New England. Whilst I have meditated in my solitary walks on the magnanimity of the English Bench and Senate, reaching out the benefit of the law to the most helpless citizen in her worldwide realm, I have found myself oppressed by other thoughts. As I have walked in the pastures and along the edge of woods, I could not keep my imagination on those agreeable figures, for other images that intruded on me. I could not see the great vision of the patriots and senators who have adopted the slave's cause they turned their backs on me. No: I see other pictures —of mean men: I see very poor, very ill-clothed, very ignorant men, not surrounded by happy friends,—to be plain,-poor black men of obscure employment as mariners, cooks, or stewards, in ships, yet citizens of this our Commonwealth of Massachusetts, freeborn as we,-whom the slave-laws of the States of South Carolina, Georgia and Louisiana, have arrested in the vessels in which they visited those ports, and shut up in jails so long as the vessel remained in port, with the stringent addition, that if the shipmaster fails to pay the costs of this official arrest, and the board in jail, these citizens are to be sold for slaves, to pay that expense. This man, these men I see, and no law to save them.

Fellow-citizens, this crime will not be hushed up any longer. I have learned that a citizen of Nantucket, walking in New Orleans, found a freeborn citizen of Nantucket-a man, too, of great personal worth, and, as it happened, very dear to him, as having saved his own life, working chained in the streets of that city, kidnapped by such a process as this. In the sleep of the laws, the private interference of two excellent citizens of Boston has, I have ascertained, rescued several natives of this State from these southern prisons. Gentlemen, I thought the deck of a Massachusetts ship was as much the territory of Massachusetts, as the floor on which we stand. It should be as sacred as the temple of God. The poorest fishing-smack, that floats under the shadow of an iceberg in the northern seas, or hunts the whale in the southern ocean, should be encompassed by her laws with comfort and protection, as much as within the arms of Cape Ann and Cape Cod. And this kidnapping is suffered within our own land and federation, whilst the fourth article of the Constitution of the United States ordains in terms, that 'The citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States.' If such a damnable outrage can be committed on the person of a citizen with impunity, let the Governor break the broad seal of the State; he wears the sword in vain. The Governor of Massachusetts is a trifler: the State-house in Boston is a play-house: the General Court is a dishonoured body: if they make laws which they cannot execute. The great-hearted Puritans have left no posterity. The rich men may walk in State-street, but they walk without honour; and the farmers may brag their democracy in the country, but they are disgraced men. If the State has no power to defend its own people in its own shipping, because it has delegated that power to the Federal Government, has it no representation in the Federal Government? Are those men dumb? I am no lawyer, and cannot indicate the forms applicable to the case, but here is something which transcends all forms. Let the senators and representatives of the State, containing a population of a million freemen, go in a body before the Congress, and say, that they have a demand to make on them so imperative, that all functions of government must stop, until it is satisfied. If ordinary legislation cannot reach it, then extraordinary must be applied. The Congress should instruct the President to send to those ports of Charlestown, Savannah, and New Orleans, such orders and such force, as shall release, forthwith, all such citizens of Massachusetts as were holden in prison without the allegation of any crime, and should set on foot the strictest inquisition to discover where such persons, brought into slavery by these local laws, at any time heretofore, may now be. That first ;-and then, let order be taken to indem

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nify all such as have been incarcerated. As for dangers to the Union, from such demands!—the Union is already at an end, when the first citizen of Massachusetts is thus outraged. Is it an union and covenant in which the State of Massachusetts agrees to be imprisoned, and the State of Carolina to imprison? Gentlemen, I am loath to say harsh things, and perhaps I know too little of politics for the smallest weight to attach to any censure of mine, —but I am at a loss how to characterise the tameness and silence of the two senators and the ten representatives of the State at Washington. To what purpose have we clothed each of those representatives with the power of seventy thousand persons, and each senator with nearly half a million, if they are to sit dumb at their desks, and see their constituents captured and sold-perhaps to gentlemen sitting by them in the hall? There is a scandalous rumour that has been swelling louder of late years,—perhaps it is wholly false,—that members are bullied into silence by southern gentlemen. It is so easy to omit to speak, or even to be absent when delicate things are to be handled. I may as well say, what all men feel, that whilst our very amiable and very innocent representatives and senators at Washington are accomplish ed lawyers and merchants, and very eloquent at dinners and at caucuses, there is a disastrous want of men from New England. I would gladly make exceptions, and you will not suffer me to forget one eloquent old man, in whose veins the blood of Massachusetts rolls, and who singly has defended the freedom of speech, and the rights of the free, against the usurpation of the slave-holder. But the reader of Congressional debates in New England is perplexed to see with what admirable sweetness and patience the majority of the free states are schooled and ridden by the minority of slaveholders. What if we should send thither representatives who were a particle less amiable and less innocent? I entreat you, sirs, let not this stain attach, let not this misery accumulate any longer. If the managers of our political parties are too prudent and too cold;—if, most unhappily, the ambitious class of young men and political men have found out that these neglected victims are poor and without weight; that they have no graceful hospitalities to offer; no valuable business to throw into any man's hands, no strong vote to cast at the elections; and therefore may with impunity be left in their chains, or to the chance of chains, then let the citizens in their primary capacity take up their cause on this very ground, and say to the government of the State and of the Union, that government exists to defend the weak and the poor and the injured party; the rich and the strong can better take care of themselves. And as an omen and assurance of success, I point you to the bright example which England set you, on this day, ten years ago."