woman, but free America sells her into life bondage under all the penalties to which woman can be subject. Many a noble woman would submit to be flogged as a martyr to the cause of liberty, but what true woman would dare to live under all the unspeakable atrocities of American slavery? I have said that there are true men, noble spirits in the northern states who did not witness these things unmoved; but that the full guilt of he iniquity rests on the north, no man can doubt. When a feeling of resistance to the Fugitive Bill began to show itself, who were the men most forward to crush it? Northern merchants, northern editors, northern politicians-ay, northern ministers of Christ. The cry of the "Union in danger" was got up; the American constitution was openly declared to have higher claims to obedience than God's moral law, and popular meetings were held throughout the union to pronounce in favour of the fugitive atrocity A mass meeting was held in the city of New York, and the great Daniel Webster, the God-like Daniel," as he was once styled, was brought there for the occasion. In his speech to the New Yorkers Mr. Webster, while considering the cry for the repeal of the Fugitive Bill, told hem the President "considered the settlement as final," and he would 'carry it into effect." Mr. Webster continued thus: "This is the subject, gentlemen, on which the moral sense of the country ought to receive tone and tension. There ought to be a stern rebuke by public opinion, of all who would reopen this agitating question-who would break this truce, as they call it-who would arm again and renew the war." The New York papers tell us this was received by the audience with “applause and cheers." Think of northern men applauding when told that that is a "final settlement" which makes them the slave-catchers of the “southern chivalry." It is often said that slavery cannot be so bad a thing, for that slaves who have escaped are glad to get back to bondage. If such cases do ever occur, it presents one of the most startling features of the vile system, that it actually degrades men so low that they know not the difference between slavery and freedom. But these New York people bring us new testimony to the demoralizing influence of slavery; they show that it blunts all the nobler feelings in those who are but indirectly connected with it; that men born and reared in the free north can rejoice to pass under the yoke of the south, and give "loud cheers" when they are told by the man who subjugated them that their degradation is to be perpetual.

But the great guilt of slavery lies at the door of American churches. Truly did Albert Barnes say: "There is no power out of the church that could sustain slavery one hour if it were not sustained in it." But nearly all the churches of the union are steeped in its iniquities; ministers, office-bearers and people are alike its upholders. In every shape you can find it, from the smooth-tongued parson who preaches that slavery is “not a sin per se," down to the bold denunciator of the "fanatic abolitionist," with stipend paid him from the toil of the poor slave. How can the state of the American church be better described than by the fact that Dr. Spring, an eminent light of the Presbyterian church, and minister of a large congregation in New York, publicly made this declaration: "If by

one prayer I could free every slave in the world, I could not offer it." Laboured arguments are constantly coming from evangelical northern pulpits palliating the system-nice criticisms on God's law in regard to it; but for my part, I cannot listen to such arguments; I sweep aside all such theological humbug, and find a solution of the whole question in the grand Christian rule, "Do unto others as you would be done unto."

It is much to be regretted that Christian men in Great Britain are so slow to comprehend the position of the American church on this question -that with it rests the fate of the traffic. It is said that Methodist church ministers and members hold 219,563 slaves; Presbyterians, 77,000; Baptists, 125,000; Campbellites, 101,000; Episcopalians, 88,000; and other denominations, 50,000; total slaves held by professing Christians, 660,563. Let these churches declare slavery a heinous sin in the sight of God; let them compel the man-stealer to choose between God and mammon, and how long would slavery exist? And yet we find such fine. weather anti-slavery men as the Rev. Mr. Chickering-men who make smooth, cautious speeches and do nothing-passing in England as thorough abolitionists, and eulogized as such by editors who should know better. Mr. Roaf has alluded to the case of Mr. Chickering and the British Banner, and all true friends of the slave must regret to see the course that excellent paper has taken in the matter. There never was a cause in which the position, "He that is not for us is against us," was so imperative as in that of abolition. Not to move is more fatal than to move backwards-it is the sleep of death to the slave. Mr. Chickering is one of those hidden abolitionists, whose lights burn brightly in England, but who cannot face the task of keeping them alive under the penalties to be incurred on this side the Atlantic. How different the man whom the Banner has ventured to attack so severely! Did the editor at all understand the case, he would take the word of Mr. Lewis Tappan on any question of abolition before a thousand Mr. Chickerings. The names of Arthur and Lewis Tappan will be enrolled as Christian patriots in the annals of their country; and when all the Chickerings have gone down to the dust and been forgotten, the Tappans will be remembered with enthusiasm as amongst the noblest and most self-denying of the pioneers of abolition. Mr. Chickering has ventured to say there are no black pews in the American churches

A VOICE: He says he never saw any.

MR. BROWN: Ah! yes; he never saw any that was the word. If so, I venture to say he is the only church-going man in the States who can make the same declaration. For my part, I have seen them often. The first time I ever entered an American church was in the city of New York-a Presbyterian church. A friend who was with me went into one pew and I entered another. Immediately I noticed several persons staring at him in a particular manner, and at last a gentleman rose, went to one of the office-bearers, whispered, and pointed to my friend. The second gentleman left his pew, went to my friend, and most politely conducted him to another seat. Both of us attributed the circumstance a

first to courtesy, but we soon learnt that we had got into the black pew, in which no white man should be degraded to worship his Maker. The thing is too common to be denied; also at the sacramental table the black Christian must sit apart from his white brother worm.

I must apologize for detaining the audience so long, but one word more, and I have done. The question is often put, What have we in Canada to do with American slavery? We have everything to do with it. It is a question of humanity, and no man has a right to refuse his aid, whatever it may be, in ameliorating the woes of his fellow-men. It is a question of Christianity; and no Christian can have a pure conscience who hesitates to lift his voice against a system which, under the sanction of a Christian altar, sets at defiance every principle of Christianity. We have to do with it on the score of self-protection. The leprosy of the atrocious system affects all around it; it leavens the thoughts, the feel. ings, the institutions of the people who touch it. It is a barrier to the spread of liberal principles. Who can talk gravely of liberty and equality in the States while slavery exists? Every intelligent American who professes to be a Christian, and upholds slavery, is committed to a glaring infidelity, which must lead him continually astray in trying to square with it his every-day conduct. We are alongside of this great evil; our people mingle with it; we are affected by it now, and every day enhances the evil. In self-protection, then, we are bound to use every effort for its abolition, that our people may not be contaminated by its withering and debasing influences. And there is another reason why we have to do with slavery. We are in the habit of calling the people of the United States "the Americans;" but we too are Americans; on us, as well as on them, lies the duty of preserving the honour of the continent. On us, as on them, rests the noble trust of shielding free institutions from the reproach of modern tyrants. Who that looks at Europe given over to the despots, and with but one little island yet left to uphold the flag of freedom, can reflect without emotion that the great republic of this continent nurtures a despotism more base than them all. How crushingly the upholders of tyranny in other lands must turn on the friends of liberty! "Behold your free institutions," they must say. "Look at the American republic, proclaiming all men to be born free and equal, and keeping nearly four millions of slaves in the most cruel bondage!"

The people of Canada are truly free; we have no slaves; all men are alike in the eye of justice. Long may it be so; and it is our duty to raise our voices as free men against a system which brings so foul a blot on the cause of popular liberty. Our neighbours are wont to boast that monarchy will be swept from this continent; let our effort be that slavery shall be driven from it, that tyranny shall not find a foot-hold. But how shall we proceed-what shall we do? Speak against it; write against it; agitate against it; when you get hold of a Yankee, drive it home to him; tell him his country is disgraced; wound his pride; tell him his pure institutions are a grand sham; send him home thoroughly ashamed of the

black blot on his country's escutcheon. In steamboat, or railroad, or wherever you are, hunt up a Yankee and speak to him faithfully; there is no other man so sensitive as to what others think of him. You will find strange arguments to meet, but every man of them will be "as much opposed to slavery in the abstract as you." It's a great evil, they will say; but what's to be done with it? Tell them that slavery is not an evil but a sin, a breach of every commandment in the decalogue, and that there is no choice but immediate emancipation. Tell them there was once a tea tax attempted to be imposed on them, and there was no word of "what's to be done" then; they flung the tea into Boston harbour, and they must send slavery after it. They'll say with the deepest sympathy that "the poor creatures could not take care of themselves," but you can tell them that we have thirty thousand of them in Canada; that they all seem to get along, and that the men whom the colonizations wish to make missionaries to the heathen may be safely left to find for themselves food and clothing. They will presently get angry, and assert that but for the violence of the abolitionists slavery would have been done away with long ago; but you can tell them that the cry of every despot since the world began has been: "Oh, these pests, that turn the world upside down!" and it is a wretched argument from a free American. Then they will come down on you with their grand reserve : "Don't you Britishers talk of slavery; you have plenty slaves in Great Britain and Ireland, a thousand times worse off than the negroes of America!" Alas! that the sufferings of our countrymen should be a cause of reproach, but it is the misfortune of Britain far more than her crime. But go to the veriest den of pauper misery in England -go to the bleakest of Scotland's wild rocks go to the most barren wilderness of Ireland-and ask the famished native, if you can find him, to exchange his starving liberty for well-fed slavery, and observe his answer. He will resent your offer with indignation, and tell you that you may feed him, but so you do your horses, and they are horses still; and that liberty to a Briton, poor and hungry though he be, is liberty still.

REPRESENTATION BY POPULATION.

This condensed speech, delivered during the session of 1857, on the question of representation by population, is selected for publication chiefly because the case is clearly put on its merits, without any admixture of other current political topics; and partly because it fairly represents the line of argument invariably adopted by Mr. Brown on what was then the burning political question in Upper Canada.

MR. BROWN said: At the risk of bringing down on myself the denunciations of the Provincial Secretary, I am about to present to the House another "abstract principle." I am quite sure that if the hon. gentlemen of the treasury benches, with regard to the resolution I have just had the honour of submitting, were under the necessity of yielding to the proposition it enunciated, there is much stronger reason why they should agree to the principle of this. I think that the resolution I am about to place in the Speaker's hands will be acknowledged by every member of this House to be sound in principle. They will say that they approve of it in the abstract, but they do not approve of it when brought into practical operation. This is the main difficulty we encounter in bringing forward this subject, that we are not met fairly by hon. members. They will not say it is wrong abstractly that all persons in the province, whether in Upper or Lower Canada, should be placed on the same level with respect to representation and political rights, but they raise objections to the carrying out of the principle which are far from being just or tenable.

The first objection is that when, at the time of the union, Upper and Lower Canada were brought together, it was arranged that the two sections should have equal representation in the House of Assembly. But I apprehend that in framing that provision of the Union Act, it was not intended to be for all time. I apprehend that the whole extent of the meaning was, that that arrangement should prevail until the people of Canada desired to change it. It is absurd to say that a time was never to come when a change should be made. No one can say that because the people of Canada at one time formed two separate countries, having now been brought together, they are never to become one, and that the same institutions are not to be applied to the whole country. It must be a mere question of time. Supposing that either section should ever come to have three or four times the population of the other, the most extreme partisan could not assert that it would be just to continue allowing the same representation to each. No one would venture to say so for a moment. If, then,