We have now accompanied Mr. Stephen through most of the leading topics of his work. We have occasionally departed from his arrangement, which indeed is not always the most convenient. This, however, is to be attributed, not to the author, but to the circumstances under which the work was composed. If there be any thing else to which we should be inclined to object, it is to the lengthened parallels which Mr. Stephen draws between the Slave laws of the West Indies and those which have existed in other countries. He is not, we think, too severe upon our Colonists. But we suspect that he is a little too indulgent to the Greeks and Romans. These passages are, at the same time, in a high degree curious and ingenious, though perhaps too long and too frequent. Such blemishes, however, if they can be called such, detract but in a very slight degree from the value of a book eminently distinguished by the copiousness and novelty of the information which it affords, by the force of its reasoning, and by the energy and animation of its style. We have not alluded to that part of the work, in which the lamentable state of the law, on the subject of religious instruction, is described; because the evil has been universally acknowledged, and something intended for a remedy has at last been provided. The imagined specific, as our readers are aware, is an Ecclesiastical Establishment. This measure, we doubt not, is well intended. But we feel convinced that, unless combined with other reforms, it will prove almost wholly useless. The immorality and irreligion of the slaves are the necessary consequences of their political and personal degradation. They are not considered by the law as human beings. And they have therefore, in some measure, ceased to be human beings. They must become men before they can become Christians. A great effect may, under fortunate circumstances, have been wrought on particular individuals: But those who believe that any extensive effect can be produced by religious instruction on this miserable race, may believe in the famous conversion wrought by St. Anthony on the fish. Can a preacher prevail on his bearers strictly to fulfil their conjugal duties in a country where {312}no protection is given to their conjugal rights.--in a country where the husband and wife may, at the pleasure of the master, or by process of law, be in an instant, separated for ever? Can he persuade them to rest on the Sunday, in Colonies where the law appoints that time for the markets? Is there any lesson which a Christian minister is more solemnly bound to teach,--is there any lesson which it is, in a religious point of view,--more important for a convert to learn, than that it is a duty to refuse obedience to the unlawful commands of superiors? Are the new pastors of the slaves to inculcate this principle or not? In other words, are the slaves to remain uninstructed in the fundamental laws of Christian morality, or are their teachers to be hanged? This is