Cowper. Most truly and impressively do these lines of our Christian poet describe the effects of legitimate and honourable commerce; the mutual exchange of the various gifts of an all-bounteous Providence, showered on the globe we inhabit, for the general use, benefit, and pleasure; and of those embellishments of art, which civilization has brought forth and nourished. But no such effect can ever flow from the piratical commerce of men, that deformed and cruel offspring of Mammon, which riots in the blood, and glories in the miseries of man. It may be urged, we are not the original agents in this trade: it is pursued with eagerness by the Africans themselves. But are those who live in that transcendent light which was granted to dispel the mists of error--to meliorate propensity to evil--to harmonize the rational soul--still to delight in works so dark, still to trample under foot every principle of humanity; still to spurn from them the obligations of justice, still to set at naught the precepts of religion; and to make themselves accomplices with pagan oppressors, in tyrannizing over those hapless beings, whom a mysterious Providence has subjected to their power? Is the Christian trader content to put himself upon a level with the unenlightened despot, and coolly to put his blood-stained profits in the balance, against the laws of religion and his country; laughing at the remonstrances of philanthropists, as the dreams of enthusiasm, or as puerile objections unworthy of attention? No; it surely will not be thus. England has entered the path of mercy [4], let her pursue it with energy and constancy: and if other nations refuse to follow her heaven-enlightened way, to them belongs the shame and the guilt of trampling down the laws which bind man to his God and his fellow-man; and, for the violation of which, every individual must be accountable, at that tremendous audit, before which the oppressed and the oppressor shall alike appear! But to return to our narrative from these reflections, which the seriousness of the subject forced from us, and which must apologize for them with our young readers.