He who has the curiosity to notice the steps by which the Britons emerged from savage life, in connection with their condition of slavery, may do well to examine the works of William of Malmsbury, Simeon of Durham, Bede, Alcuin, Wilkins, Huntingdon, Hoveden, Lingard, and Wilton. But he will not find the statutes of the monarchies succeeding Ina free from these enactments until he shall come down near the fourteenth century. Thus, generations passed away before these statutes came to be regarded with general respect. National regeneration has ever been thus slow. Thus, savage life has ever put to death the captive; while we find that slavery, among such tribes, has ever been introduced as a merciful provision in its stead, and is surely a proof of one step towards a more elevated state of moral improvement. But in the case of Britain and the whole of Europe, the slave was of the same original stock with the master; he, therefore, presented no physical impediment to amalgamation, by which has been brought about whatever of equality now exists among their descendants. But in the close of this study, we propose to take some notice of the arguments of another most distinguished writer in favour of the abolition of slavery, as it now affects the African race. In 1777, the celebrated Dr. Samuel Johnson wrote his argument in favour of the freedom of the negro slave who accompanied his master from Jamaica to Scotland, and who there brought suit in the Court of Sessions for his freedom. This argument has been deemed by so many to be unanswerable, and ever since that time so generally used as a _seed argument_ in the propagation of abolition doctrines, that we feel it worthy of notice and examination. Johnson was a bitter opponent of negro slavery; yet, strange, he ever advocated the justice of reducing the American colonies and the West India Islands to the most abject condition of political slavery to the British crown. This system is fully advocated, and garnished by his sarcasm and ridicule, in his famous work, entitled “Taxation no Tyranny.” “How is it,” says he, “that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes.” Not long after he wrote _this_ argument, on the occasion of a dinner-party at Dilly’s, he said, “I am willing to love all mankind, _except an American_;” whereupon, adds his biographer, “he breathed out threatenings and slaughter, calling them rascals, robbers, pirates, and exclaiming, he’d burn and destroy them.” Some knowledge of a man’s peculiar notions relevant to a subject will often aid the mind in a proper estimate of the value of his opinion and judgment concerning correlative matters. His biographer says—