been led in so singular a line, that must have been deeply trying, I know, to thee. May the Lord, dear John, be with thee, and furnish with best wisdom in all thy movements, (which, I have no doubt, has hitherto been the case,) and, if it be His will, give thee a release in mercy, with the income of solid peace. My heart again salutes thee and bids farewell. R. JONES. From Chambers's Edinburgh Journal, In the "Chemistry of Summer," we illustrated the power of the earth to absorb heat; and in resuming our survey of the seasons, we shall commence by showing how it returns the excess of this acquisition to the radiant skies. The process by which the return is made is called radiation, the heat being emitted in rays as if from a centre; but it is curious to observe that there is little analogy in this respect between solar and artificial heat. A fire, for instance, warms pretty nearly alike all surfaces of the same mechanical texture; while the heat of the sun is modified by the colour of the object. A dark surface absorbs and radiates more rapidly than a light one. Thus a white dress is cooler than a black one; and men, acting upon perhaps unconscious experience, prefer the former in summer and the latter in winter. Why, then, have the natives of higher latitudes dark or black skins, since these must absorb more heat than lighter skins? That such is the fact, the chemist demonstrates by experiment. He places the backs of both his hands in the sunshine on an intensely hot day; the one bare, and the other covered with a black cloth; the former having the bulb of a thermometer resting on it, and the other having the bulb underneath the cloth. In such circumstances, the exposed thermometer indicates 85 degrees, and the covered one 91 degrees. In another trial, the former indicates 98 degrees, and the latter 106 degrees. This is just what might have been expected from analogy; but the curious thing is, that the hand which has less heat is scorched and blistered, and that which has greater heat receives no injury Thus the fact is obvious-although science cannot explain the cause-that the skin is protected from injury by the very colour which increases its absorption of heat. The radiation of heat from the earth explains a beautiful and interesting phenomenon of the summer and autumnal months. At sunset, if the sky be cloudless, the glowing earth parts with a portion of its heat to the air; the directly incumbent portion of which thus becomes much warmer than the solid body on which it rests. The consequence is, that the watery vapour always present in the atmosphere is chilled when it approaches the earth, and condenses The into those drops which sparkle like gems on leaves and flowers. If the dew fell like rain, it would fall on all parts of the garden alike; but we find the grass-plot completely saturated, while the gravel-walk which passes through it is nearly dry; and in like manner the leaves of the hollyhock are dripping diamonds, while those of the laurel are free of moisture. cause of this difference is the difference in the radiating power of these several objects; some of which give out their heat with energy, and becoming cold, induce a copious deposition of water from the air; while others, being bad radiators, remain so warm, that the aqueous vapour continues to float around them unchanged. Extending our view farther, we find bare rocks and barren soils in the condition of the gravel-walk, and the more fertile parts of the earth in that of the grass-plot. The compact structure of the rock or hard soil unfits it both for absorbing and radiating heat energetically; while the reverse is the case in more productive spots, where the soil is of a loose or porous character. This affords a beautiful example of the economy of nature in bestowing dew only on places where it can answer a beneficial purpose. But dew in excessive abundance would be hurtful; and accordingly it is only when the sky is clear, and the air moderately tranquil, that the phenomenon occurs in perfection. The clouds, which protect the earth from the rigour of noon, act as screens to arrest a too profuse radiation at night; and sending back their own heat, they keep up by the interchange an equable temperature. On this principle a gardener hangs a thin mat over tender plants, to protect them from cold. A cambric handkerchief would answer the same purpose; for all that is wanted is to prevent the radiation of heat. A handkerchief of this kind was extended tightly, in the manner of a roof, on the tops of four little sticks stuck in a grass-plot, and forming a square. One night the grass thus sheltered was only three degrees colder than the air, while the grass outside the square was eleven degrees colder. At this season we may frequently observe at sunrise a white mist, several feet high, covering a field of grass or corn; and if we walk through it, we may feel the humidity on the lower part of our person, while our head is bright and dry in the beams of the early sun. This "earthcloud" is the aqueous vapour, drawn suddenly during the night from the lower part of the atmosphere by the rapid radiation of heat from the earth. The cloud prevented further radiation, and has therefore remained itself in statu quo; but presently the sun will reconvert it into invisible vapour, and diffuse it throughout the atmosphere. The red appearance of the sky at sunrise predicts foul weather, and the same phenomenon at sunset fine weather; the rationale of which is explained by science, although not so 66 clearly as to tempt us to enter into the subject. The husbandman, however, knows the fact by experience, and corroborates it by observation drawn from other circumstances. In the morning, if the cattle low more than usual, stretch forth their necks, and snuff the air with extended nostrils, it is a sign of coming rain; but if the chickweed remain open, and the trefoil and birdweed raise their heads boldly, there is no unusual hydration" in the atmosphere. As for the ordinary hydration, or presence of the watery vapour we have mentioned, that is indispensable to the life both of plants and animals. If the air we breathe thus require to be mixed with water, so the water in which aquatic plants or animals live requires to be mixed with air. Expel the air from rain-water by boiling, and after suffering it to cool in a well-corked bottle, pour it gently out into a finger-glass. If you introduce a small fish into this pure water, it will show signs of distress by gasping at the surface, and would soon die if kept immersed; but if, before introducing the fish, you pour the water for a few minutes from one vessel into another, you fit it, by the admixture of air, for the support of animal life. The reason is, that the respiratory organs of fishes withdraw oxygen, not from the water, but from the air which it contains. If we place a fish even in properly aërated water, and then secure the mouth of the vessel with an air-tight cover, the creature will die when the oxygen of the air is consumed. Fishes require a constant supply of aërated water, just as land animals require a constant supply of hydrated air. But there is a still more curious analogy between fishes and land animals; for in confined places, the former, like the latter, may be poisoned by their own breath. They exhale car bonic acid; and unless there are growing plants at hand, stimulated by solar light, to decompose this mephitic vapour-respiring the carbon, and emitting the oxygen-the consequence is languor, sickness, and death. This is why it is necessary for the life of fishes in glass globes either to change the water frequently, or introduce some aquatic plants to decompose the results of their respiration. But the plants do more than this: they protect the fishes from the heat of the sun. Light-coloured, or silver fish, more especially, are liable to be scorched by the solar heat; and one which became discoloured after the removal of shade from his habitation, was examined by a naturalist, and pronounced to be fairly sunburnt. Although living plants emit oxygen, they are supposed, when they die and decay in stagnant water, to be the source of the air-bubbles we see at this season bursting upon the surface. The vapour contained in such bubbles is composed not of oxygen, but of carbon and hydrogen, and resembles the common coal gas. It is identical with the fire-damp of mines, and receives from the chemist the name of carburetted hydrogen. This is the ignis fatuus (kindled by some unknown agency) which we now observe in the evening dancing over the surface of marshy soils, and which popular superstition has personified in Jack-o'-Lantern and Will-o'-the-Wisp. (To be continued.) SLAVERY AND IGNORANCE. For more than a century did the African slave traffic rage. During all those years, the clock of eternity never counted out a minute that did not witness the cruel death, by treachery or violence, of some son or daughter, some father or mother, of Africa. The three millions of slaves that now darken our Southern horizon are the progeny of these progenitors--a doomed race, fated and suffering from sire to son. But the enormities of the mother country did not pass without remonstrance. Many of the colonies expostulated against, and rebuked them. The New England colonies, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, presented to the Throne the most humble and suppliant petitions, praying for the abolition of the trade. The Colonial Legislatures passed laws against it; but their petitions were spurned from the Throne, their laws were vetoed by the Governors. In informal negotiations, attempted with the ministers of the Crown, the friends of the slave were made to understand that royalty turned an adder's ear to their prayers. The profoundest feelings of lamentation and abhorrence were kindled in the bosoms of his western subjects by this flagitious conduct of the King. In that dark catalogue of crimes, which led our fathers to renounce allegiance to the British Throne, its refusal to prohibit the slave trade to the colonies is made one of the most prominent of those political offences which are said to "define a tyrant." In the original draught of the Declaration of Independence, this crime of King George the Third, is set forth in the following words: "He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel Powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN King of Great Britain. Determined to keep a market where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce." Now, if the King of Great Britain prostituted his negative, that slavery might not be restricted, what, in after times, shall be said of those who prostitute their affirmative, that it may be extended? It was in the eighteenth century, when the, that the captor had a right to take the life of his mother country thus made merchandise of human captive; and that if he spared that life he made beings--a time when liberty was a forbidden it his own, and thus acquired a right to control word in the languages of Europe. It is in the nineteenth century, that we propose to re-enact, and on an ampler scale, the same execrable villany-a time when liberty is the rallying cry of all Christendom. So great has been the progress of liberal ideas within the last century, that what was venial at its beginning is unpardonable at its close. To drive coffles of slaves from here to Oregon, in the middle of the nineteenth century, is more infamous than it was to bring cargoes of slaves from Africa here, in the middle of the eighteenth. Yet such is the period that men would select to perpetuate and to increase the horrors of this traffic. As a defence against the iniquities of the institution, they have universally put in the plea that the calamity was entailed upon them by the mother country, that it made a part of the world they were born into, and therefore they could not help it. I have always been disposed to allow its full weight to this palliation. But if they now insist upon perpetrating against the whole Western world, which happens at present to be under our control, the same wrongs which, in darker days Great Britain perpetrated against them, they will forfeit every claim to sympathy. Sir, here is a test. Let not Southern men, who would now force slavery upon new regions, ever deny that their slavery at home, is a chosen, voluntary, beloved crime. The institution of slavery is against natural right. Jurists, from the time of Justinian--orators, from the time of Cicero-poets, from the time of Homer-declare it to be wrong. The writers on moral or ethical science the expounders of the law of nations and of Goddenounce slavery as an invasion of the rights of man. They find no warrant for it in the eternal principles of justice and equity; and, in that great division which they set forth between right and wrong, they arrange slavery in the catalogue of crime. All the noblest instincts of human nature rebel against it. Whatever has been taught by sage, or sung by poet, in favour of freedom, is a virtual condemnation of slavery. Whenever we applaud the great champions of Liberty, who, by the sacrifice of life in the cause of freedom, have won the homage of the world, and an immortality of fame, we record the testimony of our hearts against slavery. Wherever patriotism and philanthropy have glowed brightest-wherever piety and a devout religious sentiment have burned most fervently-there has been the most decided recognition of the universal rights of man. Sir, let us analyze this subject, and see if slavery be not the most compact, and concentrated, and condensed system of wrong, which the depravity of man has ever invented. Slavery is said to have had its origin in war. It is claimed it. I deny the right of the captor to the life of his captive; and, even if this right were conceded, I deny his right to the life of the captive's offspring. But this relation between captor and captive precludes the idea of peace; for no peace can be made where there is no free agency. Peace being precluded, it follows inevitably that the state of war continues. Hence, the state of slavery is a state of war; and, though active hostilities may have ceased, they are liable to break out, and may break out, at any moment. How long must our fellow-citizens, who were enslaved in Algiers, have continued in slavery, before they would have lost the right of escape or of resistance? Both the gentleman from Kentucky yesterday, and the gentleman from Virginia to-day, spoke repeatedly, and without the slightest discrimination, of "a slave and a horse," "a slave and a mule," &c. What should we think, sir, of a teacher for our children, or even of a tender of our cattle, who did not recognize the difference between men and mules-between humanity and horse-flesh? What should we think, if, on opening a work, claiming to be a scientific treatise on zoology, we should find the author to be ignorant of the difference between biped and quadruped, or between men and birds, or men and fishes? Yet such errors would be trifling, compared with those which have been made through all this debate. They would be simple errors in natural history, perhaps harmless; but these are errors-fatal errors-in humanity and Christian ethics. No, sir; all the legislation of the slave states, proves that they do not treat, and cannot treat, a human being as an animal. I will show that they are ever trying to degrade him into an animal, although they can never succeed. This conscious idea that the state of slavery is a state of war-a state in which superior force keeps inferior force down-develops and manifests itself perpetually. It exhibits itself in the statute-books of the slave states, prohibiting the education of slaves, making it highly penal to teach them so much as the alphabet; dispersing and punishing all meetings where they come together in quest of knowledge. Look into the statute-books of the free states, and you will find law after law, encouragement after encour agement, to secure the diffusion of knowledge. Look into the statute-books of the slave states, and you find law after law, penalty after penalty, to secure the extinction of knowledge. Who has not read with delight, those books which have been written, both in England and this country, entitled "The Pursuit of Knowledge under Difficulties," giving the biographies of illustrious men, who, by an undaunted and indomitable spirit, had risen from poverty and obscurity to the heights of eminence, and blessed the world with their achievements in literature, in science, and in morals? Yet here, in what we call republican America, are fifteen great states, vying with each other to see which will bring the blackest and most impervious pall of ignorance over three millions of human beings; nay, which can do most to stretch this pall across the continent, from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Is not knowledge a good? Is it not one of the most precious bounties which the all-bountiful Giver has bestowed upon the human race? It is one of the noblest attributes of man, that he can derive knowledge from his predecessors. We possess the accumulated learning of ages. From ten thousand confluent streams, the river of Truth, widened and deepened, has come down to us; and it is among our choicest delights, that if we can add to its volume, as it rolls on, it will bear a richer freight of blessings to our successors. But it is here proposed to annul this beneficent law of nature-to repel this proffered bounty of Heaven. It is proposed to create a race of men, to whom all the lights of experience shall be extinguished-whose hundredth generation shall be as ignorant and as barbarous as its first. For another reason, slavery is an unspeakable wrong. The slave is debarred from testifying against a white man. The courts will not hear him as a witness. By the principles of the common law, if any man suffers violence at the hands of another, he can prefer his complaint to magistrates, or to the grand juries of the courts, who are bound to give him redress. Hence the law is said to hold up its shield before every man for his protection. It surrounds him in the crowded streets, and in the solitary place. It guards his treasures with greater vigilance than locks or iron safes; and against meditated aggressions upon himself, his wife, or his children, it fastens his doors every night, more securely than triple bolts of brass. But all these sacred protections are denied to the slave. While subjected to the law of force, he is shut out from the law of right. To suffer injury is his, but never to obtain redress. For personal cruelties, for stripes that shiver his flesh, and blows that break his bones, for robbery or for murder, neither he nor his friends have preventive, remedy, or recompence. A hundred of his fellows may stand around him and witness the wrongs he suffers, but not one of them can appeal to jury, magistrate, or judge, for punishment or redress. The wickedest white man, in a company of slaves, bears a charmed life. There is not one of the fell passions that rage in his bosom, which he cannot indulge with wantonness, and to satiety, and the court has no ears to hear the complaint of the victims. And yet, infinitely flagrant, as the anomaly is, the slave is amenable to the laws of the land for all offences which he may commit against others, though he is powerless to protect himself by the same law, from offences which others may commit against him. He may suffer all wrong, and the courts will not hearken to his testimony; but for the first wrong he does, the same courts inflict their severest punishments upon him. This is the reciprocity of slave law-to be forever liable to be proved guilty, but never able to prove himself innocent; to be subject to all punishments, but, through his own oath, to no protection. Hear what is said by the highest judicial tribunal of South Carolina: "Although slaves are held to be the absolute property of their owners, yet they have the power of committing crimes." A negro is so far amenable to common law, that he may be one of three to constitute the number necessary to make a riot. By the laws of the same state, a negro may be himself stolen, and he has no redress; but if he steals a negro from another, he shall be hung. This is the way slave legislatures and slave judicatories construe the command of Christ, "Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye also the same unto them." Nay, by the laws of some of the slave states, where master and slave are engaged in a joint act, the slave is indictable, while the master is not. Slavery is an unspeakable wrong to the religious nature of man. The dearest and most precious of all human rights is the right of private judgment in matters of religion. I am interested in nothing else so much as in the attributes of my Creator, and in the relations which He has established between Himself and me, for time and for eternity. To investigate for myself these relations, and their momentous consequences; to "search the Scriptures;" to explore the works of God in the outward and visible universe; to ask counsel of the sages and divines of the ages gone by-these are rights which it would be sacrilege in me to surrender; which it is worse sacrilege in any human being or human government to usurp. Yet, by denying education to the slave, you destroy not merely the right but the power of personal examination in regard to all that most nearly concerns the soul's interests. Who so base as not to reverence the mighty champion of religious freedom, in days when the dungeon, the rack, and the fagot, were the arguments of a government theology? Who does not reverence, I say, Wickliffe, Huss, Luther, and the whole army of martyrs whose blood reddened the axe of English intolerance? Yet it was only for this right of private judgment, for this independence of another man's control in religious concernments, that the godlike champions of religious liberty periled themselves and perished. Yet it is this very religious despotism over millions of men, which it is now proposed, not to destroy, but to create. It is proposed not to break old fetters and cast them away, but to forge new ones and rivet them on. Sir, on the continent of Europe, and in the Tower of London, I have [seen the axes, the chains, and other horrid implements of death, by which the great defenders of freedom for the soul were brought to their final doom-by which political and religious liberty were cloven down; but fairer and lovelier to the view were axe and ship is experienced in our day, is a question which very naturally presents to the reflective mind, but which we shall not answer, either positively or negatively. Of one thing we may speak without hesitation. The reciprocation of gospel messen chain and all the ghastly implements of death, gers has very visibly declined since the period in ever invented by religious bigotry or civil despot-question; and the number of those, on both sides of ism, to wring and torture freedom out of the soul the Atlantic, who are clothed with the gifts of aposof man-fairer and lovelier were they all than tleship appears greatly reduced. A comparison of the parchment-roll of this House on which shall the society at these different periods, forcibly rebe inscribed a law for profaning one additional vives the inquiry, "Your fathers, where are they? foot of American soil with the curse of slavery. and the prophets, do they live forever?" and upon whom has their mantle fallen? Has our religious society retained its position in the van of civilization and reform, or has it fallen behind? These questions we leave to be answered as the judgment and observation of our readers shall suggest. FRIENDS' REVIEW. PHILADELPHIA, TENTH MONTH 7, 1848. The Memorials of Rebecca Jones, and especially Since the period in question, some very momentthe part which has recently appeared in the Re- ous improvements have been effected in civil soview, must recal to the memory of such Friends ciety, to which the labours of Friends have largely as, like the Editor, have nearly reached the west- contributed. The African slave-trade was then ern verge of life, the condition of our religious so- prosecuted under sanction of British law; and it ciety at the time when R. Jones' visit to England was in the preceding year, 1783, that the first pewas performed. We find by the narrative before tition against that odious commerce was presented us, that no fewer than five Friends in the ministry, to the English parliament: and Lord North then who were engaged in the love of the gospel to visit declared that this traffic had, in a commercial view, the churches on the other side of the Atlantic, become necessary to almost every nation of Euwere passengers in the Commerce. Of these, four rope. A memorial on the same subject being were members of Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, re- presented in that year by Philadelphia Yearly siding in or near this city. At the same time we Meeting to the American Congress, that body defind that two Philadelphia Friends were there, John clined the adoption of any measures for its restraint, Pemberton and Nicholas Waln, travelling in re- on the ground of a want of legislative authority. ligious service in England or Ireland. Thus it Subsequently, the Federal Congress prohibited that appears that at least six eminent ministers, all re-traffic as soon as the constitutional restriction exsiding within a few miles of Philadelphia, were then engaged on a mission of love to the British Islands. Simultaneously with these visits, or shortly afterwards, a number of European Friends traversed the parts of the United States where members of the society were located. This interchange of gospel messengers was then going on between the people of two nations, whom their respective governments had, a short time before, placed, as far as governments could place them, in the attitude of enemies. The epistolary correspondence which was maintained between our In our day, it appears as though the foundations Yearly Meeting and that of London, and the mutual of society, both civil and religious, are shaken. visits which were paid by ministers and others im- The slave trade, though justified by none, is still mediately after the revolutionary contest, may be prosecuted in defiance of laws human and divine; considered as conclusive evidence that the storms and the extension of slavery into regions where it of that turbulent period had no power to estrange does not now exist, is claimed as a constitutional the minds of Friends, on different sides of the right. It may not be within the range of human ocean, from each other, or to interrupt the harmony, sagacity to discern the manner in which the light which, as professors of the same faith, and advo- of truth is shining through the chasms of this cates of the same cause, they had always main- troubled scene; and the desponding mind may be tained. ready to conclude a state of inextricable confusion Whether the same cordiality of religious fellow-is coming upon the world. Yet we may be en pired; and the British parliament in the same year |