soldiers, and immediate adherents,-taking with him all the ammunition, and consequently leaving the merchants in the factory without the means either of protection or escape,—and made the best of his way to the island of Shefina, on the western side of the bay. A few days after, the enemy entered the fort, but hurt neither the persons nor the property of those whom they found there. The merchants having represented to the Zula general that, in the midst of such a number of armed natives, they could not help feeling alarmed for their safety, he assigned them a guard of ten men. In the meantime the scouts who had been sent to watch the movements of Antonio Ribeiro ascertained that he had visited the mainland, and was prevented from returning to Shefina by the state of the weather. Their numbers were therefore increased; and he was at length hunted down, and brought to the fort on the 12th October, or five days after it had been in the occupation of the natives. On the 13th he was brought to trial, accused by several natives of various acts of cruelty and injustice, and with much formality convicted and condemned. The unhappy man was immediately speared, and his heart taken out while life was yet hardly extinct. A week afterwards, the natives withdrew,-a guard of them, however, remaining for some months in the service of the Portuguese merchants. In the history of this affair, the gleams of civilisation or of order which appear in the conduct of the natives, are as well calculated to increase the certainty of their revenge, as to diminish the horror of it. A short time subsequent to this event, the governor of Inhambane, with all the forces he could collect, Portuguese and native, amounting, it is said, to about 800 men, marched southwestwards along the coast to attack the natives in the vicinity of the Rio d'Ouro, but sustained so total a defeat, that the extinction of the settlement at Inhambane may be almost regarded as the necessary result of the war.

The demonstration of the weakness of the Portuguese in Eastern Africa, thus afforded by the loss of two most important factories, has not been once alluded to by Sr. Botelho; who has, moreover, struck out of his Memoria a fact revealed in the Resumo--that the Macua Chiefs of Sanculo and Matibani on the mainland opposite to Mozambique, the faithful and obe' dient allies of the Portuguese,' have more than once menaced that settlement with destruction. We might easily indicate many other points where the dominion of the Portuguese in Eastern Africa, which is in the meantime pervaded by disunion and disaffection, is visibly crumbling to ruin. Yet this self-sufficient author, overlooking the inherent and deeply-rooted causes of decay operating on that colony, ventures to hint that Mo

zambique is the victim of the commercial policy of the English; who, he says, abusing their influence with Radama, King of the Sacalaves in Madagascar, encouraged that piratical nation to attack the Portuguese possessions. But we must tell the ex-Captain-General of Mozambique, that there is no nation on earth - less likely to encourage piracy, or more interested in its suppression than the English; and also that Radama was King not of the Sacalaves, but of the Hovahs, and was particularly urged by the English to curb the piratical activity of the former people. Is not Sr. Botelho aware that the Captains-General of Mozambique have always expected, and often experienced the aid and protection of the British ships of war cruising in the neighbouring seas? We can hardly suppose him ignorant of the fact, that at the close of the year 1822, the colony which he governed only ten years later, was saved from a mutinous revolt which threatened the worst consequences, by the timely arrival of the Andromache frigate; and while we now write, the intelligence has just reached us that the same colony has owed its preservation from a like calamity, to the prompt aid afforded to the constituted authorities by the Leveret sloop of war. In both cases the fortresses were already in the hands of the insurgents.

But to conclude,-what is to be done to restore the Portuguese colonies in Eastern Africa to their former comparative splendour? In our opinion, whatever prosperity those possessions enjoyed, was transient in its nature. The Portuguese people may pride themselves on the recollection of the former greatness of their Indian and African dominion; but let their statesmen bear in mind that that dominion was no sooner acquired than it began to decline. We do not conceive it possible by any political devices to render those colonies orthewise than burdensome. The British dominion in India is, like our national debt, admirable for its magnitude, but it is costly also; and whatever advantages are derived from it by this country, are such as an industrious and manufacturing nation alone could expect. We reap our profit, not as the Lords of India, but as merchants and manufacturers. While the Portuguese colonies are so degraded in moral character, it would be impossible to calculate on the result of any measures relating to them; but to make them more respectable would be also to make them more expensive; and what resources are there in the commerce of Portugal to repay such expense? It is, in short an unnatural, and must be an unsuccessful effort on the part of a nation situated as Portugal is, to attempt to obtain wealth through colonies, or to endeavour to raise into a cause what is properly a consequence.

Let Portuguese statesmen, therefore, aim at promoting the

wealth and prosperity of their country, not by propping up worthless ultramarine possessions, but by internal improvements. Let them maintain credit at home and abroad, encourage industry, and preserve social order; and then when, in the natural course of things, the population, the capital, and enterprise of the country shall have increased, they may indulge in the luxury of a few colonies. But the character of these must always depend on the character of the government at home. While Portuguese ministers depend wholly on the support of bands of greedy partisans, and while popular commotion is the ready instrument of selfseeking intriguers, the colonies can never be secure from the grasp of venality and corruption.

Art. VII.-The Mysteries of Providence, and the Triumphs of Grace. 12mo. London: 1835.

ERSONS who appropriate to themselves, as par excellence, a Puitle which others claim a similar right to enjoy, or profess a similar desire to merit, must expect their pretensions to be subjected to a somewhat rigid scrutiny; nor are they even entitled to complain if they incur a certain degree of obloquy and invective. Such we conceive to be the case as respects those, who, in the present day, are pleased to assume to themselves the title of Evangelical;-or even other designations more flattering to themselves and disparaging to the rest of the Christian world, such as saints, people of God, and the like. We have said that such persons lay themselves open to some degree of obloquy and invective; and this not as bespeaking a justification for ourselves, as if it were our present intention to exemplify such a mode of treatment towards them; but because they generally evince a considerable aptitude in discovering that they are objects of persecution, and in availing themselves of whatever presumption is thence to be drawn of the genuineness of their pretensions; not seeming to recollect that though the people of God are taught to expect persecutions, all persecuted people, or all who conceive themselves persecuted, are not necessarily people of God. We would advise the persons of whom we speak well to consider whether the hostility of which they complain, or rather of which they boast, is not the natural return for those terms of contempt and reprobation which they are in the habit of so freely bestowing on all beyond their own clique; and (since we are not aware that, in this age or country, religion

is ever visited with obloquy as such) whether it is by the maintenance of religious truth or religious duty that reproach is incurred, and not rather by dogmatical absurdities or superstitious observances. Most sincerely, at all events, do we disclaim any intention of holding up the persons in question to aversion or contempt,-even on account of what we consider their errors and inconsistencies, still less on account of the real piety by which we believe not a few of them are distinguished. But conceiving that many of the peculiar views and observances which they so actively promote, are calculated to have injurious effect, we must be permitted freely to state our objections to their system of religious teaching.

And we cannot help observing, in the outset, that we are always inclined to view with suspicion any doctrine which may be said to be, in the peculiar meaning of the expression, the fashion, at a particular time;- as believing it not to possess any more intrinsic recommendation than matters of mere fashion generally possess. More especially upon a subject such as the Christian religion, when a peculiar set of views are seen to arrive at a sudden and violent growth-a set of views not for the first time promulgated, but only re-appearing, as it were, in the revolution of a cycle-not professing to be the result of recent improvements in Scriptural criticism, or in Natural Theology or Ethics, but deriving their birth from a period when comparatively little light was sought or obtained from these sources,-a set of views which, during a long space, distinguished by some of the most illustrious names in divinity ever known in the world, had become all but exploded-which, in their present spread, have made their progress not downwards from the enlightened and reflecting, but upwards from the rash and ignorant, by per→ tinacity and conceit operating on timidity or love of popularityin all this we think we discover the presumptions of unsoundness and delusion. We are not, however, under the necessity, in the present instance of insisting much upon mere presumptions.

We mean to consider a few of the points, in the enforcement and illustration of which evangelical preaching is chiefly occupied, and in respect of the maintenance of which it may be presumed to arrogate its title and this for the purpose of showing that in the sense in which such points are really true, they are duly taught by Christian preachers in general, from whom the Evangelical affect to be distinguished; and that, vice versa, whatever

* As extreme opinions are to be found, on the one side, which we

In

sense, on the points in question, is conveyed by Evangelical preachers, different from the ordinary sense, is a false sense. general we shall endeavour to show that the distinctive peculiarities of the Evangelical school resolve mainly into a sheer abuse of words; or into an arbitrary and unfounded preference of some, over other parts of a complex system of truths; by which means propositions essentially true, being separated from those adjuncts which modify and explain their meaning, come to be, in effect, no better than falsehoods. Our readers need not fear either a polemical or a metaphysical discussion. It is not our purpose at present to test the peculiar doctrines of the evangelical school, by their conformity either with Scripture, or with particular ethical theories. We shall content ourselves with showing their inconsistency with one another, and with principles on which their supporters profess to defend them, or which, at all events, we suppose they would admit.

The topic which forms the starting point of all evangelical preaching, and one of those the most frequently declaimed upon, is that of human depravity. Now it is difficult to imagine what stronger notions evangelical divines could entertain of human wickedness (with any thing like a regard to known fact) than is to be heard from every pulpit of every sect-nay, to be found in the pages of any heathen moralist. Certainly, however, their representations on this head go beyond any thing elsewhere to be met with; for they insist that every thing whatever that man does (at least in his natural state) is evil, and altogether evil; that he not only never seeks to do good, but that he is continually and wholly intent upon wickedness; that his every thought and every act is wickedness, and only wickedness.* Now if these assertions were mere figures of speech, we should not quarrel with them. We war not against tropes and hyperboles. But if they are literally meant, nothing else can possibly be said of them, but that they are utterly nonsensical. Surely some at least of the thoughts and actions of men are directed

should think it idle to argue against, and, on the other, which we should not seek to defend, we may be understood in general to treat the question as lying between the evangelical and the remaining portion of the established churches of Britain.

In the declarations made with such peculiar zest and complacency by the evangelical party on the depravity of human nature, we are apt to view them as merely indulging in feelings of deep humility, until it is recollected that, of this depravity, they themselves (at least by their own account) have ceased to be partakers. The depravity, then, which they so ingenuously confess, is the depravity of all mankind-except themselves.