The British Press; or, Morning Literary Advertiser.
London, England, 1825-09-19 00:00:00

DIOCESE OF J.Lttlini.

(From the laserstois Mrestick.)
0-- .
rutinent to the requisition of Ids Honour the Mayor. a
Meeting was held on Wednesday, at the Court-heitfe;',
Kingston, the the purpose of raising a lend, by puhlic sub- !
scrip:lee, to be appropriated to the erecting of one or morel
new places of worship, wider-the govecunent of the P.i.-
2opal Establishment. At about eleven o'clock; the !I-ton. 1
i Joseph Barnes being called to the chair, the Bishop ed-
! dressed the Meeting, which was nnmerous slod highly-ne-
spectable. His Lordship spoke at some considerable length.'
Ile stated that it had devolved on him, in the ,discharge of
the important duties which his Sovereign hod ilrusted to'
him, to institute inquiries into the moral and religi,va wants
1 of the people of this extensive and important colony, and to,
propose measures of instruction commensurate to their wants.
"Those inquiries bad been particularly directed to that part
of the population, whose condition had, of late, been an ob-
ject of especial solicitude to the Executive and the Legislr
lure of England. He alluded td the slave population. It wa►
with very considerable gratification, said his Eordship, that
he was enabled, at so early a period of his ministry, as the
Eccles;estical Head of this Diocese, to bear testimony to
the circumstance, that, since the abolition of the slave
trade, great intellectual changes bad exhibited them-
selves in the negro slave. Viewing this question in its
i political aspect, he considered it one which should call
' forth the attention of all classes of his fallow-citizens. It
was entitled to regard, no less from the commercial
than from the ecclesiastical orders of the State. With
the consciousness of this fact, he maric a confident appeal
to their liberality on this occasion—a liberality that was
the more demanded from them, inasmuch as the important
changes in the social and moral state of tfle negro,were the
result of those gradual measures which had, from time to
time, been adopted by them, as a conveponiTing disposition
evinced itself on the part of the slave popalasion, to render
every ustasure piedaetive of its audiripairiebnefit• If he
were required to sfate paettenisel,.`e *ass bit ects the
intellectual change to which be all,,ied had manifested
itself—he felt assured that the eggerlenee el every one
would yield a roily concurrence in his own conclusions—
that it was remarkably demonstrated in the decline, and,
he hoped, rapid extinction, of the popular superstitions
of Africa. The horrid influence of . that ignorance,
whose source diffused its poisonous stream from their Afri-
can progenitors, was dying naturally ; awl he doubted not,
that a)Civ years, aided by increased means of Christian in-
struction, would produce all those happy result} which
had been anticipated by the people of England. He, how-
ever, felt himself bound to declare pup sly (and to him it
was a source of heart-felt pleasure tO make this public
acknowledgment of those seritimente with which he, bad
been received by them on his first antra to take upon him-
self the functions of his office), that all his inquiries had
convinced him that the decrease of crime—that the dimi-
nution of all the evils arising from a disregard to the obli-
gations of social life, and they were obligations whose
beneficial effects were seen in the rapid advances now
made in the civilized society of
.fiurope--were to be as-
' cribed to those improved systems of management, and to
that extended protection, which hewaosure had emanated
from their unconstrained reflections on their own interest
and their own security. He felt fully assured, by his own
short experience in the community, that they would cheer-
fully redeem the pledges of support which they had given
him in their several addresses—that they would concede
the propriety of extending their munificence to the claims
which he made upon them for
.Christian inetniction to
the regro--that they would fit hinf' and prepare him for
extending those opportunities of utility to himself and
them—that they would see that they did not render their
own ameliorating conci shims abortive, by withholding
themselves from assisting in drawinhe slave into a respect'
for religion and a love of good order; eff,qte which were
perceptibly operating on the negro'ajtabito fit his own vo-
luntary relinquishment of the Sure%y mile, and his own
desire to render the Sabbath a day of rest, and of Christian
instruction,

His Lordship here read a communication from his Ho-
nour the Mayor of Kingston, relative to the fact of a
change in the negro habits being the growth of time and
of gradual amelioration; not forced by express legislative
enactment, but being the result of an increased religious
feeling on the part of the nee roes themselves. The ad-
vancement of the negro mind from barbarism to civiliza-
tion, said his Lordship, under 'he benign spirit of Christi-
lewi•e, lad amp::. testimony home n it by several Minis.
ten, wtli known to the s . etriceseinet;
the names of Mr. Trew, Mr. Stainsby, and others of tne
island Clergy, in the report of the Society for Propagating
the Gospel in Frreign Parts, (a report which his Lordship
bad only recently received from England,) had added
weight to the conclusions formed by his own experience.
The testimony was so interesting and so apposite to the
purposes of the meeting, so calculated to stimulate their
zeal, that his Lordship said he should request permission to
read an extract to the meeting. He then resumed.
Now, said his Lordship, that I have (as Pt necessary
part in the exposition of an object in calling this meet-
ing) touched on the subject of gradual amelioration, I am
tempted to make my unequivocal declaration that it is the
only means which experience holds out as an effectual re-
medy for the moral evils in the condition of the slave.
All violent measures, or rather measures that have not re-
ceived a corresponding enlargement of reflection in the
mind of the negro, will infallibly defeat the beneficent ob-
ject of a benevolent spirit. He alluded, he said, to mea-
sures designed, if he might use the observation, to change
him, as it were, per saltum, and net with a due regard to
the general unfolding of his moral perceptions. All human
experience bears testimony to thie momentous truth. He
who would scorn its precepts is an injudicious friend of hu-
manity. If we advert only to the growth of the human
body with whose growth we perceive the intellectual
expansion of man to be intimately connected, we see it ar-
riving at maturity by the gradual and simultaneous exten •
sion of all its functions, both mental and corporeal; and ,
such it was in the social habitude of man—we must teach
him habits of utility, we must instruct him in the advan-
tages which those will bring about before we shall rouse
his attention or redouble his exertions to attain them.
This must be the work of time. St. l'aul, in illustrating
the gradual progress of religion in the soul, represents by a
similar figure, the newly admitted Christian as receiving
the benefits of the doctrines of the holy faith by differently
modified circumstances--the milk first, as moat accordant
to the slow development of the economy of animal nature,
till we become fitted for the reception of substantial food
by the robust action of the system. It is, however, with
you, said his Lordship, to accelerate or retard the opera-
tions of this law of our social as well as animal nature. He
then declared his confidence in their liberality and benevo-
lence, and concluded by assuring them that, feeling that
the cause of the laity, from the claims of interest, was the
same as that of the clergy—that the propagation of the
Gospel was the best meat's of securing the integrity of the
colonial empire—aml that Chtfatisoity, by diffusing A conci-
liatory spirit, was the extending ofhappiness to one and all
—he sat down under the conviction that, as auxiliaries,
they would, by the resolutions of that day, be found power-
ful and unwearied, and evince themselves the judicious
I friends of the human race.