British portion of the Alliance was, that the resolution could not be maintained. Many regretted that the question had been introduced at all; but since it had, they felt it necessary to take their ground, and to exert themselves to procure its withdrawal. In proof of this, I appeal to the speeches delivered on the occasion, and to the strong dissent which was laid on the table on the Monday morning. One of the reasons of this dissent was, "that it constituted the Alliance so as actually to admit slaveholders who may choose to affirm that their sin in holding their fellow-men in bondage is not their fault, or for their own advantage." This dissent was sympathised with by many who did not move in it, because it was found that there was a prospect of getting rid of the resolution against which it was recorded. We appeal also to the letter lately published by Dr Wardlaw on the subject.

When the motion was made to rescind the resolution, all parties concurred in it; and a large committee was appointed to take the resolution and the amendment into consideration. That committee consisted of forty-six members, selected from all countries. The conference adjourned to Tuesday; but the committee met immediately. They met again early on Tuesday morning. After the Conference was assembled, the committee were still engaged in anxious deliberation, and sent a request that "special prayer might be offered on their behalf" by the Conference. Four brethren engaged in supplication in succession. After an anxious interval they brought up their report, the substance of which, as is now well known, was, "that it is expedient to defer the complete and final arrangement of the details of the general alliance of which the foundation has been laid, till another general conference; that the members of the Alliance be recommended to adopt such organization in their several countries as in their judgment may be most in accordance with their peculiar circumstances, without involving the responsibility of one part of the Alliance for another; the brethren from each country to act collectively in originating their respective national plans."

Now, I ask my readers to ponder this report, and which, by being adopted, became the resolution of the Conference. Here is the Alliance not finally organized-the object on which the hearts of so many good men were set not realized, when it seemed on the very point of being secured. And why? Because British Christians would not and could not agree with their American brethren to admit persons connected with slavery into the Evangelical Alliance. We entreat our readers to mark this well. This is the question which was discussed,-Shall we agree to admit slaveholders as members of the Alliance? The American brethren said, Yes; there are some in our country connected with the system who are desirous that it should be abolished. We regard them as Christians, and we think that they should be admissible to our convocation. No, answered the British members; we cannot consent to this. We do not presume to judge those who are connected with slavery: to their own master they stand or fall. But we regard the whole system of slavery as a thing so accursed, that we will forego the formation of an Ecumenical Alliance, rather than that slaveholders shall be admitted to its membership. This was the ground taken by them, and this is

at this moment the precise position of the British portion of the Conference. They have not yet recorded it in a formal resolution; but they have, by their determination, most emphatically said to America and the whole christian world-we will not admit slaveholders. They have said to the American brethren and to the American churches— we think slavery an evil—an accursed evil; and so strong are our convictions of its atrocity, that, much as we love you who are with us, we cannot consent to go along even with you, if you identify yourselves with the system. To the slaveholders themselves they emphatically say we can have no fellowship with you. Your connexion with slavery compels us to forego the high gratification of forming an Ecumenical Alliance, rather than run the risk of admitting you.

This is substantially the declaration of the British portion of the Alliance to American brethren, and rightly understood, is equally remote from all affinity with the Free Church question, and that alleged compromise with slaveholding or slavehaving which has called forth so many aspersions.

We are quite certain that this is the impression carried across the Atlantic by our American brethren. It is but too manifest, that even the good men of America do not see the system, and feel in regard to it, as those do who contemplate it from a distance, and apart from the national prejudices which an American seems to cherish more than other men. But those of them who were in the Alliance had truths on the subject told them with a plainness and a faithfulness which they cannot soon forget. One good man, and who is as determined an enemy of slavery as was in the convention, said that his heart was ready to bleed for the Americans when he listened to the things said of slavery and slaveholding churches in the course of the discussions. They know better now than ever they did before, the views and feelings of British Christians regarding the accursed system; and they have gone home indoctrinated in such a way as can hardly fail of some good result. Upon the whole, it is my decided conviction that the discussions on the question, and the grounds taken by the Alliance will, by the blessing of God, accelerate the emancipation of the slave from his grinding bondage.

G. J.

Since the above was in type, we are enabled, by the kindness of a member of the Manchester meeting, held November 4, to subjoin the following particulars :-the object of the meeting, as most of our readers are aware, was to organize the British section of the Evangelical Alliance.

About 500 were present, a large number when we consider the season of the year, and the short period that has elapsed since the meeting in London. A most delightful spirit of harmony and brotherly affection pervaded their deliberations. We cannot now enter into detail, and merely advert to two resolutions passed, the one on Wednesday evening, and the other on Thursday forenoon. The first is in these "That this Conference, consisting of the British members of the Evangelical Alliance, in entering on the business for which they have been convened, record their devout thanksgiving to the God of peace and love for having disposed the hearts of so many of his servants,

terms:

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from various parts of the world, recently to assemble in London for the purpose of confessing the catholic unity of all true believers, and of promoting their visible union; and for having led them, with this great object in view, to form the Evangelical Alliance: and, acting upon their recommendation, hereby constitute an organization, to be called 'The British Organization in connexion with the Evangelical Alliance,' which, of necessity, takes for its basis and its objects, the basis and objects of the Alliance." The second resolution refers to slavery, and is as follows: That, whereas the provisional committee, during its session at Birmingham, resolved that no slave-holder should be invited to attend the meeting which was to be held in London for the formation of the Evangelical Alliance; and whereas it is known that some British subjects are holders of slaves; the British Organization, in pursuance of the course adopted by the provisional committee, and upon mature deliberation on the whole case, but without pronouncing any judgment on the personal Christianity of slaveholders, agrees to declare that no holder of a slave shall be eligible to its membership."

This resolution was carried all but unanimously, only three or four held up their hands against its passing, and that on the ground that it was unnecessary, as sufficiently decided action had already been taken at Birmingham and London. It will be observed that the Alliance had spoken out on the question of slavery, before the agitation by Messrs G. Thompson and W. L. Garrison, against the Alliance had commenced. The Birmingham resolution was one which they lauded. They have not succeeded in showing that the London meeting departed from the spirit of that resolution. How could they, without demonstrating a falsehood to be truth? The measures of the London conference were adopted in the very same spirit which has led to the Manchester decision. Of the nature and animus of the agitation to which we have referred, we shall not further speak. We shall only express the hope that those who have done such grievous injustice to men as thoroughly and purely abolitionists as themselves, will yet see and acknowledge their error and their sin.

We deem it of importance to lay before our readers the following extract from a letter, published in the "Manchester Times," by W. Shuttleworth, Esq., the gentleman who presided over the meeting held there to review the proceedings of the Alliance, and which was addressed by Messrs Thompson, Garrison, aud, Douglass. He says:

"I well remember that my friend Mr Thompson professed to have a knowledge of very much, if not all, of the detail discussions which took place in the great London Alliance meeting. In this respect I am willing to hope and believe he was mistaken; for if he had been fully and accurately informed on the subject, he ought, in all fairness, to have communicated unreservedly to his audience, at least the prime features of all he knew, that a correct and sound judgment might be formed of the whole affair. Whereas, it now appears, that his communications, and those of the gentlemen who accompanied him, were not simply partial, but absolutely destitute of some of the main and essential features of the case; by withholding which, neither I nor any one present, circumstanced as I was, could form any thing like a correct judgment of the question professedly discussed. I feel it, there

fore, due to myself, and to the public, and above all to the Alliance, to urge upon you the propriety of affording your numerous readers an opportunity of, at least, modifying the impressions made by your report upon their minds, in reference to the subject in question, by inserting the Doctor's (Wardlaw) admirable letter. I infer from the letter itself, that the doctor was a member of the London Alliance meeting, and that he headed and took part in the discussions on American slavery, which occupied its attention; and that, of course, he is fully acquainted with the merits of the question, as there entertained ; and, in this respect, considering his high moral and intellectual character, he is an authority vastly superior to Mr Thompson, Mr Garrison, or Mr Douglass, who were not members of that assembly. And, indeed, considering the very peculiar position in which these three gentlemen stand in relation to slavery, all of whom have personally and grievously suffered by the abominable system, it may be expected that their sensitiveness may be so far excessive as not always to preserve them from a degree of rashness and impatience in their resistance to its existence and supposed encroachments, which cannot invariably be justified. Few men are altogether free from beclouding influences.

"I am bound to declare that I consider the letter of Dr Wardlaw an able vindication, both in statement of facts and in argument, of the Evangelical Alliance, so far at least as American slavery is concerned; and that the Alliance would have proved itself unworthy of the confidence of well-disposed christian men, had its conduct and proceedings been otherwise than they were. And I must declare,—a regard for truth compelled me, that, in my opinion, such a mode of procedure as that adopted by Messrs Thompson, Garrison, and Douglass, in their late meeting in Manchester, cannot but injure a cause dear to humanity, -not being calculated, either in Manchester or elsewhere, ultimately to win the approbation, and sympathy, and countenance of the discreet and sober minded."

We only express, in conclusion, our conviction that the feelings of distrust and alienation towards the Alliance, which have been excited in the minds of some by the misrepresentations to which it has been exposed, will, in proportion as the facts are known, subside; and that an institution which contemplates the accomplishment of that, for which the divine Redeemer prays, will yet concentrate around it the co-operation and the prayers of all who love "the peace of Jerusalem.”

J. R.

NOTICES OF NEW PUBLICATIONS.

LIFE and CORRESPONDENCE of JOHN | tion of his thoughts to his intimate friends. FOSTER. Edited by J. E. RYLAND.

London: Jackson and Walford.

We need not say the work is of surpassing interest. John Foster is the subject, As these volumes consist mainly of Mr and in great part the author; and, in Foster's correspondence, the work pos- both respects, the book is worthy of Fossesses, to a great extent, the character of ter. In the communicativeness of letter an autobiography. The illustrious sub-writing, we see in active employment the ject of the memoir here writes his own same mind which produced those more life, in the free and familiar communica- elaborate performances which have gain

a recoil

ed him so high a name-the same pro- constitutional pensiveness of Foster's found thought-the same acute and sub-mind, which at times induced ' tle genius-the same power of analysis- from human beings into a cold interior the same brilliancy of conception. Fos- retirement,' where he felt as if dissociated ter's mind moved in a walk of its own, in from the whole creation." But emotion which his eagle-eyed observation pene- and sentiment being thus repressed, his trated heights and depths, which com- outward life was marked by a timidity monplace intellect attempts not to scale that amounted to infinite shyness.' A or fathom; while, absorbed in lofty mus- very large proportion of his feelings were ings, in which he finds no companion to so much his own, that he either felt keep pace with his adventure, he com- precisely that they could not be communes with his own thoughts in a style municated, or he did not feel that they of wrapt abstraction. However familiar could.' His early antipathies were with his writings, and accustomed to strong, but not malicious.' His assoform an estimate of the mind that pro- ciations were intensely vivid; he had, duced them, the reader of these volumes for instance, an insuperable dislike to a will feel more strongly than in ordinary book during the reading of which he had cases, that he is now making acquaint- done any thing that strongly excited ance with the man-that he sees him at self-reproach; or to whatever was conhand, and hears him speak, and ex- nected with feelings of disgust and hor changes thought with him, in the way of ror. For a number of years he would converse, instead of seeing him afar, as a not sit on a stool which had belonged to being who moves in a world of his own- a man who had died in a sudden and an isolated impersonation of penetrating strange way, and whose ghost was said genius and of elevated spiritual views. to have appeared in a barn near his house. In short, his imagination was imperious and tyrannical, and would often haunt him with a scene of Indian tortures, or the idea of a skeleton meeting

through to bed. 'The time of going to bed was an awful season of each day.' He was excited to strong emotion by reading passages in favourite authors, such as

Young's Night Thoughts.' Even single words (as chalcedony), or the names of ancient heroes, had a mighty fascinanation over him, simply from their sound; and other words from their meaning, as hermit."

Yet Foster was an easy, humble, conversable person; and, though sometimes moody, quite disposed to be on the best terms with his kind. The history of his life is soon told. It is peculiarly the his-him each night in a room he had to pass tory of a mind; and, as regards matters of fact, is more than usually uneventful. John Foster was born, September 17, 1770, in the parish of Halifax. His parents were persons of eminent piety, and members of a Baptist church, under the pastoral care of Dr Fawcett, of Hebden Bridge. "When not twelve years old, young Foster had, to use his own words, a painful sense of an awkward but entire individuality.' This was apparent The elder Foster tenanted a small in his manners and language. His farm, to the labours of which he added observations on characters and events the craft of weaving, and in the latter resembled those of a person arrived at occupation his son assisted him till his maturity, and obtained for him from fourteenth year. At this period his relithe neighbours the appellation of old gious convictions were strong. "When fashioned.' Thoughtful and silent, he about fourteen years old, he communishunned the companionship of boys cated to an associate the poignant anxiety whose vivacity was merely physical he had suffered from comparing his and uninspired by sentiment. His character with the requirements of the natural tendency to reserve was in- Divine law, and added, that he had found creased by the want of juvenile asso- relief only by placing a simple reliance on ciates at home; for his only brother, the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for acceptance Thomas, was four years younger than before God." Six days after the complehimself, and they had no sisters. His tion of his seventeenth year, he became parents, partly from the lateness of their a member of the Baptist Church at Hebmarriage, had acquired habits of too den Bridge. Soon after, urged by Dr fixed a gravity to admit of that confiding Fawcett and other friends, and guided by intercourse which is adapted to promote his own deliberate choice, he commenced the healthy exercise of the affections. his studies for the ministry. He received Had a freer interchange of feeling existed, it might have rendered less intense (though it could not have removed) that

his early instructions in the house of Dr Fawcett, who had several young men under his training for the service of the