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design, as it was his intention to kill all the people in those parts. Nor has he been worse than his word;-for the death of one of his relations by the hands of some of these people, who also were his relatives, during his absence, he has taken a fearful and truly savage revenge. In spite of the entreaties of the other chief who had accompanied him from New South Wales for a reconciliation, he marched an army of three thousand men into his country, slew a thousand of its inhabitants, and roasted and ate three hundred of them, before he and his army left the field of battle. He himself killed the offending chief, cut off his head, poured the blood into his hands, and drank it. Since his return home, he has killed more than twenty slaves, and roasted and ate them in honour of his victory. He has again taken the field against some other chiefs, at the head of 3000 men.

The agents of the SCOTTISH MISSIONARY SOCIETY have entered into several conversations on religious subjects with the Tartars in the neighbourhood of Astrachan, but as yet without much effect. In a journey from Orenburg to Kasan, one of the Missionaries distributed several tracts and copies of the New Testament, which were received gladly even by the Mahomedan priests. Women begged for books, not only for themselves but their children.

The NETHERLANDS MISSIONARY SOCIETY has established an auxiliary at Chinsurah in the East Indies, where divine service is regularly celebrated in Dutch and English with increasing success. Its valuable Missionary occasionally preaches also in a friend's house at Chandernagore, whilst native preaching is continued in Bungalow chapels, the market-place, and by the way-side.

Turning to AMERICA, we first notice the AMERICAN BOARD OF BAPTIST MISSIONS, and its valuable agent, Mrs. Judson, wife of the Rev. Mr. Judson, who has for nine years been its laborious and useful missionary in the Burman empire. This lady has lately been in England for the re-establisment of her health, and, whilst here, has marked out for herself a singular plan of usefulness on her return to Rangoon, which we ardently hope that the liberality of British Christians will enable her to execute. After encountering many difficulties and privations during the first six years of their residence in this singular country, Mr. Judson has mastered its language, translated a considerable portion of the New Testament into it, and circulated many copies of a Serampore impression of his version amongst the natives, from the midst of whom several genuine converts have been formed into a Christian church, and conduct themselves in every respect worthy their profession, whilst many others are making inquiry after the same excellent way. Female education is there however, as in other parts of the East, strongly opposed by national prejudice, and the only mode of attempting it is that suggested by Mrs. Judson, (and one of our number has heard her personally explain its details and prove its practicability,) in the purchase, or rather the ransom of about five-and-twenty female children, who have been sold as slaves to pay the debts of their fathers, a horrid and unnatural custom, though not confined to this portion of the Eastern world, as will be seen in another part of our present number. Eight pounds apiece will accomplish this benevolent object, and the expense of their support will not afterwards excecd £75 per annum, a very moderate sum certainly, and which after the first four years will be nearly, if not entirely superseded by the produce of the children's newly acquired VOL. V.-No. 10.

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habits of industry. The husband of this excellent woman meanwhile pursues his arduous course with resolution and success. The viceroy, now at Rangoon, appears friendly to toleration, and has already defeated a base attempt on the part of the priests and officers of his village, to destroy the most promising of the Christian converts. Several others seem, notwithstanding the persecution that has been raised, to be anxiously inquiring for the truth. The prospect, however, of a war with Siam is very discouraging to the mission. The translation of the scriptures is proceeding slowly but surely.

The AMERICAN BOARD FOR FOREIGN MISSIONS has now establishments among the Cherokee and Choctaw Indians, at Bombay, in Ceylon, and the Sandwich Islands, besides the active agents in the Mediterranean, of whose proceedings we gave an account in our last. Its receipts, to the close of its twelfth year, amounted to 300,000 dollars, or about £67,500. We are concerned however to learn, that its agents on the Sandwich Islands have been obliged to adopt a measure of the last extremity with Doctor Holman, one of their number, in separating him from their communion, " for walking disorderly, slander, rioting, and covetousness." The mission however prospers, notwithstanding this severe affliction. Great prosperity has also attended its foreign mission school, in which thirty heathen children, sent home by the Missionaries, are educated.

The UNITED FOREIGN MISSIONARY SOCIETY, a Transatlantic institution, supported principally by Presbyterians in their form of church government, now maintains Missionaries among the Ossagee, Tuscarora, and Seneca Indians. Its receipts, during the five first years of its existence, have been about 33,000 dollars, somewhat more than £7400.

The MISSIONARY SOCIETY OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH has particularly directed its attention to the Wyandot and Choctaw Indians, amongst whom it has several converts. Of the black and coloured population of the United States themselves, no less than 38,000 are members of the Methodist church.

The EPISCOPAL MISSIONARY SOCIETY is the last that has been formed in America, being now only in the third year of its operation. It owes its existence to our Church Missionary Society, which first suggested its establishment, and made a grant of £200 in its aid. It has not at present done more than establish a seminary at New Haven, for the education of candidates for holy orders, on condition that those who are trained up there from any charitable fund, shall, if required by the trustees, officiate as Missionaries under the direction of the Society, for from one to three years.

POLITICAL RETROSPECT.

SINCE our last retrospect, a Session of Parliament has closed, which was long in its duration, and useful to the country in the retrenchments which it effected, though many others may and must be made in the succeeding one. The financial prospects of England are certainly improving, though we cannot as yet indulge in the sanguine expectation of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that we shall

have a surplus revenue of ten millions at a period not more distant than five years. To other proceedings of the Legislature we advert with more mingled emotions; for whilst we approve of some of them, others are causes of bitter, though unavailing regret.

The business of the Bishop of Peterborough has again been brought before the House of Lords, on the petition of Mr. Grimshaw, whose curate has been excluded the diocese of the right reverend prelate, for not giving a satisfactory answer to his 87 questions upon the Articles of the Church of England. This new test of orthodoxy, we do not hesitate to characterize, with Lord Dacre, who presented the petition, as “unusual, uncanonical, illiberal, and in opposition to the constitution." The Church of England, be it remembered, is, professes to be, and prides itself upon being, a church by law established--and that law requires subscription to the articles and liturgy of the Church, and subscription only, to qualify the clergyman making it, to preferment in it. If, however, in addition to this, every prelate is to be at liberty to prepare a long catalogue of expository questions, in order to satisfy himself that candidates for admission into his diocese put precisely the same interpretation upon every iota of those long debated and very debateable tests, it will follow that we shall have an Arminian clergy in one bishopric, a Calvinistic one in another, and, unless the orthodoxy of some members of the right reverend bench is strangely belied, an Arian one in a third. From circumstances, to which it is needless to do more than thus distantly advert, these are no days for Bishops to make experiments with their authority, and we would caution Bishop Marsh how-if he wishes to prove himself a real friend to the establishment of which he is a dignitary, zealous and learned as any of them we admit he attempts, in the nineteenth century, that Lauding it over God's heritage, the Church, which had so untoward an effect upon episcopacy in the seventeenth. We cannot quit a subject, to which we fear that we shall have occasion to revert hereafter, without expressing our surprise, that when these charges were brought against the parties complained of, when one noble Lord openly and very truly asserted, that "if the power of examination, claimed, had a legal existence, it ought to be abolished,”—and another peer, holding a high office in the administration, very intelligibly condemned the practice-not one of the right reverend bench, though it was unusually crowded upon the occasion, and they were bitterly taunted with their silence, said a word in defence of their right reverend brother, though they perhaps more effectually served him by the benefit of their silent votes-too often, we cannot but say, a dead weight against every liberal proposition presented to the House, of which they form an anomalous, but, upon such occasions, a most effective part.

For relieving the wants of IRELAND, suffering at once from pestilence and famine, English liberality has, by private subscriptions, and parochial and congregational contributions, raised nearly £300,000, besides a further parliamentary grant, carried almost by acclamation, of £100,000. Yet as no step has yet been taken for the permanent relief of Ireland, on the scale upon which she must be relieved, or as far as all useful purposes to the empire of which she forms an ill-fated part is concerned, be lost, we scruple not to call this voluntary aid of a liberal people to a distressed one, a premium for misgove rnment, renewable every year or two, as long

as that wretched system of misgovernment shall madly be persisted in. The measure introduced by Mr. Goulbourn for remedying the evils under which Ireland is groaning, from the oppressive operation of the tithe system, is one of very partial operation, merely empowering, as it does, incumbents to enter into leases of their tithes for twenty-one years, not with the occupiers of the soil, but with landlords, or persons having a reversionary interest in it. This may, and we doubt not will, be productive of some benefit; but it is a sorry half-measure, indeed, to remove the pressure upon a starving population, of what has very truly been termed "the richest and most useless ccclesiastical establishment in the world." In other things, the new Irish government is vigilant enough; witness its thorough alteration of the police of the country, by placing the appointment of peace-officers throughout the kingdom, in the Lord Lieutenant, instead of in the Grand Juries, with whom it has hitherto, and much more constitutionally, been left. Why as vigorous remedies are not applied to the diseases in her state, created by an overgrown and radically defective church establishment, we should be at a loss to imagine, were we not but too well, though too painfully, satisfied, that against that system of patronage, which has long been the bane of Ireland, even the bold and masterly genius of a Wellesley cannot successfully contend? If proofs of this can be needed, some late and intended promotions will abundantly afford them. The primacy of Ireland was vacant; one of the archiepiscopal sees was filled by a prelate, who, though of illustrious birth, was an example of diligence and fidelity in discharging the duties of his office to prelates almost in any age of the church. His promotion to the head of an establishment, standing in need of the weight of such a name to support its tottering influence, would have done honour to the government, and have afforded general satisfaction to the people; but a Beresford was also an archbishop, and wished to be primate, and primate accordingly he is. It is thought advisable to give to the Irish peerage another dukedom—and a Be̱resford is to be promoted to the highest rank which his sovereign can bestow. In 1819, the archbishopric of Tuam, and the valuable bishopric of Clogher and Kilmore, were filled by a Beresford-a Beresford, et iterum, iterum, iterumque, a Beresford again. Toujours un Beresford! we may well exclaim, in looking how the good things temporal and spiritual of Ireland are disposed of,toujours un Beresford, for Beresford is in fact the Monsieur Nong tong pas of Irish story; and why so, but that the Marquis of Waterford (the embryo Duke of Munster, it is said) the head of that house, has more parliamentary influence than any peer in Ireland ? and therefore he must be his Grace the Duke,—his brother, his Grace the Primate,—and his cousin, the right honourable and right reverend the Lord Bishop of Kilmore-death having (for a while only, we doubt not) left the family a bishop short of their complement, if complement they can have, in the Irish hierarchy. In the midst of all this trafficking and jobbing, we are pleased however to find, that a memorial, signed by nearly all the Irish noblemen and gentlemen of property then in London, was presented about two months since to the Earl of Liverpool and the late Marquess of Londonderry, stating their firm conviction, that a commutation of tithes in Ireland might be effected with advantage to all interests. It was signed with great readiness

and unanimity by gentlemen of all political parties, and we hope it will be attended to. If indeed the tithes of Ireland be not commuted, or put in some way or other on a new footing, the time cannot be very far distant, when the clergy there will have but a scanty portion of tithes left them to commute.

Of the proceedings of the Session of Parliament upon which we have not already commented, there are few that require particular notice. The New Marriage Act has thrown old maids and young ones, beaux and bachelors,-into great alarm, and not without occasion, though we cannot dwell upon the minor provisions, of placarding names of sighing swains and yielding beauties, about to be made as happy as the bands of matrimony can make them, hauling young ladies and old ones (if old there can ever be) before surrogates, doctors, proctors, mayors, bailiffs, and justices, to make depositions upon that point, on which, of all others, ladies are most wary and tenacious, their age, and upon the long et cetera of grievances of which they complain. We do however join the Lord Chancellor, and the best legal authorities of both Houses, in entering a protest against its retrospective operation, as ex post facto laws are always bad in principle: and this is such, and cannot but be productive of injury to many who acted upon the law as it was, not as it should be. To make it so for the future, is all a legislature ever should attempt; it has no right to repair the injuries of the past, at the expense of those who proceeded, as they had a right to do, upon the law as it stood. To have prevented any person hereafter from taking advantage of a deliberate perjury committed in obtaining a marriage license, either by himself or the person whose heir he claims to be, was a reform in our marriage laws which justice and morality alike demanded; but we cannot but think the other substantial alterations have been introduced, to serve (to do justice, equitably and abstractedly speaking, it may also be,) a particular nobleman, rather than from any wish to benefit the public, who are chiefly affected by minor regulations, hurried through the legislature one session, to be repealed, we doubt not, in the next. The bill for preventing cruelty to animals, is a measure of more tardy growth, but one of which we cannot but express our decided approbation.

Since the termination of the Session, an event has occurred, which has excited the strongest feelings throughout the country. The Marquess of Londonderry, the leader of the ministerialists in the House of Commons, and the most active member of the cabinet, suddenly terminated his existence by his own hand. Of himself, or of his policy, we intend not at present to say more, than that, though his character in private life was highly respectable, and even amiable, it was distinguished by a disregard of the Sabbath, and of religious institutions, which set but a bad example to the country; and that as a statesman he seldom consulted so much what was just, as what was expedient. The catastrophe which has hurried him from scenes in which he acted so conspicuous a part, was unquestionably an act of madness, but of a madness brought on by unremitted application to business, even on those days on which our Creator has commanded us to rest. Let his example teach others the impolicy, as well as the impiety, of neglecting so merciful a provision against the over-action of a frame that has a limit to its powers and its exertions.

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