TO THE READER. THE observations which we deemed it expedient to make in our last number, must have suggested to our readers the necessity of directing our energies in future to the condition of the professedly emancipated slaves of our own colonies. In suspending this monthly publication for the present, we must protest against the inference being drawn that we feel less interested in American Abolition movements, or that we shall watch with less anxiety the progress of the cause of justice and freedom there; but we do feel that, as a nation, we are too deeply implicated in the chicanery and deception which are practised in our own colonies, to warrant the withdrawal of any portion of our efforts to nations over whom we have no political influence, and where our national character is no ways implicated. But, while relinquishing this publication in its present shape, we shall have frequent opportunities, in periodicals, newspapers, and other mediums of a public description, of keeping the cause of the American Philanthropists before the eye of British Christians. This we shall ever consider our paramount duty; and we shall attend to it from a full conviction that no human instrumentality is so effective in showing the man-stealer his guilt, as in the constant exposure of his conduct before those, with whom he wishes to stand on terms of amicable and friendly equality. In a slave state, the whole atmosphere is tainted; one man keeps another in countenance; the heart is hardened by what the eyes every day behold; and it is only by bringing his arbitrary and despotic institutions into frequent juxta-position with the free and equal laws of other nations, that we can shame him out of practices which are as much a disgrace to his character as they are a clog to his prosperity. We must also warn our American friends from being in the least degree disheartened in their onward course by what is occurring in our Colonies. We there see a practical proof of what has been frequently asserted, both by American and British philanthropists, that the chief difficulty in |