INTRODUCTION. OPPRESSION OF THE MISSIONARIES-MOTION OF CENSURE ON THE DEMERARA GOVERNMENT-EFFECT OF THE DISCUSSION UPON PUBLIC OPINION. THERE never has been any case of Colonial oppression attended with such important consequences, and seldom any that excited so lively an interest as that of the Missionary Smith, in 1823. This venerable person belonged to the sect of Independents,-a class of men famous in all ages for their tolerant principles, as well as for their love of liberty, and to whom this country owes a lasting debt of gratitude, for their strenuous exertions in the troubles of the seventeenth century, those troubles in which the cradle of English liberty was rocked. He had been sent to Demerara by the London Missionary Society, and its worthy head the truly respectable Mr. Alers Hankey. An insurrection of the Negroes having broken out, in the fever of alarm which generally attends such events, among a set of men justly conscious like the planters, both of the Negro's continued wrongs, and of their own imminent dangers, it was fancied that Mr. Smith had in some way contributed to the movement. That such a rumour once propagated should have gained ground among the multitude, was perhaps not to be wondered at. But, that the constituted authorities should have been so far moved by it as to put the party on his trial, without the most careful previous investigation of all the circumstances, seems hardly credible, when we reflect on the extreme delicacy of the questions thus certain to be raised, and upon the religious feeling, still stronger than the political, sure to be excited. There were, however, stranger things yet to be witnessed in the progress of this important affair. The popular agitation (if we may so call the excitement among the handful of Whites thinly scattered among the real bulk of the people) extended itself to the court, before whom the Missionary was tried; and the judges, partaking of the violence which inspired the planters and other slave-dealers, committed a series of errors so gross as to mock belief, and of oppressions which are unexampled in the dispensation of English justice. Among these acts, whether of matchless ignorance or of gross injustice, the most striking but not the only ones, were, the constant admission of manifestly illegal evidence, and the condemning to death a person only accused of misprision, a crime plainly not capital. The Missionary was cast into a small and loathsome dungeon, in a state of health which made any imprisonment dangerous. There, after some weeks of the most severe suffering, he yielded up his pious spirit, expiating with his guiltless blood the sin of which there is |