votional feeling among these poor people. The worst of
it is, that it is zeal without understanding, and profits them but
little; yet light is light, even that poor portion that may stream
through a key-hole, and I welcome this most ignorant profession of
religion in Mr. ----'s dependents, as the herald of better and brighter
things for them. Some of the planters are entirely inimical to any such
proceedings, and neither allow their negroes to attend worship, or to
congregate together for religious purposes, and truly I think they are
wise in their own generation. On other plantations, again, the same rigid
discipline is not observed; and some planters and overseers go even
farther than toleration; and encourage these devotional exercises and
professions of religion, having actually discovered that a man may become
more faithful and trustworthy even as a slave, who acknowledges the
higher influences of Christianity, no matter in how small a degree.
Slave-holding clergymen, and certain piously inclined planters, undertake,
accordingly, to enlighten these poor creatures upon these matters, with a
safe understanding, however, of what truth is to be given to them, and
what is not; how much they may learn to become better slaves, and how
much they may not learn, lest they cease to be slaves at all. The process
is a very ticklish one, and but for the northern public opinion, which is
now pressing the slaveholders close, I dare say would not be attempted at
all. As it is, they are putting their own throats and their own souls in
jeopardy by this very endeavour to serve God and Mammon. The light that
they are letting in between their fingers will presently strike them
blind, and the mighty flood of truth which they are straining through a
sieve to the thirsty lips of their slaves, sweep them away like straws
from their cautious moorings, and overwhelm them in its great deeps, to
the waters of which man may in nowise say, thus far shall ye come and no
farther. The community I now speak of, the white population of Darien,
should be a religious one, to judge by the number of Churches it
maintains. However, we know the old proverb, and, at that rate, it may
not be so godly after all. Mr. ---- and his brother have been called upon
at various times to subscribe to them all; and I saw this morning a most
fervent appeal, extremely ill-spelled, from a gentleman living in the
neighbourhood of the town, and whose slaves are notoriously ill-t