detail of the life and prospects of the subordinate ranks of Europeans in this island, particularly those young men who engage as book-keepers on plantations, which deserves serious perusal, as well by the youth who are destined to cross the tropic, as by their advisers. It is from these inferior stations that the body of small planters, and attornies of the greater proprietors, gradually rise to wealth and distinction.

It is only in the particular instances, that our author's account of the habitual dissoluteness and profligacy, in which the whole community of Jamaica is immersed, can be new to English readers. Whilst, however, the women of colour are charged with the most shameless licentiousness, we must not omit to notice his eulogy of the decorum and the virtues of the white ladies; he adds expressively, that

Jamaica is a country unworthy of, and unsuitable to, the tender and amiable part of the human species. They are often ill used and neglected, and those who ought to be their protectors, their defenders, their affectionate companions, act, in too many instances, in a manner inconsistent with that character.' P. 164.

The want of proper means of education for both sexes in Jamaica is described and properly lamented; we are told that, among the most opulent of this country, there are a great number who consider a book (not an accompt-book) as an useless superfluous thing calculated only for the idle, ' and view all arts and information as contemptible, that do not contribute to the production of cent per cent.'

Amusements, among colonists of this description, are naturally those of the most base and sensual kind. Accordingly, we find that the favourite ones are convivial parties, tavern dinners, dancing, racing, and gambling. In this place the author mentions the hearty and undistinguishing hospitality of the islanders, with the remark, however, that all are ambitious to make a figure in this respect, and usually treat their guests much above, rather than under their circumstances.'

Though the author states, on the subject of the slavetrade, and its abolition, that he is unconditionally an advocate for neither side;' the bias of his mind is evident, whenever there is the smallest reference to that iniquitous traffic, and its detestable consequences in the West Indies. We do not scruple to pronounce him an advocate of slavery, and an enemy to its abolition. Happily it is needless, in these times, to demolish the few and feeble arguments here adduced to countenance this exploded system of iniquity. Indeed the book confutes itself. Great stress has been laid, and is here laid, upon the amelioration of the laws in the West Indies, with respect to slaves. A complete code of

'The evi

laws, called the Consolidated Slave-laws,' now exists in Jamaica, chiefly for the protection of the slaves. "The negro slave is as completely protected,' says this author, against violence and murder, as the white man. A white man, who beats and abuses a negro, is equally liable to be prosecuted and punished, either by a magistrate, or the owner of the slave,' (not by the abused slave himself!) as if he thus treated a white man like himself.' But mark the mockery of this pretended equal distribution of justice. dence of a slave is, however, not admissible against a white man.' Slaves, forsooth, are not to be believed, because they have' (rationally enough, perhaps) no other opinion of Buckera swear, as they call the oath of the white people, than that it is a mere empty form of words;' and yet it is said, they regard their own mode of taking an oath as most solemn and binding; this, however, can only be administered by one negro to another.'-Again; Neither overseer nor owner is allowed by the law to exceed, in inflicting punishment, thirty-nine lashes; nor is a book-keeper, nor others in subordinate situations, permitted to exceed the fourth part of that quantum: at least, if they abuse this law, they are liable to a heavy penalty, one half of which goes to the informer.'-What? to the negro-informer? to the man who is disqualified from bearing testimony? And what other informer can there possibly be in such cases? Whatever nominal provision there may be for the security of person and property to the negroes, we have not the smallest doubt of its being in a great measure, if not totally, nullified, by intentional flaws in the legislative enactments, or by the dis positions of those to whom the execution of such enactments is confided.

We heartily concur with our author in deploring the paucity of religious instruction, which is to be met with in Jamaica, either for the negroes, or for its white inhabitants. It is not sufficiently known in England with what a desperate and diabolical obstinacy every attempt to Christianize the blacks is discouraged, counteracted, and repelled, by the legislative and municipal bodies, as well as by a large proportion of the inhabitants, of this guilty and ill-destinied region. But it is not by any means surprising, that the spirit of vice, impiety, and persecution, should effectively prevail on a soil so tainted with every crime and possessed by every demon, when such a spirit is with difficulty restrained, even in a country like our own, from breaking forth into acts of. violence or attempting measures of legal hostility. We are sorry to perceive that the moral feelings of the author have not entirely escaped contamination from this polluted com

munity. He has unfortunately let several passages escape him, which betray the state of his inoral sentiments; and we mention them not for the sake of the reader, whom they would rather disgust than endanger,-but as a warning to all residents in Jamaica to be very cautious when they write for the public eye. The awful

U

have not of earthquakes, because of late years they

have not swallowed up whole towns, is treated with most unbecoming levity, p. 28.; and the expression, tantalizing partiality, applied to the plenteous and daily showers which fertilized one valley while the next estate was ruined by conblasphemy. We attri

'bute it to the habit near akin' to

༑

which our author, in common with other white residents, has acquired, of considering people of colour as an inferior species, that, in describing the manners of a planter, he should say, His spurious issue, (by a female of colour) he doats on with a parental fondness, as if they were the offspring of a more virtuous and tender union', he lavishes on them abundance, he sends them to Europe, where they are liberally educated, and, if the laws of the country would permit him, he would, at his decease, bequeath the bulk of his fortune to them. p. 200. Must the man forego parental duties, because he has neglected connubial ones? Is one crime to be produced as the justification of nother?

There are also a few errors of a more venial kind, such as Lucca,' p. 11. for Lucea, the name of a town and port on the north side; tracts for tracks, p. 17; mead for meed, p. 39. But the work is on the whole respectable, and "not unworthy of attention from the public.

Art. IV. The New Testament, in an Improved Version, upon the Basis of i Archbishop Newcome's New Translation: with a corrected Text, and Notes, critical and explanatory. i

Art. V. A New Testament; or the New Covenant, according to Luke, Paul, and John. Published in Conformity to the Plan of the late Rev. Edward Evanson.

(Concluded from p. 251.)

II. On the Distribution and Punctuation of the Text of the New Testament.

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Every reader must have felt the utility and comfort of having any written or printed document presented to his eye, in a rational and clear form of division and subdivision. Yet it is remarkable, that a practice so convenient and obvious should have existed in a comparatively im perfect state till our own times. The ancients seem

to

* Parents are restrained by law from leaving more than £2000 currency to a child of colour.

have trusted almost every thing to the intelligence and the mental grasp of the reader: for in the oldest MSS. not even the words are separated, and the larger breaks were often regulated by the size rather than by the sense. The editions, especially of the Greek Classics and Fathers, during the xvith and part of the xviith centuries, generally furnish but poor ocular accommodation. But it was for the most important of all writings to experience the hardest treatment in this respect. We have not room to describe the Titles supposed to have been invented by Tatian in the iid. century, or the Sections of Ammonius in the iiid., or the smaller divisions of rixo. Though these were not designed as a distribution raisonnée, they were not likely to be so injurious to the sense and connexion as the modern plan of division. Our present Chapters were cut out by Cardinal de Sancto Caro, who died in 1263; and from his time have been universally followed in the West of Europe. The subdivision of Verses, in imitation of the Pesukim introduced by the Masoretic Jews into the O. T. was made by the eminently learned and worthy Robert Stephens, on a journey from Paris to Lyons; and, for the first time, the numerals were marked in the margin of his small edition, 1551. But the solid mass of each page was not broken into detached fragments till 1557, in the English Genevan N. Test.

The division into chapters and verses is convenient for reference, and on that account is now necessary; but it may be, preserved in the margin, without interfering with a rational distribution of the Text itself. Yet the universal acquiescence in this division, especially since the versicular breaks were adopted by printers, has been seriously detrimental to the generality of readers. It stops the continuity of history: it breaks the links of argument: it blunts the edge of demonstration it obscures the felicity of illustrative and allusive imagery: it promotes confined and discrepant sentiments in religion: it induces some to regard the Scriptures as a cabinet of unconnected, and of course often discordant aphorisms, of which the men of party may select their parcels, each according to his system, his wishes, or his caprice.

To obviate these evils, various editions of the whole, or of parts, of the N. T. have been published within the last eighty or hundred years, both in the original and in translations. We have examples in our own country, in the Text which accompanies the expository works of Locke, Pierce, Benson, Doddridge, and Campbell. The pious and excellent Bengelius formed a most admirable disposition of the Text in his Ň. T. Gr. 1734; and this was followed by the Oxford editor of 1742, by Bowyer in 1763, and Nichols in 1782. Griesbach made the sections fewer. Newcome formed his own division, which

does not greatly differ from the pericopa of Bengelius: and we have not discovered, by our comparison, that the editors of the "Impr. Vers." have introduced any alterations from the primate. In all these editions, the common notation of chapters and verses for the conveniency of reference is displayed in the margin. That of 1763 even makes the breaks.

In affixing the stops, to ancient composures, according to the modern system of punctuation, the taste and judgement of editors are put to the trial; and there are instances of amphibologia, in which no exercise of judgement can produce incontrovertible certainty. Such cases, Griesbach, with laudable caution, and very advantageously to the biblical student, designates by an asterism.

With the general punctuation of the Improved Version," we are tolerably satisfied; and we think our readers will feel the same satisfaction, if, as a test, they turn to some of the more intricate parts of the epistles of St. Paul; for example, Rom. iv. v. vi. vii. 1. Cor. xii. xiv. xv. Eph. i. ii. iii. The light, which such passages receive from a judicious punctuation, is inconceivable to one that has not made the experiment. To Mr. Bowyer and his erudite friends Markland, Owen, &c. the praise is due of having led the way of this reformation -We have, however, noticed some instances of the punctuation in the I. V. to which we object; and a few are important enough to be adduced.

1. Tim. iii. 16. We have already remarked that the trans lation and the distinction here are at variance with the usage of the Greek language, and with the connection of the pas See p. 472 of the present volume.

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Rom. ix. 5, "whose are the fathers, and of whom, by natural descent, Christ came. God God who is over all be blessed for ever" Thus, by putting a full point after age, and regarding the remaining words as a devout apostrophe, the editors of the I. V. follow Enjedin and other Socinians in order to silence this signal testimony to the Deity of the Messiah. Locke proposed to insert the full stop after a. But to both these expedients there lies the solid objection, that they violate the usage of reek construction;; and in a point of idiom, too, so interwoven.

the texture of the language, in all its forms and dialects, as to have been preserved unaltered, notwithstanding the Hebraisms and other deviations from classic purity which characterize the New Testament. See this fact satisfactorily proved in

Dr. Middleton on the Greek Article, pp. 458-460. Feeling, it may be, some want of confidence in the former resource, Whitby, Taylor, Wakefield, and the present editors, have expressed a strong inclination to the conjecture of Jonas Schlictingius, that, instead of, we should read, as the

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