A draft for five thousand pounds had obtained me the honor of being advertised as a shareholder and a patron; and, I know not why!--but it certainly caused me to inquire into the results with far more interest than I had ever before felt in any similar institution.

Perhaps this benevolent anxiety arose from that principle in our nature which induces us to look after whatever has been our own as long as any part of it can be seen.
The principal trustee of the Philo-African-anti-compulsion-free-labor Society now wrote to state that some of the speculations which had gone pari passu with the charity had been successful, and that the shareholders were, by the fundamental provisions of the association, entitled to a dividend, but--how often that awkward word stands between the cup and the lip!--BUT that he was of opinion the establishment of a new factory near a point where the slavers most resorted, and where gold-dust and palm-oil were also to be had in the greatest quantities, and consequently at the lowest prices, would equally benefit trade and philanthropy; that by a judicious application of our means these two interests might be made to see-saw very cleverly, as cause and effect, effect and cause; that the black man would be spared an incalculable amount of misery, the white man a grievous burden of sin, and the particular agents of so manifest a good might quite reasonably calculate on making at the very least forty per cent.

per annum on their money besides having all their souls saved in the bargain.

Of course I assented to a proposition so reasonable in itself, and which offered benefits so plausible! The next epistle was from the head of a great commercial house in Spain in which I had taken some shares, and whose interests had been temporarily deranged by the throes of the people in their efforts to obtain redress for real or imaginary wrongs.

My correspondent showed a proper indignation on the occasion, and was not sparing in his language whenever he was called to speak of popular tumults.