The Camden Journal

From the Augusta Chronicle.
BRITISH PHILANTHROPY.

The benevolence of British philanthropists encompasseth the earth! How eager is it to civilize and Christianize barbarous nations and savage tribes! How alert to put a stop to the slave trade, and give freedom to the slave! Even our benighted land is made to feel the influence of this world-enlightening sun—whether for good or for evil, is a subject of discussion.

Picture, drawn by the Boston Atlas— what would British philanthropists say of our Southern planters, if, when their slaves become too old or infirm to earn a living, they were to ship them to London or Liverpool, to live upon the charities of a foreign people, or to die in the streets? Would it be worse thus to dispose of an old infirm negro slave, than a white free man? Is this trade of shipping paupers against their will a whit better than the African slave-trade? Thank God, there is nothing in the system of slavery, as it exists in this country, one half as horrible.

From the Atlas.

"EXECRABLE BARBARITY.—By statements in various quarters, it seems that the English are pushing, with desperate vigor, the means begun by them some time since, to get rid of their pauper population. At every opportune occasion, the half-starved inmates of their alms-houses are packed off like cattle, in vessels hired to convey them to the United States. In this way the parish officers of many towns have already freed themselves of a vast number of diseased, blind, decrepid, old deformed, and helpless beings.— These poor men and women, who are English by birth; after expending their youth, the flower of their lives—exhausting themselves, body and mind, to subserve the cupidity, and administer to the wants of a purse-proud, luxurious, and never satisfied aristocracy—these broken down people, who, in the extremity of their age and destitution, have the strongest of all human claims upon the sympathies and charities of their country men—these unfortunate and suffering beings are now made outcasts of their own fellow citizens; expatriated against their will; sent, in despite of their prayers and tears, thousands of miles over the seas, to a foreign clime; and there, without a single hope this side of the grave, must speedily end their days in wretchedness and misery—deprived even of the solace that their mortal bodies might rest, at last, in the land where they were born and labored so long!

Where, in the annals of all the nations of the earth, can be found an act more abhorrent, barbarous or execrable than this? Great Britain the most enlightened and potent of empires, is now covering up her other foul and bloody deeds, by this, the blackest and most unnatural of public crimes!"