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    other hearts and minds may have been more potent in many of the several particulars which arrested his attention , but it may with truth be said of him , that he has , in a variety of important instances , given an impulse to good feeling and to active benevolence which is every day more deeply felt and more widely

    acknowledged . Fifteen years before the formation of the association whose object it was to do away with the slave-trade , we find him , then a young townsman of Liverpool , scarce , indeed , more than a boy , * eloquently protesting against that iniquitous traffic , in his poem of ' Mount Pleasant . ' Itrhis latter years , his zealous and vehement remonstrance with the American legislatures Hid

    very much , if , indeed , it did not do more than the remonstrance of any other person , towards procuring the substitution of daily labour in prisons , together with solitary confinement at night , for the horrible punishment of entire loneliness and absence of all employment .

    'Against this inhuman and unchristian like system / says he , in a letter to Dr . Hosack , of New York , ( dated 13 th July , 1830 , just a year before his death , ) ' my humble voice has been raised , amongst those of many others of more importance , for several years past ; but it is only a few weeks since I learnt , by a communication of authentic documents from Philadelphia , that the legislature have at length given

    way to the feelings of humanity , and have determined that the convicts shall be allowed to labour in the day , and shall be instructed for that purpose , as well as in whatever else may be requisite for their reformation . * * * By this decision , I conceive the great question of prison discipline , as far as regards the United States , is finally settled ; every other place , except Philadelphia , having already adopted that plan , thereby making crime to counteract itself , and repair , as far

    as possible , the evils it has occasioned . In no country has this principle been so well understood , and carried so far , as in your own ; and the relinquishment of it for the Bastile system of solitary confinement , would have grieved me more than I can express ; but thank God , my dread of that is over . / shall now die in peace , convinced that the time will come when my own country will follow the example . *

    On another occasion , still nearer the close of his career , we find this venerable man , then , as he says , fast approaching his eightieth year , starting up to dictate to La Fayette a most animated congratulation on the French Revolution of 1830 . 'My dear Sir , —I can speak on no other subject till I have returned

    my earnest thanks to God , and congratulated you on * the wonderful events which have taken place in France , &c . This is the first time in my life when I have seen the triumph of liberty complete , and a foundation laid for the perpetual extirpation of slavery and oppression from every part of the civilized world / And he then proceeds to seize this important opportunity for * He was not mow than nioiteta ,

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    On the Life and Character of the late Mr . Roscoe . 671

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Oct. 2, 1833, page 671, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2624/page/11/