who rules on high;
Has he bid you buy and sell us,
Speaking from his throne, the sky?
Ask him, if your knotted scourges,
Fetters, blood-extorting screws,
Are the means, which duty urges
Agents of his will to use?

"Hark! he answers. Wild tornadoes,
Strewing yonder sea with wrecks,
Wasting towns, plantations, meadows,
Are the voice with which he speaks.
He, foreseeing what vexations
Afric's sons should undergo,
Fix'd their tyrants' habitations
Where his whirlwinds answer--No.

"By our blood in Afric wasted,
Ere our necks received the chain;
By the miseries, which we tasted
Crossing, in your barks, the main;
By our sufferings, since you brought us
To the man-degrading mart,
All sustain'd by patience, taught us
Only by a broken heart.

"Deem our nation brutes no longer,
Till some reason you shall find
Worthier of regard, and stronger,
Than the colour of our kind.
Slaves of gold! whose sordid dealings
Tarnish all your boasted powers,
Prove that you have human feelings,
Ere you proudly question ours."

This little piece, Cowper presented in manuscript to some of his friends in
London; and these, conceiving it to contain a powerful appeal in behalf of
the injured Africans, joined in printing it. Having ordered it on the
finest hot-pressed paper, and folded it up in a small and neat form, they
gave it the printed title of "A Subject for Conversation at the Tea-table."
After this, they sent many thousand copies of it in franks into the
country. From one it spread to another, till it travelled almost over the
whole island. Falling at length into the hands of the musician, it was set
to music; and it then found its way into the streets, both of the
metropolis and of the country, where it was sung as a ballad; and where it
gave a plain account of the subject, with an appropriate feeling, to those
who heard it.

Nor was the philanthropy of the late Mr. Wedgwood less instrumental in
turning the popular feeling in our favour. He made his own manufactory
contribute to this end. He took the seal of the committee, as exhibited in
the first volume, for his model; and he produced a beautiful cameo, of a
less size, of which the ground was a most delicate white, but the Negro,
who was seen imploring compassion in the middle of it, was in his own
native colour. Mr. Wedgwood made a liberal donation of these, when
finished, among his fr