perpetrate acts of fiendish cruelty. Travellers in the interior of Africa tell us that the curse of the Dark Continent, greater perhaps than the slave trade itself, is witchcraft. If a man is taken ill, he is supposed to be bewitched, and he cannot recover until the person who has bewitched him is found and put to death. Here come in a class of medicine-men, or fetish-men, who claim to have the power of detecting by secret signs those who have bewitched the sick, and this pretended power they use to gratify their own malignity or revenge. M. du Chaillu once described to me the horrible scenes which he had witnessed in an African village, particularly the fate of a beautiful girl who ran to him shrieking in despair, and whom he tried to save, but in vain.
These fetish-men are really professional murderers, as much as the Thugs of India. If an African king were to become so far civilized as to get his eyes open to the horrible cruelty of these demons in human form, could he make a better use of his knowledge or of his power than to seize them as the most conspicuous examples of crime and its punishment? Might he not rightfully do to them as they had caused to be done to so many others? The public execution of a score of those who had been most active and most brutal, might break the spell which they had exercised over the unhappy children of Africa.
It is vain here to make a comparison between the feeble Jewish Commonwealth and the majestic Roman Empire, which, when it ruled the earth, tolerated all religions, and received injury from none. That had other elements of unity — power, conquest, and dominion. It was in no danger of being mingled and lost in other nations, since it ruled over all.
Far different was the state of the children of Israel, not yet formed into a nation, wandering like a caravan
