and truly I think they are wise in their own generation.  On other plantations, again, the same rigid discipline is not observed; and some planters and overseers go even farther than toleration; and encourage these devotional exercises and professions of religion, having actually discovered that a man may become more faithful and trustworthy even as a slave, who acknowledges the higher influences of Christianity, no matter in how small a degree.  Slave-holding clergymen, and certain piously inclined planters, undertake, accordingly, to enlighten these poor creatures upon these matters, with a safe understanding, however, of what truth is to be given to them, and what is not; how much they may learn to become better slaves, and how much they may not learn, lest they cease to be slaves at all.  The process is a very ticklish one, and but for the northern public opinion, which is now pressing the slaveholders close, I dare say would not be attempted at all.  As it is, they are putting their own throats and their own souls in jeopardy by this very endeavour to serve God and Mammon.  The light that they are letting in between their fingers will presently strike them blind, and the mighty flood of truth which they are straining through a sieve to the thirsty lips of their slaves, sweep them away like straws from their cautious moorings, and overwhelm them in its great deeps, to the waters of which man may in nowise say, thus far shall ye come and no farther.  The community I now speak of, the white population of Darien, should be a religious one, to judge by the number of Churches it maintains.  However, we know the old proverb, and, at that rate, it may not be so godly after all.  Mr. ——­ and his brother have been called upon at various times to subscribe to them all; and I saw this morning a most fervent appeal, extremely ill-spelled, from a gentleman living in the neighbourhood of the town, and whose slaves are notoriously ill-treated; reminding Mr. ——­ of the precious souls of his human cattle, and requesting a further donation for the Baptist Church, of which most of the people here are members.  Now this man is known to be a hard master; his negro houses are sheds, not fit to stable beasts in, his slaves are ragged, half-naked and miserable—­yet he is urgent for their religious comforts, and writes to Mr. ——­ about ’their souls, their precious souls.’  He was over here a few days ago, and pressed me very much to attend his church.  I told him I would not go to a church where the people who worked for us were parted off from us, as if they had the pest, and we should catch it of them.  I asked him, for I was curious to know, how they managed to administer the Sacrament to a mixed congregation?  He replied, Oh! very easily; that the white portion of the assembly received it first, and the blacks afterwards.  ’A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another, even as I have loved you.’  Oh, what a shocking mockery!  However, they show their faith at all events, in the declaration that God is no respecter of persons, since they do not pretend to exclude from His table those whom they most certainly would not admit to their own.