ten, that during the time of the discussion of the American question for the last thirty years, we have forgotten in reference to this sin of slavery, our own part in it. While we have often pointed the finger of scorn at our

is, not that we have this great meeting but that my countrymen have been so tardy in recognising-in thanking God for-in congratulating themselves about-and in sending congratulations to America over this grand achievement. I know of nothing in the transatlantic brethren, we have too often for

history of our country comparable to it. I gotten that we left them the legacy, and that am not going for one moment to under- it was easier for us to abolish slavery in a rate that grand event by which we struck distant colony than for them. But mark me, off the chains from 800,000 men thirty years my countrymen, when the history of the ago. It was one, if I may be allowed to men- struggle in America for the abolition of slation a matter concerning myself-one of the very comes to be written-as written it will events of my life that taught me to take an be-it will exhibit before the world a moral interest in politics. I was a boy then, and I manhood, and a spirit of self-sacrifice; such, remember my father making me sit up all perhaps, as we have never witnessed before. night to watch the sun rise on our country The struggles in the cause of right there have free from the curse of slavery. I see boys here been something more than our struggles here. to-night who will look back upon this event- They have struggled often with the halter this 18th of December which we have heard of round their necks. All that we have ever -and this grand meeting as one of the epochs had to fight against in this country, has been in their history which will help to make them a few hard words, and they do not break fight the battle of freedom when some of us many bones. All that we have had to fight are gone. Comparing it with that—as 800,000 against in this country, has been opposition is to 4,000,000—you have the difference be- from head-quarters, but there they have had tween the one and the other. I am not here to fight not only with opposition but blowsto-night to under-rate the greatness of that they have had to fight with the only weapons event-when the Corn Laws were abolished that the South could use-physical force-for in this country—it was a great thing to give they recognised nothing else. Was there not the people free bread, but as the soul is more something grand the other day when Lloyd important as man's higher interest in Garrison set for the last time the type of the this world, and in the next, are more impor- paper he first set thirty-two years ago, putting tant than the way in which he lives, so the at the head of it the motto, "I am in earnest, event which we are met to celebrate here to-I will be heard," and it is not given to mere night is greater than that. I am not here mortals often to live thirty years, starting, as to-night to depreciate that great period when he did, with such a little band, to see the we obtained the Reform Bill of 1832, and that great principle triumphant throughout the greater event of which we shall have notice whole of a great country. When he set before long. "There is a good time coming, up the last paper, what did he say? "You wait a little longer." But still I stand here Boston people have taken me round this city without fear of contradiction, to say that in three times with a halter round my neckthe face of all these events, the event which you Americans have tarred and featherd me― we are met to celebrate to-night, is the my life for the last 30 years was not worth an grandest of them all. It is the march of hour's purchase in the South,"—and his expe 4,000,000 of men from slavery into freedom.rience practically was the experience of thouNow, there is another reason why I am sands in America. We have not sympathised anxious to celebrate this event to-night. The Chairman has very properly said we had something to do with planting slavery in that country. I am rather afraid during the time of the discussion of the American question, for the last four years, we have often forgot.

with them as we ought to have done, and I stand here to-night to claim for that noble, that glorious band of moral heroes, the sympathy, the kindly feeling, and the prayers of every right-hearted man in England. There is another reason why I am anxious

that this meeting should give no uncertain across were disappointed they did not have it. sound to-night. I do not think we did America I will tell you, my countrymen, to-night, and justice in the last five years of the war, in all say from experiences which I will give you due deference to our excellent Chairman, and directly, because I am not a very long time that although I am a peace man and opposed from the United States-I say that they had to war, if there ever was a war that was a right to expect that sympathy, and not right, that war on the part of the North was having it, we have lost the power with Ameright. I stand here to say that if there ever rica which we ought to have had. Up to the has been a war in which I would have lifted time of that war America was sensitive althe sword it was in that mind. I am a peace most to a fault of English opinion, and I am man, nevertheless, for what I say, and I be- afraid we shall not have as much influence lieve that from the first, if the North had with America as we have had. America has fought the South as they ought to have learnt that she can conquer even without that fought them years ago, in a more determined sympathy, for though I speak it to the honour way, they might have avoided it, but you must of my country, I believe that never was a time take things as they are, and I say that when the when the majority of Englishmen were against South resolved that nothing but the sword them, though I believe that men in high should settle it, I thank God that the sword places, and the majority of the press in this settled it against them. And mark, my coun- country were trying to corrupt public opinion. trymen, it was not the North that appealed to My countrymen, I have another source of that sword; never forget the North never drew satisfaction to-night. I believe the discusthe sword till the South said we will settle it sion of the American war for the last four in no other way, and they drove the North at years, and the sympathy that has been shown last to this. They said you must let Slavery for the South in that time has deteriorated go over the whole of that country-you must public feeling in this country on the subject submit to the downfall of liberty or you must of slavery. We have not now the same feeltake the sword to put them down. And I re- ing as we had twenty years ago; it is one joice that when that challenge was thrown to of the things in which we have gone back. the North, they said you shall not-our coun- Do you think if there was the spirit in us try shall be free and whole, and there shall that there was in our fathers, that that vile not be a slave throughout its broad domains. thing could have occurred in Jamaica? Do (Cheers.) Never were the words of Scripture you think you could have the Times newsmore fully verified than in their experience. paper writing day after day to defend the "They took the sword and they perished by blackest atrocities that ever were committed the sword." And I rejoice, my countrymen, against our fellow creatures? My country. to-night, that in the same grave that buries men, that could not take place if our feelthe sword, there is the chain of the slave-ings, if our sentiments, if our thoughts on holder; and all the villainous hellish instru- this slavery question were as sound as the ments of his demoniacal power are buried in thoughts of our fathers five and twenty years the same grave with it. I am not here to- ago. Why, if half the cruelty that has been night to conceal from you the fact that we practised against the black race in Jamaica made a sore place in America during the dis-had been perpetrated against the whites, do cussion of that war. We did not do America you not think that every paper in the country justice; she did not want our help, she had a would have denounced it? I stand here toright to look for and wanted our sympathy-night to demand as much justice for a man they said here are we engaged in a great war, forced upon us by the unholy advocate of Slavery-you in England have been always pointing at us because we have been too friendly with the slave power-we want your sympathy-they expected it-and looking

with a coloured skin, as I do for a man with a white skin. (Hear, hear.) We will make use of this circumstance to bring our country. men up to that noble moral platform from which they have fallen, and, as the Times has been so utterly wrong for the last four

years on America, every prediction having between labour and capital, and I am not been falsified, every statement having been quite sure that we might not organise someproved to be untrue, so it will be equally thing of that sort with advantage in this wrong in reference to Jamaica, and we shall country. At any rate it is meeting the difficome out of this struggle with the public culty, and it is intended to say that the sentiment raised higher, and put on a diffe- coloured man shall not be purchased, thererent platform to what it has been before, fore I venture to stand here in your presence and I rejoice that out of this apparent evil and to say that I believe that the Americans to the Black there should come a real good. are not going to commit the same blunder as I have another reason for congratulating we did in Jamaica. They are not going to you here to-night, gentlemen, and, that is, I leave the carrying out of the emancipation have witnessed with my own eyes during the policy to men who want to defeat it. You last few months, the efforts that America is have put the carrying out of that anti-slamaking to overcome and to overreach the very policy into the hands of men who have great event that has come upon them. I stand been every day of their lives trying to defeat here to-night to admit that perhaps it would that policy. Now the Americans are not have been better to have had slavery abolished going to do that, they have put at the head gradually, and if the North could have had of this Department men like General Howard their way it would have been so. When Mr. -men who are as true as steel in the interest Lincoln was voted to that chair, he said that of the coloured man and the interest of the slavery should not exist. He and his party slave, and I believe that they are resolved to saw that if they circumscribed the area of see justice done between white and black, slavery it would die in the end, and the and I should not much wonder if the coloured South would not submit even to that, and man in America does not get votes before therefore it was that you had slavery abo- some of you working people in England. You lished suddenly. If there are any evils re- talk about the prejudice in America against sulting from this, I charge those evils upon colour; do not forget this, that one in five of the South, not upon the North. But I know the new votes prove that the coloured men what the North are now doing to meet those vote on equal terms with the white, and now great growing wants in the South. I had they have votes to defend. In the district of the pleasure while I was in Washington of Columbia, in Richmond, among the planters, spending a couple of hours with that noble and all over the South, I find a very growing man-and I shall ever rejoice that I did so- feeling in favour of giving coloured men I mean General Howard, the head of the votes. Many of the planters with whom I Freed-man's Bureau. You could not be in dined said, now that slavery is abolished we the company of that man without feeling that must carry the thing to its legitimate se. he was a gentleman of the highest Christian quence; and they told me that they saw character. They used to call him the "Hed- clearly enough they could not exclude a man ley Vicars" of the Northern army. I rejoice on account of his colour. Now the North are that the North has put that man in the posi- trying to meet the difficulty; they are sendtion he occupies. He has lost one arm in the ing school teachers and clergymen by thoubattle of Gettysburgh, but none of his intel- sands into the South-they are sending all lect, and none of his heart. When I was the appliances to meet their wants, and I rethere he was busily reorganising the rela-joice that England, who has been a partner tions between masters and servants, in re- in the guilt, resolves now to be a partner in ference to labour, and the principle on helping. I had an opportunity whilst I was which he was re-organising them was this: the master chose one representative and the coloured people chose another, and then those two chose an umpire. These three men were to settle all questions of dispute

there of conversing with the President of the United States in a very long and confidential conversation on this question, and whoever tells you in England (as the Times told you some time ago) that he is "a drunken sot,"

tells you what is not true. I stand here to- million of soldiers in the course of six months. night to say he has one of the finest intellects I had a long letter from General Grant only of any man I have ever met with, though, last week, and another from General Sherperhaps, his views on this slavery question man, and both of them spoke in the highest are not quite so advanced as those of that terms, and with the greatest confidence of the honoured man who occupied the Chair before future of their country in reference to this him, of that man who for four years the very question. And what pleased me still Times tried to slander, and who, when he more is this, my countrymen: they spoke died—when he fell by the hand of the assassin with the greatest earnestness of a desire for -could say "that there had fallen one of the union between England and America. (Hear, greatest men that the world had ever seen;" hear). That man deserves to be held up to and they shall say yet that Johnson, too, the execration of the whole human raceshall be one of the greatest men who has that man's name shall go down with infamy, ever been thrown into that position in Ame- that man's name shall be blotted out from all rica. I have conversed with Mr. Seward for that is noble, who tries to set these two coun. some time on this question-a man who seems tries at variance. Gentlemen, there shall not to look all over the world with one vision and only be union and freedom in America, but at one glance. And I had a long conversation there shall be union between the two great with Mr. Sumner, that man who fell under the branches of the Anglo-Saxon race. We must slave-holder's whip in his place in the Senate have, in this country, what I saw constantly House, and who-to the eternal disgrace of the occurring in that, the old union jack of our ladies of the South be it spoken-when his country and the stars and the stripes of theirs stick broke, received from them another, with waving in unison—waving in harmony-and the remark, "Hit him again." "I very much with England and America united and free, more value a gold-headed cane the ladies of the whole world will be blessed by their inthe North sent me the other day." (Laughter) fluence. There is another thing that I reI spoke for two or three hours with him on joice over. We were told all through that this question, and I feel as confident as I feel war the moment the North could see their way that I am standing here to-night that not only to union slavery would grow again; do you see slavery, but all that slavery has led to in that any symptoms of that? What means the country is gone; the curse of this has gone keeping of these Southern men out of the for ever, and the future of America shall be House of Congress? It means this, that the a future of union, shall be a future of liberty; North will have guarantees for the protection the stars and stripes shall only cover the free of the coloured race before those gentlemen and equal. I met and had the honour of come back. I was being entertained at Rich. speaking with General Grant and General mond at the house of old Jeff. Davis, by Sherman, and all I can say is that when a General Terry. I sat at his table just six country can throw such men on the surface months from the time he left that table, and of political life, and can throw such generals I believe I occupied his chair more worthily in the front as they have thrown there, who than he had done, when he was there. I are glad to go back to civil life, there is believe when I was there an honest man not much to fear-General Grant told me was in it. (Great Laughter.) I was being that there was 1,300,000 men in arms not entertained by General Terry, and I will tell six months before I landed in the country, you what happened while I was there. There a million of them had already gone back into came information to the General that a civil life. When the newspapers of this coun- coloured woman had been shot by a a planter try were telling us that America was going without reason. General Terry said noto become a great military despotism, I put body but coloured people had seen the act, that fact before you, and I ask you whether and he signed an order while I was in the there is any chance of a country becoming a house to have that planter taken up and tried great military despotism that can absorb a by that coloured testimony, and he said if

that coloured testimony convicted him "I swamps in search of freedom; he had followed will hang him as sure as he is a living man, the North star, and he had got at last into to show the Virginians that in the future that ship, but ere the keel of the ship had coloured testimony shall be received on equal touched the shore the man had bounded over, terms with that of the white man." For be and with one grand swim had got to the shore, it remembered, my countrymen, that one of and was kissing the ground upon which he lay. the blessings of the abolition of slavery has I do not wonder that my friend said that it was been this, that if, before, twenty coloured one of the grandest sights he ever looked men saw a crime committed that did not con- upon. And now I ask you if that was grand vict the man who committed it, but in the -the sight of one-what is it when 4,000,000 future the coloured testimony shall be taken are thus able to kiss the ground. Now let me in the South as white testimony is taken; tell you in conclusion, that with slavery thus we shall have the abolition of slavery abolished, there is a great future for that not in name only but in reality. Now, then, country. In twenty years time there will be from all these considerations I ask for your sixty millions of people there. I have the sympathy, and ask for your cordial greeting means of knowing that there will be nearly a of this great movement to-night. I ask that million of persons emigrating to that country you shall send across the Atlantic to-night this year, and I rejoice, my countrymen, that no uncertain sound that you rejoice with your there is a country where, if a man cannot brethren that that great curse has been re- succeed in Europe he can go to and succeed; moved. When I was there, there were two there is a country where labour is respected; States still under the curse of slavery. I that there is a country where the soil is open went into one of them-Kentucky; those two | to every man. And if you ask me to-night, States had not seceded, therefore the war what I saw there which showed me the source measure of Mr. Lincoln had not reached them, of American greatness, and American power but the Constitutional Amendment has-speaking of the physical cause-I say it is reached them, and now there is not a State in America where there is a single slave; and they can sing as truly in America to-night as we can sing in England, the man that breathes American air are like the men who breathe British air-they are for ever free. Do you ever try to think what it is to be free? While I was in America I heard this glorious fact: there was a gentleman there who told me he had seen almost every great sight in the world-he had seen Mont Blanc, he had looked down over the finest and grandest sights in Europe. He had come down the Rhine, and seen all that is grand there-he had stood on the foaming heights of Niagara, and seen all that is grand there-but what was it ? He was once crossing the Lakes from the United States to Canada, and he said as the vessel was going across he saw a man looking out at the prow of the ship, evidently gazing out at the land that was in front of him, and he saw there was a little tinge of coloured blood in his veins, and he thought he was a slave trying to escape. This poor fellow had probably gone through the

the interest every man has in its soil. I found hundreds of thousands of men there who had gone from our country, and they said to me "there we were labourers; now here we are farmers with our 160 acres of land." One man I shall never forget, who went from my neighbourhood, who said, “I had four sons; I have sent three of them to the war-one has come back with his leg off. I have an interest in this country, and I will not allow my country to be dismembered; that is why I can rejoice. When these men have done their work, they can go back to civil life, and gain an interest in the soil. I rejoice there is a country where our language is spoken, where our bible is read-where there is freedom-where every man is educated-for, mark, I passed through nearly the whole of that country, and I did not meet with one who could not read or write-not one. I went from the Atlantic seaboard to the Mississippi, and never found a man who asked me for alms. There was one coloured man whom Mr. Seward put me under the care of one day, who took me a little journey. I of.