Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands (Vol.1&2). Harriet Beecher StoweЧитать онлайн книгу.
yourselves in a Christian spirit, and in a Christian way continually, till you see that your admonitions have had a suitable influence. I do not doubt what you say, that you will receive with great pleasure men who come from the United States to promote the cause of temperance, and you may have the opportunity of showing your sincerity before long; and the manner in which you receive them will have a very important bearing on the subject of slavery. [Cheers.] I have not the least doubt you will hail with joy those who will come across the Atlantic to advance and promote still more earnestly those noble institutions, the ragged schools and the ragged churches. [Cheers.] The men who want to do good at home are the men who do good abroad; and the same spirit of Christian liberality that leads you to feel for the American slave will lead you to care for your own poor, and those in adverse circumstances in your own land, I would ask, Is it possible, then, that admonition and reproof given in a Christian spirit, and by a Christian heart, can fail to produce a right influence on a Christian spirit and a Christian heart? I think the thing is utterly impossible; and that if such admonitions as are contained in the resolution, conceived in such a spirit, and so kindly expressed—if they are not received in a Christian spirit, it is because the Christian spirit has unhappily fled. I can answer for myself, at least, and many of my brethren, that it will be so; and, so far from desiring you to withhold your expressions on account of any bad feeling that they might excite, I wish you to reiterate them, and reiterate them in the same spirit in which they are given in this resolution; for I believe that these expressions of impatience and petulance represent the feelings of very few. Who is it that always speaks first? The angry man, and it comes out at once; but the wise man keeps it in till afterwards; and it will not be long before you will find, that whatever you say in a Christian spirit will be responded to on the other side of the water. Now, I believe our churches have neglected their duty on this subject, and are still neglecting it. Many do not seem to know what their duty is. Yet I believe them to be good, conscientious men, and men who will do their duty when they know what it is. Take, for example, the American Board of Foreign Missions. There are not better men, or more conscientious men, on the face of the earth, or men more sincerely desirous of doing their duty; yet, in some things, I believe they are mistaken. I think it would be better to throw over the very few churches connected with the Board which are slaveholding, than to endeavor to sustain them, and to have all this pressure of responsibility still upon them. But yet they are pursuing the course which they conscientiously think to be right. Christian admonition will not be lost upon them.8 I will say the same of the American Home Missionary Society. They have little to do with slavery, as I have already remarked. Many think they ought not to say any thing upon the subject, because they cannot do so without weakening their influence. But then this question comes: If good men do not speak, who will?—[Hear, hear!]—and, as our Savior said in regard to the children that shouted, Hosannah, 'If these should hold their peace, the stones would immediately cry out.' It is in consequence of their silence that stones have begun to cry out, and they rebuke the silence and apathy of good men; and this is made an argument against religion, which has had effect with unthinking people; so I think it absolutely necessary that men in the church, on that very ground, should speak out their mind on this great subject at whatever risk—[cheers]—and they must take the consequences. In due time God will prosper the right, and in due time the fetters will fall from every slave, and the black man will have the same privileges as the white. [Applause.]"
Royal Highland School Society Dinner, At The Freemason's Tavern, London—May 14.
The Chairman, Sir Archibald Alison, gave "The health of her Grace the Duchess of Sutherland, and the noble patronesses of the Society," which was received with great applause. It was extremely gratifying, he said, to find a lady, belonging to one of the most ancient and noblest families of the kingdom, displaying so great an interest in their institution. [Cheers.] Not the least of their obligations to her Grace was the opportunity she had given them to offer their respects to a lady, remarkable alike for her genius and her philanthropy, who had come from across the Atlantic, and who, by her philanthropic exertions in the cause of negro emancipation, had enlisted the feelings and called forth the sympathies of thousands and tens of thousands on both sides of the ocean. [Tremendous cheering.] She had shown that the genius, and talents, and energies, which such a cause inspired, had created a species of freemasonry throughout the world; it had set aside nationalities, and bound two nations together which the broad Atlantic could not sever; and created a union of sentiment and purpose which he trusted would continue till the great work of negro emancipation had been finally accomplished. [Cheers.]
Professor Stowe responded to the allusion which had been made to Mrs. Stowe, and was greeted with hearty applause. He said he had read in his childhood the writings of Sir Walter Scott, and thus became intensely interested in all that pertained to Scotland. [Cheers.] He had read, more recently, his Life of Napoleon, and also Sir Archibald Alison's History of Europe. [Protracted cheers.] But he certainly never expected to be called upon to address such an assembly as that, and under such circumstances. Nothing could exceed the astonishment which was felt by himself and Mrs. Stowe at the cordiality of their reception in every part of Great Britain, from persons of every rank in life. [Cheers.] Every body seemed to have read her book. [Hear, hear! and loud cheers.] Everyone seemed to have been deeply interested, [cheers,] and disposed to return a full-hearted homage to the writer. But all she claimed credit for was truth, and honesty, and earnestness of purpose. He had only to add that he cordially thanked the Royal Highland School Society for the kindness which induced them to invite him and Mrs. Stowe to be present that evening. [Cheers.] The work in which the society was engaged was one that they both held dear, and in which they felt the deepest interest, inasmuch as that object was to promote the education of youth among those whose poverty rendered them unable to provide the means of education for themselves. [Hear, hear!] In such works as that they had themselves for most of their lives been diligently engaged. [Cheers.]
Antislavery Society, Exeter Hall—May 16.
The Earl Of Shaftesbury, who, on coming forward to open the proceedings, was received with much applause, spoke as follows: "We are assembled here this night to protest, with the utmost intensity, and with all the force which language can command, against the greatest wrong that the wickedness of man ever perpetrated upon his fellow-man—[loud cheers]—a wrong which, great in all ages—great in heathen times—great in all countries—great even under heathen sentiments—is indescribably monstrous in Christian days, and exercised as it is, not unfrequently, over Christian people. [Hear!] It is surely remarkable, and exceedingly disgraceful to a century and a generation so boastful of its progress, and of the institution of so many Bible societies, with so many professions and preachments of Christianity—with so many declarations of the spiritual value of man before God—after so many declarations of this equality of every man in the sight of his fellow-man—that we should be assembled here this evening to protest against the conduct of a mighty and a Protestant people, who, in the spirit of the Romish Babylon, which they had renounced, resort to her most abominable practices—making merchandise of the temples of God, and trafficking in the bodies and souls of men. [Cheers.] We are not here to proclaim and maintain our own immaculate purity. We are not here to stand forward and say, 'I am holier than thou.' We have confessed, and that openly, and freely, and unreservedly, our share, our heavy share, in by-gone days, of vast wickedness; we have, we declare it again, and we had our deep remorse. We sympathize with the preponderating bulk of the American people; we acknowledge and we feel the difficulties which beset them; we rejoice and we believe in their good intentions; but we have no patience—I at least have none—with those professed leaders, be they political or be they clerical, who mislead the people—with those who, blasphemously resting slavery on the Holy Scriptures, desecrate their pulpits by the promulgation of doctrines better suited to the synagogue of Satan—[cheers]—nor with that gentleman who, the greatest officer of the greatest republic in the whole world, in pronouncing an inaugural address to the assembled multitudes, maintains the institution of slavery; and—will