My
Lord: Two events of recent occurrence -- trifling in themselves,
except when regarded in connection with the peculiar circumstances
of the times in which they occurred -- have contributed more
towards the identification of your lordship's name with the
political convulsion which the year of our Lord one thousand
eight hundred and sixtyone is now witnessing in America, and
with the anti-slavery movement, in which it has had its origin,
than all which you have hitherto accomplished, during your long
and brilliant career as an English statesman.
With
a zeal which has known no flagging -- with a resolution which
was appalled by no probable or possible consequences -- with
an ability which is fully accorded by your adversaries -- and
with an earnestness which would seem to preclude any doubt of
your sincerity, you have labored for the overthrow of that institution
of African slavery in America, which has existed from a period
long anterior to the incorporation of the Republic in the family
of nations.
In
this lifetime labor, however, you have been identified with
others of your compatriots, who have exhibited the same pertinacity
of purpose, and who have probably acquired a reputation almost
equal to your own as the great exponents of English sentiment
and English policy.
It
has been the fortune of your lordship through the instrumentality
of the two events referred to, to inscribe your name far above
those of your fellow-laborers, in the roll of the recognized
exemplars of British sentiment and British policy.
The
first of these occasions offered to your lordship the opportunity,
in an assembly of distinguished dignitaries from almost every
nation of the civilized world, of proclaiming, in effect, your
belief in the equality of the races of man, and the special
claim of an African then present to be regarded as a worthy
and fit associate for the noble Peers of England.
If
your lordship had been contented with the utterance of this
simple expression of opinion, it would probably have been forgotten
by those who were your auditors, almost as soon as uttered.
If, by any accident, a representative man of the millions of
Anglo-Saxon blood and Anglo-Saxon color, who have sighed in
vain to attain to that social rank and station which you so
readily accorded in that august assemblage of princes, and nobles,
and statesmen, to this sooty African, had bestowed a passing
notice upon this paragraph in your lordship's speech, the subject
would doubtless have been dismissed after a brief commentary,
with the very natural and charitable observation, that a Peer
of England had an undoubted right to choose his own associates,
and might be expected to comprehend better than another the
qualifications and characteristics of those who should be regarded
as worthy of such association.
But
your lordship entertained a deeper purpose. You desired to hold
up to obloquy a great nation on the opposite side of the Atlantic;
and, in order to startle your audience by the magnitude and
the enormity of its crimes, you proclaimed the presence of the
diplomatic representative of that nation which held in the bonds
of slavery millions of a race of people, of which you then and
there presented a faithful type, and to whom you assigned an
equality of social rank with the noble order of which your lordship,
in the estimation of your fellow-countrymen, is a faithful representative.
Your
lordship's design was skilfully, and artistically, and dramatically
executed. To be received and acknowledged as a peer, in such
an assembly, was certainly, in your lordship's estimation, to
be placed upon a pinnacle of social and moral elevation which
few could hope to reach; while the doom of the slaves upon the
plantations of America was a degradation beyond which there
was no lower depth. The worthy representative of the oppressed,
and the official representative of the hated oppressor, were
both present before you. Both were in a foreign land, and both
were strangers, and your guests. Disregarding these pressing
claims upon your forebearance -- acting, it may be, upon the
conviction that the claims of God and humanity were more than
paramount to all other considerations, you held them up, as
it were, to the gaze of your audience as representatives of
the victim and of the enslaver -- of virtue and of vice -- of
freedom and of despotism -- of all that was worthy to be loved,
and of all that should be hated.
The
occasion was one which precluded reply or explanation. The generous,
the refined, the intellectual, the noble representative of a
despised and down-trodden race, stood revealed before your sympathizing
audience, in all the majesty of injured innocence; while there,
too, stood the spoiler -- the embodiment of the stupendous crime
of his country.
It
would probably be presumptuous in me to question the good taste
displayed by your lordship, either in your choice of the occasion,
or in your manner of treating one of these stranger guests.
I am willing to concede that your lordship should know better
than I the rules of politeness and good breeding proper to be
observed in an assemblage of nobles and high dignitaries, gathered
together in the great capital of the civilized world, and presided
over by the Prince Consort of England's noblest Queen. Upon
this collateral point, I would not dare to make up an issue
with your lordship, the more especially as your audience, by
the applause with which it greeted your remarks, has already
recorded its verdict in your favor.
The
main purpose of your lordship was achieved -- the contrast you
suggested startled the world by its magnitude. The irrelevancy
of the subject to that which your auditors had assembled to
consider, gave to the incident a notoriety which was magnified
by its very isolation; while the event has been perpetuated
in the memory of the multitude by the princely character of
the audience before whom the scene was so dramatically enacted.
From that moment, America has recognized in the questionable
gallantry of your achievement, the qualities which have made
you the great champion of British abolitionism.
I
will now pass to the second event, which has served, in a still
greater degree, by expanding the field of your operation, to
strengthen and to confirm you in the position which, by common
consent, had been previously assigned to you. But, before entering
directly upon the subject, allow me to refer to an incident
which occurred, not a great while ago, at a spot more than three
thousand miles distant from that great centre of civilization
in which your lordship moves.
A
murderer in another continent closed a long career of crime
under the gallows! There was nothing peculiar in this fact,
for such has been often the fate of murderers in England, in
America, and elsewhere. But this was a villain of no ordinary
stamp. His victims were not stalwart men alone, but defenceless
women and little children. He did not slay in the glare of the
noonday sun, as a common robber at the head of his band of retainers,
but he killed in the quiet hours of the night, and the slumbers
of innocence were startled by the death-shrieks of his unsuspecting
victims. But his crimes had not their beginning in those for
which he suffered an ignominious death. They extended over a
series of years; and the last, for which with his life he paid
the forfeit, was by no means the worst. I myself have seen and
known the unhappy victims of his earlier crimes. I have seen
and known the happy wife and mother -- happy in the innocence
and purity of her life, though humble in her station -- and
I have seen her again in all the desolation of a childless widowhood.
Dreadful, indeed, were the scenes through which that poor woman
passed during the brief space of one short night. She was sleeping
in fancied security when the spoilers came to her humble log
cabin, and passed through the unbarred door to the bedsides
of her sleeping husband and children. Your lordship knows the
rest, and I will be brief. They were four when they lay down
to rest, that dreadful night. The morning dawned upon the living
woman, surrounded by the lifeless and mutilated bodies of her
husband and children.
The
chief criminal in this drama of blood, emboldened by immunity,
changed the scene and enlarged the field of his operations.
At Harper's Ferry, he again unsheathed his bloody dagger, and
again was the hour of midnight made terrible by the death-struggles
of his unwatching victims. Am I not right, then, in saying that
John Brown was a villain of no ordinary stamp? Sane men, in
a contemplation of the magnitude of his crimes, have said that
he was mad, while madmen have exalted the demon into a saint,
and mourn for him as a martyr in a holy cause!
It
was upon the 3rd day of December, 1860, that his friends and
partisans assembled in the city of Boston, to celebrate the
first anniversary of his martyrdom.
Previous
to that time, a letter had been addressed to your lordship by
the "Committee of Managers," inviting you to be present
upon that occasion, and to join in that celebration.
Those
who knew the fact that such an invitation had been addressed
to your lordship, were eager to learn in what manner you would
respond. The first impression would naturally be, that your
lordship would treat the massive with the dignified silence
and disdain with which a nobleman of your lordship's exalted
standing might be expected to meet a gross and studied insult;
or, that your indignation, obtaining the mastery of your better
judgment, might induce you, in that burning eloquence of words,
which your lordship can so readily command, to hurl back the
insult in the faces of your traducers; or, milder and more humane
than either, and, perhaps, more in consonance with the gentle
manners which might be expected to distinguish those through
whose veins flows gentle blood, you would have responded, "It
is not my sins but your insanity, which has led you to believe
that I could hold fellowship with the partisans and admirers
of an assassin. Go! you are madmen, and I forgive you."
These
thoughts, I confess, were my thoughts, and that I give them
voice here will show to your lordship that I did not rank you
amongst the vicious and blood-thirsty fanatics with whom a common
sentiment, upon a single point, had served in some measure to
identify you. Besides, I will add, that my high respect for
the exalted order to which you belong, as well as the position
in which you stand towards the occupant of a throne, induced
in my mind the belief that you would, in some manner, exhibit
your horror of the crime of assassination, and with such an
emphasis that even madmen might never again give expression
to the thought that an English nobleman could have any sympathies
in common with either assassins or their partisans.
Pardon
me, my lord, if I, in unconscious ignorance, did not estimate,
at their proper value, the refined principles of that "higher
law" which have been incorporated among the doctrines of
that socalled great humanitarian anti-slavery party, of which
you are so distinguished a chief.
At
first view it might occasion surprise that the "philanthropists"
of Great Britain should seem to shut their eyes to the spectacle,
and their ears to the wail of woe which rises up around them
from the millions of the unhappy, the destitute, and depressed,
of their own race and kin, who live through life a lingering
death, while they have only eyes to see, and ears to hear, and
tears to shed over the reputed wrongs of a handful of Africans
upon the far-off shores of a continent beyond the Atlantic.
But it is necessary in charity to remember that the degradation
and wrongs of the one are familiar to them from youth to old
age. It is an oft-told tale, to which they have become accustomed,
familiar, and perhaps indifferent from its constant repetition.
They are probably appalled by the magnitute of the evil, and
ask to forget its existence and their obligations by the exhibition
of redoubled zeal in the cause of those whom their imaginations,
excited by heart-rending romances, picture as the victims of
sorrow and oppression in a far distant land.
From
this brief but not unnatural digression, I will return to the
subject of the invitation which was given to you to participate
in the celebration in memory of John Brown, the great American
murderer. Permit me to refresh your memory with the first lines
of your response to the committee in your own language:
"Sir:
I feel honored by the invitation to attend the Boston Convention."
Upon
reading these few emphatic words, I paused and re-read the letter
of invitation which had been addressed to you, to discover if
I had not, in my hasty perusal thereof, misunderstood its import
and object. I beg to quote its words:
"My
Lord: A number of young men, earnestly desirous of devoting
themselves to the work of eradicating slavery in the United
States, respectfully invite you to meet them in a public convention,
to be held in this city on Monday, the 3d day of December. *
* * * * It seems to them that the anniversary of the death of
John Brown, who was killed for attempting to decide this problem
in the mode that he believed to be the most efficient, is an
occasion peculiarly appropriate for the discussion of our duty
to the race for whom he suffered. * * * * * It would be a work
of supererogation now to defend John Brown, and a useless waste
of time to eulogize him. Leaving both these duties to the coming
ages, let us seek to continue his life by striving to accomplish
what he left us to finish."
It
is true, my lord, that you modified somewhat the only legitimate
interpretation of your first emphatic endorsement. True, as
"the representative of the anti-slavery party in England,"
you avowed a wide difference of opinion between those you represented
and the promoters of the Harper's Ferry expedition. True, you
denied that John Brown was a real martyr. True, you declared
your opposition to the encouragement of negro insurrections,
because "they might prove less hurtful to the master than
the slave." True, you intimated that the surest means of
accomplishing your cherished schemes of American negro emancipation
was under the form of law, through the instrumentality of a
recent political change in the Government of the Republic! But
preëminent above all other considerations which are suggested
by a perusal of your letter, stands forth the declaration that
you "feel honored by the invitation to attend the Boston
Convention!"
What
a spectacle is here presented, and how fruitful a theme for
reflection! An English nobleman shaking hands across the ocean
and transmitting pleasant messages to such an assemblage, convened
for such a purpose!
Itis,
perhaps, not unworthy of a passing thought, that while some
of your admirers have hailed your letter as furnishing evidence
of the conservatism and moderation of British abolitionism,
many have regarded your slight deviation from the bloody path
of an extreme fanaticism as too great a concession to the dictates
of an uncalculating and weakly-relenting humanity.
I
confess that upon this subject there is a chasm between us,
so broad and so deep, that I have not the hardihood to attempt
to fill it up. I cannot hope even that anything will ever occur
to reduce the breadth of this impassable gulf to smaller dimensions.
But
pardon me, my lord, if I suggest the possibility that you may
not have fully appreciated the deep significance of the first
sentence of your memorable letter. Did you reflect upon the
powerful influence which your slightest word of encouragement
might exercise upon the furious madmen whom you addressed? Do
you believe they will fail to infer that while you disclaim
sympathy with John Brown's plans of emancipation "because
they are less likely to result in injury to the master than
the slave," you will, nevertheless, regard it as an honor
to be invited to attend the celebrations consequent upon the
death of other martyrs in the same cause? Do you excuse yourself,
my lord, with the thought that it is only the assassins of slave-holders
in America who are worthy to be treated with so much kindness,
respect, and forbearance? Have you forgotten from whom, and
under whose auspices, American slaves were acquired as chattels?
May I be pardoned for saying that in the family of the writer
there is a slave, bought and paid for by my ancestor from a
British subject in a British province, under the solemn sanction
and approval of British laws, and who is now held as a slave
under the guarantee of a British title deed? Should another
John Brown, under the pretext of giving freedom to this slave,
slay the owner thereof, and for his crime suffer a felon's death,
would your lordship feel honored by an invitation to attend
the anniversary celebration of his "martyrdom?" Your
lordship has already answered the interrogatory in the affirmative.
The
day may come, my lord, when "even-handed justice will commend
the ingredients of the poisoned chalice to your own lips."
There are more shining marks for the assassin's dagger than
the slave-owners of America! Millions of lives stand between
the honored felon and the accomplishment of his bloody work
of philanthropy; a thousand times your lordship might have the
privilege of acknowledging "the honor" of invitations
to attend and participate in the celebration of events similar
to those which were enacted at Harper's Ferry, and as often
might "English philanthropy" palliate or excuse the
crimes in which they had their origin, and still there would
be a sea of living blood coursing through the veins of slaveholders!
There are millions of the human race who, bound in the chains
of political servitude, are ready to believe that they behold
but one living man standing between themselves and the liberty
to which they aspire! that one life less, and the fetters would
fall from their liberated limbs! You may truly believe, my lord,
that no such danger may threaten England's Sovereign. Even madmen
would not strike at one whose noble virtues have added a brighter
gem to the British Crown than was ever placed there by the valor
of British arms. But England's best and noblest Queen must die,
and be succeeded by sovereigns who may not imitate her virtues.
If a British nobleman, of such world-wide reputation for statesmanship
and philanthropy as your lordship, endeavors to instil into
the public mind the belief that it is a real honor for an honorable
man to be invited to join in rendering homage to the virtues,
the moral worth, and the philanthropic services of an admitted
midnight assassin, whose only virtue, or worth, or service in
the cause of humanity, whose only claim to distinction above
other cut-throats, beyond that notoriety which always attaches
to the most revolting murderers, consists in the fact that he
killed ostensibly in the cause of the so-called great humanitarian
anti-slavery movement of the age; you need not be surprised,
if others, who have real or imaginary wrongs to redress, may,
while rejecting your peculiar idiosyncrasy, accept this as a
means of redress. There are those who from the depths of their
bleeding hearts, and for the redress of grievous wrongs which
they themselves have suffered at the hands of their own race,
would feel and say "If this be a real honor, which a British
nobleman may covet, how much more honorable to be invited to
participate in saturnalia of nobler blood!" May Heaven
grant that neither your lordship nor any other may ever again
be called upon to acknowledge the honor of an invitation to
join in the celebration of such a feast!
But
your lordship's response has satisfied me that though you may
be a fanatic, you are not a madman. Though you may move fearlessly
upon the brink of the precipice, you will not plunge bodily
into the abyss into which you invite others to descend. You
will not place in jeopardy that which you conceive to be the
policy of England, by permitting it to be fully identified with
the crime of assassination -- the more especially as you imagine
that you perceive in recent political events a more effectual
means of accomplishing your ends, with less probability of injury
to the slave than the master.
I
come now, my lord, to consider a paragraph in your letter, which,
containing, as it does, a grave personal charge against myself,
constitutes within itself my claim and my apology for addressing
you. Your lordship may mentally respond to this announcement,
that not the most insignificant thing alive was farther from
your thoughts than the unknown writer who now demands and exercises
the privilege of repelling your unjust imputations, that he
has never once "passed between the wind and your nobility,"
and that you have, therefore, never given to him a cause of
offence.
In
order to refresh your lordship's memory, I beg to refer you
to the closing sentences of your response to the Boston committee.
The following is your language:
In
the elevation of your new President, all friends of America,
of its continued Union, of the final extinction of slavery,
by peaceful means, all friends of the human race must heartily
rejoice! They will, let us hope, find in him a powerfully ally,
as his country may expect to find an able, a consistent, and
an honest ruler. I have the honor to be, your faithful servant,
Brougham.
I
have italicized that portion of the above paragraph to which
I claim the right of response. While I will not pause to consider
the phenomenon which is exhibited in your expressions of friendly
regard and sympathy for, and confidence in, an American President;
yet, I beg to say, that it at least furnishes evidence of a
wonderful change in the sentiments of British politicians in
regard to the chiefs of the Republic. At the end of a long night
of horrors and misrule, your lordship sees bursting over the
horizon the bright and glorious sunshine, which is hereafter
to illumine the career of the Republic. By the early light of
this dawning luminary you imagine that you behold in the not
distant future, the end of that terrible conflict between brothers
and fellow-countrymen, which you hope will in its results be
less hurtful to the slave than his master. You, perhaps, imagine
that in a very brief period the nation which Great Britain failed
to conquer with her mighty sword, even in the dawn of its infant
existence, will have fallen an easy victim to that subtle policy,
by which you and your co-laborers have endeavored to arm its
citizens in a fratricidal war. If the merit of a deed may be
measured by its success, I grant that your lordship, as the
representative of British policy, may boast that you are upon
the point of achieving a greater triumph by the subtle arts
of diplomacy, than has ever been won by British arms, during
a long and brilliant and bloody career.
In
contemplating the possibility of such a catastrophe, one is
tempted to exclaim, Was ever nation before so wooed, so won!
Your own King Richard had less cause to hope for success, when
he sought to win the widow of the murdered Edward. And in surveying
the victory you have achieved, you may well recall the words
in which he vaunted his victory over the weak Lady Anne, and,
with a slight change of phraseology, apply them to your own
triumph:
I'll
have her, but I will not keep her long: What! I, that killed
her husband, and his father! The bleeding witness of her hatred
by,
With God, her conscience, and these bars against me,
And I, no friend to back my suit withal,
But the plain devil, and dissembling looks --
And yet to win her! all the world to nothing!
Were
this communication addressed to my fellow-countrymen, instead
of to your lordship, I might beg them to remember this farewell
injunction of the Father of his Country -- the immortal Washington:
Against
the insidious wiles of foreign influence, I conjure you to believe
me, fellow-citizens, the jealousy of a free people ought to
be constantly awake; since history and experience prove that
foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of Republican
Government.
I
might pray them to consider that foreign nations rarely, if
ever, mingle in the internal conflicts of a rival power, for
any other than selfish purposes. I might point to the long and
brilliant career of your own great country, and demand in vain
to be informed of a solitary instance in which the footsteps
of Great Britain might be traced upon the soil of a foreign
land, except in the accomplishment of her own agrandizement.
I might say to them, and I might prove that British anti-slavery
fanaticism is but the creature and the servant of British policy,
owing its origin and its development to what was supposed to
be a political necessity, and that though your lordship might
write as a fanatic, you have never failed to remember that you
are also a British politician! Yes, my lord, if I thought that
my voice would be listened to in the madness of the hour, I
would appeal to my countrymen, with the earnestness of conviction,
to resist with all the energy of a determined will, and to repel
as an insult not to be forgiven, every effort of the foreigner
to embroil them in fratricidal conflicts, even though attempted
under the garb of philanthropy. I would say to them, that however
gratifying it might be to have the sympathies, and to win the
smiles of the great of other lands, the hopes which may be built
thereon will prove delusive; the promises of succor will, in
the day of adversity, be forgotten, and all the bright anticipations
which may have their origin in such an association, will, like
the apples of Sodom which tempt the eye of the traveller upon
the shores of the Dead Sea, turn to ashes on the lips!
Perhaps,
though, your lordship's visions of the future of the Republic
may prove delusive. Perhaps your own unguarded words, written
in the first flush of an anticipated but not yet fully accomplished
victory, may of themselves induce a momentary pause in the made
career which you and your associates have inaugurated. Perhaps,
when they read your lordship's letter, a burning thought of
days long past, when, as a band of brothers, their fathers,
by their bloody valor, conquered liberty from their hostile
invaders, may penetrate their hearts. Perhaps the retrospect
may reinaugurate once more that feeling of fraternity which
animated their ancestors "in the days that tried men's
souls." Or, if they cannot agree to live together as brothers
in one family, that they will, in memory of a glorious past,
with all its heart-thrilling associations, in memory of the
blood of their sires, mingled together upon many a hard-fought
battle-field, consent at least to part as friends. The end may
not be yet, my lord. Out of the clouds may emerge a sun, more
resplendent than even that which seems to you now to be setting
in a starless night.
But
your lordship, plunging into the arena of party politics in
America, hails the recent defeat of that political organization,
which has ruled and guided the destinies of the Republic from
the first moment of its existence to the present day, as an
event in which "all friends of America -- all friends of
the human race must heartily rejoice." If your lordship
should happen to remember that, during brief intervals in the
history of the Republic, parties known by other names have obtained
a temporary ascendency, I need scarcely remind you that these
were but branches of that great organization which has just
been defeated, divided as it was into three parties, each claiming
that it adhered most closely to the distinctive principles of
the old Democratic party. All of these, therefore, go to swell
the ranks of those whom your lordship declares, in effect, to
be the enemies of America and of the human race.
This
is a most harsh judgment, most harshly enunciated -- to say
nothing of its implied condemnation of the statesmen and citizens
who have passed away, and whom we, their sons by blood and inheritance,
have been taught to regard as "true friends of America."
It is certainly, when considered in reference to the source
from whence it emanates, a most overwhelming condemnation of
the millions of American citizens who struggled to avert its
downfall, and who still cling to its fallen fortunes, and to
its great distinctive principles, as the sheet-anchor of the
hopes of the Republic. The charge is as sweeping as it is harsh.
You will not grant that ONE "friend of America, or of the
human race," can feel any regret at the occurrence of the
event you commemorate.
The
Heaven-doomed city of olden time, even after its destruction
had been ordained by the flat of Omnipotence, was allowed a
respite from its terrible fate, in answer to the prayer of one
real friend of humanity, who said: "Behold, now, I have
taken upon me to speak unto the Lord, which am but dust and
ashes -- peradventure ten righteous men shall be found there;"
and the Lord, admitting the doubt, and ever tempering justice
with mercy, delayed the execution of his judgment with a promise
that if ten righteous men could be found in Sodom, the city
should be spared for their sake.
More
inexorable in your judgment, though but a man; under the influence
of your own antipathies, and upon the testimony of their enemies
alone, you condemn unheard millions of your fellow-men, and
deny that, amongst them all, there lives one friend of his country
or of the human race, whose righteousness might plead in behalf
of his fellow-countrymen to save them from the doom of Sodom.
While
the world may give your lordship credit for a more profound
knowledge of those subjects which concern the general good of
the human race, than the unknown writer who now addresses you,
I cannot doubt that an impartial public would decide that an
American citizen, whose destiny has been cast within the limits
of the Republic, ought to understand as thoroughly, and to appreciate
as fully, the qualities which distinguish a "true friend
of America," as any British nobleman, however high his
rank, or however exalted his endowments as a British statesman.
This
consideration emboldens me to declare, in my right as an American-born
citizen, and as the representative of a sentiment held in common
by millions of my fellow-countrymen, that it is not I, nor they,
who are the enemies of America. If it must be that one or the
other of us, my lord, is an enemy of the Republic, it is you,
who, from your high and noble rank, disdain not to stoop to
a fellowship with the openly-avowed friends and followers of
assassins! It is you, who, by acknowledging yourself to be honored
by an invitation to participate in demonstrations of respect
for one of the foulest murderers whose deeds have found a place
in the records of crime, place the lighted torch and the dagger
in the hands of the incendiary! It is you, who, from your safe
retreat, may laugh to scorn the horrors of such a contest, thus
enkindle the flames of a fratricidal war in a distant land,
and all in the prostituted name of humanity.
There
are many who do not rejoice over the event which has filled
your lordship with so much satisfaction. These mourn over a
result which places in imminent peril one of the noblest --
pardon me if, with the old pride of an American, I say, the
noblest fabric of a government that has ever been constructed
by human intelligence.
You
delude yourself, my lord, if you believe that all "friends
of America" and of the "human race" share your
sentiments of joy upon the occasion you celebrate. Millions
of the downtrodden and the oppressed of other climes now mourn
over the peril which menaces the overthrow of "the great
Republic," without knowing, or caring to comprehend, the
domestic questions which have produced the danger. During eighty-five
years, it has been a beacon of hope to the weary and heavy laden,
and should its brightness be quenched by that dark and clouded
night, upon whose gloomy and fitful shadows we may even, at
this moment, be gazing, believe not, my lord, that the announcement
of the catastrophe will be a message of joy to the hearts of
"all the friends of the human race!" No, my lord:
you may or may not represent the sentiments of the high and
noble order to which you belong -- I would fain hope that you
do not -- but you do not express the sentiments of the million!
If
your lordship really believes that "all friends of the
human race" are rejoiced at the overthrow of that political
organization which, commencing with Washington, has been perpetuated
in power to the present day, descend a little, I pray you, from
your elevated position in the social scale, and seek enlightenment
from those whom you may encounter. Ask of the wandering exile
from his native land, who, for the crime of seeking freedom
from the thraldom of despotism, has been doomed to revisit the
home of his childhood no more for ever, if he rejoices at an
event which threatens to extinguish the brightness of that light,
the contemplation of which has been to him, and to his fellow-sufferers,
a thing of joy, of life, and hope, in the gloomiest moments
of his despondency!
I
would ask no nobler epitaph upon the tomb of that party, whose
defeat your lordship commemorates as an event which should be
hailed with joy by every "friend of the human race,"
than to record in simple and brief words, this fragment of its
history:
"The
political organization which inaugurated the revolt of the Thirteen
American Colonies of Great Britain; which conducted the war
of the Revolution to a successful close; under whose auspices
the Confederation of free States was established; and which
ruled and guided the destinies of the Republic during the firrst
eighty-five years of its existence, perished in the year of
the Christian era one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one."
Whether
its fall was a consequence of its crimes, its virtues, or its
misfortunes, let posterity determine.
And
may I be pardoned, if, in casting a glance into the unrevealed
future, I venture the prediction, that even though the Republic
itself should perish to-day, the incidents of its brief, but
brilliant career will be remembered, and the grandeur and sublimity
of the great principles upon which it was constructed will be
appreciated, and the memory of its founders and of their successors,
who ruled it, will be honored, when London, with its Kings,
and its Nobles, and its Commons, will have been, like Egypt's
ancient capital, with its monuments and its inhabitants, mingled
together in undistinguishable ashes?
It
would be profitless for me to indulge at greater length in the
reflections to which the two events I have referred to, and
your lordship's connection therewith, have given birth. I am
unwilling to offer to you, my lord, any defence for the local
policy of the political party in America to which I belong.
Nor, on the other hand, will I make any attack upon that in
whose success your lordship seems to feel so deep an interest,
and whose cause you commend with so much zeal. I do not recognize
in Englishmen, or any other foreigners, the right to interfere
in those domestic questions which concern Americans alone, and
which they should be left free to settle among themselves. I
cannot admit a foreign tribunal to judge between us, any more
than I would claim for America the right of interference, under
similar circumstances, in the internal affairs of England. But,
my lord, you have invited a comparison by which I am willing
that my country shall be tested. You have, by the energy of
your assaults upon the institution of African slavery in America,
indirectly challenged an examination into the manner in which
subjugated races have been ruled by your own country, and you
seem to invite scrutiny into your own connection, as a nation,
with the institution of African slavery in the past, as well
as in the present era.
I,
in turn, challenge an investigation and a comparison, and I
am willing to accept "all friends of the human race"
as our umpires. I am willing that both shall be tried "by
the laws of God and humanity," and that the inquiry shall
have for its object the determination of the question: Which
has so governed as to achieve the greatest good, with the least
evil, to those over whom Providence or cupidity has called them,
respectively, to bear sway? Every friend of the Southern States
of America is willing to stand or fall upon the result of such
an investigation and comparison.
I
have a high respect, my lord, for the great nation in which
you hold so distinguished a rank. I am satisfied that many,
very many, of its noblest citizens of all classes deprecate
the officious interference of British politicians in the contests
of political parties in America. But my friendly regard for
individual citizens of your country does not blind me to the
fact that English influence has been a principal element in
the sectional troubles which now distract my country. Chief
among the leading journals of England is one which, by the common
consent of all Europe, is the great exponent of English sentiments
and English ideas. In America, it is equally recognized as the
unrivalled European defamer of the Southern States and their
inhabitants. While you, my lord, in conjunction with your associates
of the same school, stand at the head of the pseudo-religious
section of the political anti-American-slavery movement of England,
the Times leads that other branch of this formidable politico-religious
organization, whose moral principle can only be effectually
aroused to a healthy action by means of a thorough perception
of certain concomitant temporal advantages.
To
show to you, my lord, that I do not over-estimate the influence
which, directly and indirectly, you have exercised in producing
the present political troubles in America, and that I have not
misconceived the nature and motive of your action in regard
thereto, I beg to submit to you the following brief but pointed
extract of a leading editorial article from the London Times:
Will
any one, however, say that it is not mainly to the ceaseless
exertions, to the philanthropic energy, to the entreaties, to
the persuasion of this country, that the anti-slavery party
in the States owes its strength? Blot out England, and English
sympathies, and English power from the map of the world, and
the battle between the North and the South would be fought on
the other side of the Atlantic on very different terms. So far,
then, as this, Englishmen are as one with each other on this
question. Slavery shall not be in our own dominions -- could
we have gone one step farther and annihilated the peculiar institution,
in all other countries as well as in our own, the problem would,
in the main, have speedily received a satisfactory solution,
This, however, was beyond our power, and consequently we find
ourselves in this anomaly, that we, without a slave population,
must compete in the markets of the world with other countries
which have slave populations, and that with respect to tropical
productions.
To
these few bluff words, the purport of the last four lines of
which is a key to Anglo-American, anti-slavery philanthropy,
I may add that the persistent misrepresentations against the
Southern American States, which have emanated from this British
party, have excited unjust and wholly unfounded prejudices against
my countrymen throughout Europe. I cannot hope that in a day,
or a year, these prejudices can be removed by any exposure of
that narrow and thoroughly selfish policy which, decked in the
garb of humanity, has given tone to the sentiments of Europe
upon American affairs. But in the confidence that a returning
sense of justice will induce your lordship to listen to the
defence made by one whom you have accused as an enemy to his
country and to the human race, I propose, after the lapse of
a few weeks, which will be necessarily occupied by other engagements,
to do myself the honor of again addressing you. [*]
I
may not hope that the judge who has already pronounced against
me, in terms so emphatic, will be induced to reverse his pre-determined
judgment; but I will not despair of obtaining a reversal of
your sentence before a tribunal composed of the "friends
of the human race," until longer to hope would be fanaticism.
The
small grain of mustard seed, which I throw upon the ground,
may be choked by the foul weeds amongst which it is cast, and
never see the sun; but it may be that from this little seed
may grow and "wax a great tree," and that the "fowls
of the air may lodge in the branches of it," and that beneath
its shade a few, at least, of the noxious plants, from the midst
of which it grew, may wither and perish!
I
have the honor to be, most respectfully,
Your
Lordship's obedient servant,
James
Williams.
