Читать книгу Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands (Vol.1&2). Letters & Travel Sketches from Europe онлайн

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The Rev. Dr. R. Lee then said: "I am quite sure that every individual here responds cordially to those sentiments of respect and gratitude towards our honored guest which have been so well expressed by the Lord Provost and the other gentlemen who have addressed us. We think that this lady has not only laid us under a great obligation by giving us one of the most delightful books in the English language, but that she has improved us as men and as Christians, that she has taught us the value of our privileges, and made us more sensible than we were before of the obligation which lies upon us to promote every good work. I have been requested to say a few words on the degradation of American slavery; but I feel, in the presence of the gentleman who last addressed you, and of those who are still to address you, that it would be almost presumption in me to enter on such a subject. It is impossible to speak or to think of the subject of slavery without feeling that there is a double degradation in the matter; for, in the first place, the slave is a man made in the image of God—God's image cut in ebony, as old Thomas Fuller quaintly but beautifully said; and what right have we to reduce him to the image of a brute, and make property of him? We esteem drunkenness as a sin. Why is it a sin? Because it reduces that which was made in the image of God to the image of a brute. We say to the drunkard, 'You are guilty of a sacrilege, because you reduce that which God made in his own image "into the image of an irrational creature."' Slavery does the very same. But there is not only a degradation committed as regards the slave—there is a degradation also committed against himself by him who makes him a slave, and who retains him in the position of a slave; for is it not one of the most commonplace of truths that we cannot do a wrong to a neighbor without doing a greater wrong to ourselves?—that we cannot injure him without also injuring ourselves yet more? I observe there is a certain class of writers in America who are fond of representing the feeling of this country towards America as one of jealousy, if not of hatred.. I think, my lord, that no American ever travelled in this country without being conscious at once that this is a total mistake—that this is a total misapprehension. I venture to say that there is no nation on the face of the earth in which we feel half so much interest, or towards which we feel the tenth part of the affection, which we do towards our brethren in the United States of America. And what is more than that—there is no nation towards which we feel one half so much admiration, and for which we feel half so much respect, as we do for the people of the United States of America. [Cheers.] Why, sir, how can it be otherwise? How is it possible that it should be the reverse? Are they not our bone and our flesh? and their character, whatever it is, is it any thing more than our own, a little exaggerated, perhaps? Their virtues and their vices, their faults and their excellences, are just the virtues and the vices, the faults and the excellences, of that old respectable freeholder, John Bull, from whom they are descended. We are not much surprised that a nation which are slaves themselves should make other men slaves. This cannot very much surprise us: but we are both surprised and we are deeply grieved, that a nation which has conceived so well the idea of freedom—a nation which has preached the doctrines of freedom with such boldness and such fulness—a nation which has so boldly and perfectly realized its idea of freedom in every other respect—should in this only instance have sunk so completely below its own idea, and forgetting the rights of one class of their fellow-creatures, should have deprived them of freedom altogether. I say that our grief and our disapprobation of this in the case of our brethren in America arises very much from this, that in other respects we admire them so much, we are sorry that so noble a nation should allow a blot like this to remain upon its escutcheon. I am not ignorant—nobody can be ignorant—of the great difficulties which encompass the solution of this question in America. It is vain for us to shut our eyes to it. There can be no doubt whatever that great sacrifices will require to be made in order to get rid of this great evil. But the Americans are a most ingenious people; they are full of inventions of all sorts, from the invention of a machine for protecting our feet from the water, to a machine for making ships go by means of heated air; from the one to the other the whole field of discovery is occupied by their inventive genius. There is not an article in common use among us but bears some stamp of America. We rise in the morning, and before we are dressed we have had half a dozen American articles in our hands. And during the day, as we pass through the streets, articles of American invention meet us every where. In short, the ingenuity of the people is proclaimed all over the world. And there can be no doubt that the moment this great, this ingenious people finds that slavery is both an evil and a sin, their ingenuity will be successfully exerted in discovering some invention for preventing its abolition from ruining them altogether. [Cheers.] No doubt their ingenuity will be equal to the occasion; and I may take the liberty of adding, that their ingenuity in that case will find even a richer reward than it has done in those other inventions which have done them so much honor, and been productive of so much profit. I say, that sacrifices must be made; there can be no doubt about that; but I would also observe, that the longer the evil is permitted to continue, the greater and more tremendous will become the sacrifice which will be needed to put an end to it; for all history proves that a nation encumbered, with slavery is surrounded with danger. [Applause.] Has the history of antiquity been written in vain? Does it not teach us that not only domestic and social pollutions are the inevitable results, but does it not teach us also that political insecurity and political revolutions as certainly slumber beneath the institution of slavery as fireworks at the basis of Mount Ætna? [Cheers.] It cannot but be so. Men no more than steam can be compressed without a tremendous revulsion; and let our brethren in America be sure of this, that the longer the day of reckoning is put off by them, the more tremendous at last that reckoning will Be." [Loud, applause.]