JOHN PHILPOT CURRAN. “UNIVERSAL EMANCIPATION!" I speak in the spirit of the British Law, which makes liberty commensurate with, and inseparable from, the British soil-which proclaims, even to the stranger and the sojourner, the moment he sets his foot upon British earth, that the ground on which he treads is holy, and consecrated by the genius of Universal Emancipation. No matter in what language his doom may have been pronounced; no matter what complexion incompatible with freedom, an Indian or an African sun may have burnt upon him; no matter in what disastrous battle his liberty may have been cloven down; no matter with what solemnities he may have been devoted upon the altar of slavery; the first moment he touches the sacred soil of Britain, the altar and the god sink together in the dust; his soul walks abroad in her own majesty; his body swells beyond the measure of his chains, that burst from around him, and he stands redeemed, regenerated, and disenthralled, by the irresistible Genius of UNIVERSAL EMANCIPATION ! HENRY GRATTAN. Liberty-and is this subject a matter of indifference ?-Liberty, which, like the Deity, is an essential spirit best known by its consequences-liberty, which now animates you in your battles by sea and land, and lifts you up proudly superior to your enemies-liberty, that glorious spark and emanation of the Divinity, which fired your ancestors, and taught them to feel like an Hampden, that it was not life, but the condition of living! An Irishman sympathizes in these noble sentiments-wherever he goes-to whatever quarter of the earth he journeys-whatever wind blows his poor garments, let him but have the pride, the glory, the ostentation of liberty! MARIA EDGEWORTH. Are we disposed to pity the slave-merchant, who, urged by the maniacal desire for gold, hears, unmoved, the groans of his fellowcreatures, the execrations of mankind, and that "small still voice," which haunts those who are stained with blood?--Practical Education. Granting it to be physically impossible that the world should exist without rum and sugar and indigo, why could they not be produced by freemen as well as by slaves? If we hired negroes for laborers, instead of purchasing them for slaves, do you think they would not work as well as now? Does any negro, under the fear of the over seer, work harder than a Birmingham journeyman, or a Newcastle collier; who toil for themselves and their families? The law, in our case, seems to make the right; and the very reverse ought to be done; the right should make the law. THOMAS MOORE. Wearily every bosom pineth, There the warrior's dart There the maiden's heart Who can, with patience, for a moment see In free confusion o'er Columbia's plains? Away! away! I'd rather hold my neck Than thus to live, where boasted Freedom waves The brute made ruler, and the man made brute! DANIEL O'CONNELL. He had often To proceed, however, to the case of America. longed to go there in reality; but so long as that country was tarnished by the continuance of slavery, he would never pollute his foot by treading on its shores. (Loud applause.) In the course of his parliamentary duty, he had lately felt it necessary to arraign the conduct of the despot of the north, for his cruelty to the men, women, and children of Poland; but, although he hated him with as much hatred as one Christian man could hate another, viz. he detested his actions, yet he confessed that there was a climax to his hatred. He would adopt the language of the poet, but reverse the imagery, and say, “In the deepest hell there is a depth still more profound," and that was to be found in the conduct of the American slave owners. He rejoiced that upon the wings of the press, the voice of so humble an individual as himself would pass against the western breeze, and would reach the rivers, the lakes, the mountains, and the glens of America, and that the friends of liberty there would sympathize with him, and rejoice that in England he tore down the image of slavery from the recreant hand of America, and condemned her as the vilest hypocrite, the greatest of liars. (Loud applause.) An American gentleman called upon him that morning, and he (Mr. O'C.) asked him, with some anxiety, what part of America he came from? to which the gentleman replied, from Boston. He then shook hands with him, and congratulated him that that state had never been tarnished with slavery; but added, that he should be sorry to be contaminated by the touch of a man from states where slavery was continued. The gentleman then said that he was no advocate of slavery, but if he (Mr. O'C.) would permit him, he would discuss the question with him. He (Mr. O'C.) replied, that if a man were to propose to him a discussion on picking pockets, he should turn him out of his study, lest he should carry his theory into practice(laughter)—but he would as soon discuss that question as the propriety of negro slavery. The man who stole his purse stole trash; but he who thought he could vindicate the possession of one human being by another-the selling of soul and body-the separation of a father from his offspring, or the mother from the infant she had reared -was a man whom he would not answer with words, nor with blows, because the time for the latter had not yet arrived. (Cheers.) A lie was stamped on the American constitution; for when a parliament of boroughmongers in Westminster thought to put their long fingers across the Atlantic into the pockets of the Americans, and take out as much as they pleased, the Americans turned round and appealed to justice; and when they laid the foundation of their liberty, they began by saying, "We hold these truths to be self-evident-that all men are born free and equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty; and the pursuit of happiness." But the man who could not vote in the assembly of the nation without admitting the declaration he had just quoted, had the atrocious, the murderous injustice to hold his brother man in slavery. (Cheers.) The Americans must abolish slavery, or call a general convention of the states to blot out the first sentence of their declaration of independence, otherwise they would write themselves down liars. He formerly, however, had some consolation, even when he thought of the continuation of slavery in America. He thought there were men employed there in mitigating the evil, and establishing the principle of universal emancipation. He heard of the colony of Liberia; he read puffs of it in the newspapers; and he saw, day after day, declarations of its importance towards liberating the slave. He was waited upon by grave personages, who appeared to detest slavery as much as he did himself, and they informed him that the establishment of that colony would be the destruction of slavery. He took them at their word, and was glad to have another corps in the cause of humanity. He had not read the real history nor the real character of the colony, but he had been enlightened by what he had heard that day; and he would read to the meeting one quotation from the third volume of the " African Repository," page 107, that they might be enlightened also:-"It is no abolition society; it addresses as yet arguments to no master." What harm would it have been to argue with the master? What an admirable society the Colonization Society must be, that would not, for fear of offending the gentility of the master, tell him that he ought not to have a slave! Yet this was an institution which had come before the British public professing to be an instrument of humanity. “And disavows, with horror, the idea of offering temptations to any slave"-temptations to be free-to have a right to go with his wife and family where he pleased to work for whom he pleased, and not for any body else. (Cheers.) O! the negro, who toiled from the rising sun to sun-down-who labored in the cultivation of a crop he would never reap-who came home weary, and faint, and disheartened, and heart-sick, to find in his little hut creatures that were to run in the same career—would they not tell him of a period when his toil should be at an end? O no, not a word! (Cheers.) "Offering temptations to any slave." It denies the design of attempting emancipation! Humble as he was, and feeble as his voice might be, yet deafening the sound of the westerly wave, and riding against the blast as thunder did, it should reach America, and tell the black man that the time of his emancipation was come, and the oppressor, that the period of his injustice was terminated. "It denies the design of attempting emancipation, either partial or general;"-that was the society they were called upon to support. Was he right in asking the meeting to disclaim the agent of that society?-Speech in London on the subject of African Colonization, July, 1833. Mr. O'Connell then congratulated the friends of freedom on the unity of sentiment that bound them together in the holy cause in which they were engaged. Whatever differences of religious belief, continued he, might exist among them, these were left to that God who alone could determine which of them was right. But all would agree with him, that of "these three things, Faith, Hope, and Charity, the greatest was Charity." (Cheers.) Animated by that principle, they had joined their exertions, and had been already so far successful. He trusted that their phalanx would become yet more close and serried, as they pressed forward in the struggle, and that they would still advance till they secured the full fruits of their victory in unqua lified emancipation. (Cheers.) (Cheers.) And when this shall have been accomplished, let them come with another broadside on the United States of America. (Laughter.) He had, himself, given the Americans two or three good hard thumps; for which they had paid him wages in abuse and scurrility. He was satisfied that they had done So. He was accustomed to receive such wages in return for his labors. He had never done good but he was vilified for his pains; and he felt that he could not sleep soundly were such opponents to cease abusing him. (Cheers.) He would continue to earn such wages. (Cheers.) By the blessing of God he would yet trample on the serpent of slave-owning cupidity, and triumph over the hiss of the foul reptile which marked its agony and excited his contempt. The Americans, in their conduct toward the slaves, were traitors to the cause of human liberty, foul detractors of the democratic principle which he had cherished throughout his political life, and blasphemers of that great and sacred name which they pretended to recognise. For, in their solemn league and covenant, the declaration of American Independence, they declared that all men (he used their own words) have certain "inalienable rights," these they defined to be, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. To maintain these, they pledged themselves with all the solemnity of an oath, in the presence of Almighty God. That aid which they had invoked from heaven had been awarded to them, but they had violated their awfully solemn compact with the Deity, and set at nought every principle which they professed to hold sacred, by keeping two and a half millions of their fellow-men in bondage. In reprobation of that disgraceful conduct, his humble voice had been heard across the wide waves of the Atlantic. Like the thunder-storm in its strength, it had careered against the breeze, armed with the lightning of Christian truth. (Great cheering.) And, let them seek to repress it as they may-let them murder and assassinate in the true spirit of Lynch law; the storm would wax louder and louder around them, till the claims of justice became too strong to be withstood, and the black man would stand up too big for his chains. It seemed, indeed-he hoped what he was about to say was not profanation as if the curse of the Almighty had already overtaken them. For the first time in their political history, disgraceful tumult and anarchy had been witnessed in their cities. Blood had been shed without the sanction of law, and even Sir Robert Peel had been enabled-but he was here in danger of becoming political. (Cries of no, no-go on, and cheers.) Well, then, even Sir Robert Peel had been enabled to taunt the Americans with gross inconsistency and lawless proceedings. He differed from Sir Robert Peel on many points. On one point, however, he fully agreed with him. Let the proud Americans learn that all parties in this country unite in condemnation of their present conduct; and let them also learn that the worst of all aristocracies is that which prevails in America-an aristocracy which had been aptly denominated that of the human skin. The most insufferable pride was that shown by such an aristocracy. And yet he must confess 1 |