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The government resisted it for years. The government was compelled to yield to the voice of the people. No act of the English nation was ever so national, so truly the people's act, as this. And can we hope to conquer the conscience as well as the now solemnly adopted policy of a great nation? Were England to concede this point, she would prove herself false to known, acknowledged truth and duty. Her freshest, proudest laurel would wither. The toils and prayers of her Wilberforces, Clarksons, and a host of holy men, which now invoke God's blessings on her, would be turned to her reproach and shame, and call down the vengeance of Heaven.

In bearing this testimony to the spirit of the English people in the abolition of the slave-trade and of slavery, nothing is farther from my mind than a disposition to defend the public policy or institutions of that country. In this case, as in most others, the people are better than their rulers. England is one of the last countries of which I am ready to become a partisan. There must be something radically wrong in the policy, institutions, and spirit of a nation which all other nations regard with jealousy and dislike. Great Britain, with all her progress in the arts, has not learned the art of inspiring confidence and love. She sends forth her bounty over the earth, but, politically considered, has made the world her foe. Her Chinese war, and her wild extension of dominion over vast regions which she cannot rule well or retain, give reason to fear that she is falling a prey to the disease under which great nations have so often perished.

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To a man who looks with sympathy and brotherly regard on the mass of the people, who is chiefly interested in the "lower classes,' England must present much which is repulsive. Though a monarchy in name, she is an aristocracy in faet; and an aristocratical caste, however adorned by private virtue, can hardly help sinking an infinite chasm between itself and the multitude of men. A privileged order, possessing the chief power of the state, cannot but rule in the spirit of an order, cannot respect the mass of the people, cannot feel that for them government chiefly exists and ought to be administered, and that for them the nobleman holds his rank as a trust. The condition of the lower orders at the present moment is a mournful commentary on English institutions and civilization. The multitude are depressed in that country to a degree of ignorance, want, and misery, which must touch every heart not made of stone. In the civilized world there are few sadder spectacles than the contrast now presented in Great Britain of unbounded wealth and luxury with the starvation of thousands and ten thousands, crowded into cellars and dens without ventilation or light, compared with which the wigwam of the Indian is a palaee. Misery, famine, brutal degradation, in the neighborhood and presence of stately mansions which ring with gayety and dazzle with pomp and unbounded profusion, shock us as no other wretchedness does; and this is not an accidental, but an almost necessary effect of the spirit of

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aristocracy and the spirit of trade acting intensely together. It is a striking fact, that the private charity of England, though almost incredible, makes but little impression on this mass of misery; thus teaching the rich and titled to be "just before being generous," and not to look to private munificence as a remedy for the evils of selfish institutions. Notwithstanding my admiration of the course of England in reference to slavery, I see as plainly as any the wrongs and miseries under which her lower classes groan. I do not on this account, however, subscribe to a doctrine very common in this country, that the poor Chartists of England are more to be pitied than our slaves. Ah, no! Misery is not slavery; and were it greater than it is, it would afford the slave-holder no warrant for trampling on the rights and the souls of his fellow-creatures. The Chartist, depressed as he is, is not a slave. The blood would rush to his cheek, and the spirit of a man swell his emaciated form at the suggestion of relieving his misery by reducing him to bondage, and this sensibility shows the immeasurable distance between him and the slave. He has rights, and knows them. He pleads his own cause, and just and good men plead it for him. According to the best testimony, intelligence is spreading among the Chartists; so is temperance; so is self-restraint. They feel themselves to be men. Their wives and children do not belong to another. They meet together for free discussion, and their speeches are not wanting in strong sense and strong expression. Not a few among them have seized on the idea of the elevation of their class by a new intellectual and moral culture, and here is a living seed, the promise of immeasurable good. Shall such men, who aspire after a better lot, and among whom strong and generous spirits are springing up, be confounded with slaves, whose lot admits no change, who must not speak of wrongs or think of redress, whom it is a crime to teach to read, to whom even the Bible is a sealed book, who have no future, no hope on this side death?

I have spoken freely of England; yet I do not forget our debt or the debt of the world to her. She was the mother of our freedom. She has been the bulwark of Protestantism. What nation has been more fruitful in great men, in men of genius? What nation can compare with her in munificence? What nation but must now acknowledge her unrivalled greatness? That little island sways a wider empire than the Roman, and has a power of blessing mankind never before conferred on a people. Would to God she could learn, what nation never yet learned, so to use power as to inspire confidence, not fear, so as to awaken the world's gratitude, not its jealousy and revenge!

But whatever be the claims of England or of any other state, I must cling to my own country with strong preference, and cling to it even now, in this dark day, this day of her humiliation, when she stands before the world branded, beyond the truth, with dishonesty, and, too truly, with the crime of resisting the progress of freedom on the earth.

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After all, she has her glory. After all, in these free states a man is still a man. He knows his rights, he respects himself, and acknowledgis es the equal claim of his brother. We have order without the display of force. We have government without soldiers, spies, or the constay nt presence of coercion. The rights of thought, of speech, of the press. Id of conscience, of worship are enjoyed to the full without violence er or dangerous excess. We are even distinguished by kindliness and go erod temper amidst this unbounded freedom. The individual is not lost kein the mass, but has a consciousness of self-subsistence, and stands ere e, ct. That character which we call manliness is stamped on the multitude here as nowhere else. No aristocracy interferes with the natural rehea tions of men to one another. No hierarchy weighs down the intelleayt, and makes the church a prison to the soul, from which it ought to break every chain. I make no boast of my country's progress, marvellous as it has been. I feel deeply her defects. But, in the language of Cowper,

I can say to her,

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Our country is free; this is its glory. How deeply to be lamented is it that this glory is obscured by the presence of slavery in any part of our territory! The distant foreigner, to whom America is a point, and who communicates the taint of a part to the whole, hears with derision our boast of liberty, and points with a sneer to our ministers in London not ashamed to plead the rights of slavery before the civilized world. He ought to learn that America, which shrinks in his mind into a harrow unity, is a league of sovereignties stretching from the Bay of Fundy to the Gulf of Mexico, and destined, unless disunited, to spread from ocean to ocean; that a great majority of its citizens hold no slaves; that a vast proportion of its wealth, commerce, manufactures, and arts belongs to the wide region not blighted by this evil; that we of the free states cannot touch slavery, where it exists, with one of our fingers; that it exists without and against our will; and that our necessity is not our choice and crime. Still, the cloud hangs over us as a people, the only dark and menacing cloud. Can it not be dispersed? Will not the South, so alive to honor, so ardent and fearless, and containing so many elements of greatness, resolve on the destruction of what does not profit and cannot but degrade it? Must slavery still continue to exist, a firebrand at home and our shame abroad? Can we of the free states brook that it should be thrust perpetually by our diplomacy on the notice of a reproving world? that it should become our distinction among nations? that it should place us behind all? Can we endure that it should control our public councils, that it should threaten war, should threaten to assert its claims in the thunder of our artillery? Can we endure that our peace should be broken, our country exposed to inva

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sion, our cities stormed, our fields ravaged, our prosperity withered, our progress arrested, our sons slain, our homes turned into deserts, not for rights, not for liberty, not for a cause which humanity smiles on and God will bless, but to rivet chains on fellow-creatures, to extend the law of slavery throughout the earth? These are great questions for the free states. The duties of the free states in relation to slavery deserve the most serious regard. Let us implore Him who was the God of our fathers, and who has shielded us in so many perils, to open our minds and hearts to what is true and just and good, to continue our union at home and our peace abroad, and to make our country a living witness to the blessings of freedom, of reverence for right on our own shores and in our intercourse with all nations.

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THE LESSONS OF INDEPENDENCE DAY.

WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON.

July 4, 1842.

I present myself as the advocate of my enslaved countrymen, at a time when their claims cannot be shuffled out of sight, and on an occasion which entitles me to a respectful hearing in their behalf. If I am asked to prove their title to liberty, my answer is, that the fourth of July is not a day to be wasted in establishing "self-evident truths." In the name of the God who has made us of one blood, and in whose image we are created; in the name of the Messiah, who came to bind up the broken-hearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, and the opening of a prison to them that are bound; I demand the immediate emancipation of those who are pining in slavery on the American soil, whether they are fattening for the shambles in Maryland and Virginia, or are wasting, as with a pestilent disease, on the cotton and sugar plantations of Alabama and Louisiana; whether they are male or female, young or old, vigorous or infirm. I make this demand, not for the children merely, but the parents also; not for one, but for all; not with restrictions and limitations, but unconditionally. I assert their perfect equality with ourselves, as a part of the human race, and their inalienable right to liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That this demand is founded in justice, and is therefore irresistible, the whole nation is this day acknowledging, as upon oath at the bar of the world. And not until, by a formal vote, the people repudiate the declaration of independence as a false and dangerous instrument, and cease to keep this festival in honor of liberty, as unworthy of note or remembrance; not until they spike every cannon, and muffle every bell, and disband every procession, and quench every bonfire, and gag every orator; not until they brand Washington, and Adams, and

Jefferson, and Hancock, as fanatics and madmen; not until they place themselves again in the condition of colonial subserviency to Great Britain, or transform this republic into an imperial government; not until they cease pointing exultingly to Bunker Hill, and the plains of Concord and Lexington; not, in fine, until they deny the authority of God, and proclaim themselves to be destitute of principle and humanity, will I argue the question, as one of doubtful disputation, on an occasion like this, whether our slaves are entitled to the rights and privileges of freemen. That question is settled irrevocably. There is no man to be found, unless he has a brow of brass and a heart of stone, who will dare to contest it on a day like this. A state of vassalage is pronounced, by universal acclamation, to be such as no man, or body of men, ought to submit to for one moment. I therefore tell the American slaves, that the time for their emancipation is come; that, their own taskmasters being witnesses, they are created equal to the rest of mankind, and possess an inalienable right to liberty; and that no man has a right to hold them in bondage. I counsel them not to fight for their freedom, both on account of the hopelessness of the effort, and because it is rendering evil for evil; but I tell them, not less emphatically, it is not wrong for them to refuse to wear the yoke of slavery any longer. Let them shed no blood-enter into no conspiracies-raise no murderous revolts; but, whenever and wherever they can break their fetters, God give them courage to do so! And should they attempt to elope from their house of bondage, and come to the north, may each of them find a covert from the search of the spoiler, and an invincible public sentiment to shield them from the grasp of the kidnapper! Success attend them in their flight to Canada, to touch whose monarchical soil insures freedom to every republican slave!

Is this preaching sedition? Sedition against what? Not the lives of the Southern oppressors for-I renew the solemn injunction, “Shed no blood!"-but against unlawful authority, and barbarous usage, and unrequited toil. If slave-holders are still obstinately bent upon plundering and starving their long-suffering victims, why, let them look well to consequences! To save them from danger, I am not obligated to suppress the truth, or to stop proclaiming liberty "throughout all the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof." No, indeed. There are two important truths, which, as far as practicable, I mean every slave shall be made to understand. The first is, that he has a right to his freedom now; the other is, that this is recognized as a self-evident truth in the Declaration of Independence. Sedition, forsooth! Why, what are the American people doing this day? In theory, maintaining the freedom and equality of the human race; and in practice, declaring that all tyrants ought to be extirpated from the face of the earth! We are giving to our slaves the following easy sums for solution:-If the principle involved in a threepenny tax on tea justified a

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