e now
is Exeter Hall, so lately teeming with anti slavery harangues, but now
cheering the slavery rebellion? Where are the abolition lords and ladies
of England; where the reverend clergy; where the public press, and
Parliament? Has England been struck dumb in a moment, that she can no
longer denounce a system which, up to the hour of pro-slavery secession,
she had, from day to day, during more than a fourth of a century,
declared to combine all the crimes of the decalogue? Where now are the
compliments that were lavished upon _Uncle Tom's Cabin_ and its gifted
writer? Where are the notices in England, of our recent great
anti-slavery work, _Among the Pines_, by the celebrated Edmund Kirke,
'who awoke one morning and found himself famous'? The book is read and
circulated here by thousands, but none will notice or take it now in
England.

But England is not silent. Her press, her statesmen, and even members of
her cabinet, declare that the rebellion has dissolved our Union, and
destroyed our Government. They say we can never conquer the rebellion;
that we should abandon the contest, acknowledge the South as an
independent power, give it all the Gulf, two thirds of the Atlantic, all
the Chesapeake, half the Ohio, all the lower Mississippi and its mouth,
cut our territory into two parts, acknowledge the right of secession,
and the absolute dissolution of the Union. Such is the assurance of
rightful and certain success by which England encourages the rebels,
while _surrender_, is the advice she gratuitously urges upon us, from
day to day. But England is not the only false prophet whose predictions
were based only on her wishes. Indeed, many of her presses and statesmen
openly avow their belief and desire that the Union should be overthrown.
Our area, they say, is too large, although all compact and connected by
the greatest arterial river-system of the globe. But England is not
large enough, and new possessions are constantly added by the sword,
although her territory is double our own, and scattered over all the
continents, and many of the isles of the world. If, before or shortly
after this struggle began, England had spoken a word of friendship and
sympathy for us--if she had but repeated her former denunciations of
slavery, and given us the moral weight of her opinion--the rebellion
would have been crushed long since. If--claiming to be our mother--she
had only, in this crisis, acted as such, in her hour of need a kindr