lavery to be identified with the government of the
United States; but in the temptations of commerce the evil was
overlooked; and how changed for the worse has become the public
sentiment even within the last thirty or forty years! The enormous
increase in the consumption of cotton has raised enormously the market
value of slaves, and arrayed both avarice and political ambition in
defence of slavery. Instruct the conscience, and produce free cotton,
and this will be like Cromwell's exhortation to his soldiers, '_Trust
in God, and keep your powder dry_.'" [Continued cheers.]

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 gr