se facts were given to me unguarded by any promise or
seal of secrecy, expressed or implied; that they were lodged with me as
one sister rests her story with another for sympathy, for counsel, for
defence. _Never_ did I suppose the day would come that I should be
subjected to so cruel an anguish as this use of them has been to me.
Never did I suppose that,--when those kind hands, that had shed nothing
but blessings, were lying in the helplessness of death, when that gentle
heart, so sorely tried and to the last so full of love, was lying cold in
the tomb,--a countryman in England could be found to cast the foulest
slanders on her grave, and not one in all England to raise an effective
voice in her defence.

I admit the feebleness of my plea, in point of execution. It was written
in a state of exhausted health, when no labour of the kind was safe for
me,--when my hand had not strength to hold the pen, and I was forced to
dictate to another.

I have been told that I have no reason to congratulate myself on it as a
literary effort. O my brothers and sisters! is there then nothing in the
world to think of but literary efforts? I ask any man with a heart in
his bosom, if he had been obliged to tell a story so cruel, because his
mother's grave gave no rest from slander,--I ask any woman who had been
forced to such a disclosure to free a dead sister's name from grossest
insults, whether she would have thought of making this work of bitterness
a literary success?

Are the cries of the oppressed, the gasps of the dying, the last prayers
of mothers,--are _any_ words wrung like drops of blood from the human
heart to be judged as literary efforts?

My fellow-countrymen of America, men of the press, I have done you one
act of justice,--of all your bitter articles, I have read not one. I
shall never be troubled in the future time by the remembrance of any
unkind word you have said of me, for at this moment I recollect not one.
I had such faith in you, such pride in my countrymen, as men with whom,
above all others, the cause of woman was safe and sacred, that I was at
first astonished and incredulous at what I heard of the course of the
American press, and was silent, not merely from the impossibility of
being heard, but from grief and shame. But reflection convinces me that
you were, in many cases, acting from a misunderstanding of facts and
through misguided honourable feeling; and I still feel courage,
therefore, to ask