d disgrace from the
Christian world.

"We do not say these things in a spirit of self-complacency, as though
our nation were free from the guilt it perceives in others.

"We acknowledge with grief and shame our heavy share in this great sin.
We acknowledge that our forefathers introduced, nay, compelled the
adoption of slavery in those mighty colonies. We humbly confess it
before Almighty God; and it is because we so deeply feel and so
unfeignedly avow our own complicity, that we now venture to implore your
aid to wipe away our common crime and our common dishonor."

This address, splendidly illuminated on vellum, was sent to our shores
at the head of twenty-six folio volumes, containing considerably more
than half a million of signatures of British women. It was forwarded
to me with a letter from a British nobleman now occupying one of the
highest official positions in England, with a request on behalf of these
ladies that it should be in any possible way presented to the attention
of my countrywomen.

This memorial, as it now stands in its solid oaken case, with its heavy
folios, each bearing on its back the imprint of the American eagle,
forms a most unique library, a singular monument of an international
expression of a moral idea.

No right-thinking person can find aught to be objected against the
substance or the form of this memorial. It is temperate, just, and
kindly, and on the high ground of Christian equality, where it places
itself, may be regarded as a perfectly proper expression of sentiment,
as between blood-relations and equals in two different nations.

The signatures to this appeal are not the least remarkable part of it;
for, beginning at the very steps of the throne, they go down to the
names of women in the very humblest conditions in life, and represent
all that Great Britain possesses, not only of highest and wisest, but
of plain, homely common sense and good feeling. Names of wives of
cabinet-ministers appear on the same page with the names of wives
of humble laborers,--names of duchesses and countesses, of wives of
generals, ambassadors, savans, and men of letters, mingled with names
traced in trembling characters by hands evidently unused to hold the pen
and stiffened by lowly toil. Nay, so deep and expansive was the feeling,
that British subjects in foreign lands had their representation. Among
the signatures are those of foreign residents from Paris to Jerusalem.
Autographs so diverse,