n myself and the Americans, upon that
point I can say that I deserve credit. I do not say this with any
affectation, because I understand fully your feelings upon that matter.
I fully recognize, I completely comprehend, as man to man, that in that
day of your greatest trouble, even the small voice that came over the
great Atlantic was listened to with extreme pleasure and unexaggerated
sympathy.

But when I look to myself, I am bound to say I find extremely little
merit in the matter. There was one ground of sympathy between you and
the English people, which you had the holiest right to believe would
have been absolute and overpowering. The English nation had put itself
forward as the great opponent of slavery in the world. [Applause.] It
had stated at the Congress of Vienna that the one point which England
required as the _sine qua non_ was the abolition of the slave trade. For
that purpose England not only asserted itself, but interfered up to the
utmost limit, perhaps beyond the limits of the law of nations, with all
the powers of the world. Therefore, you had a perfect right to believe,
to suppose, that in a question, in a matter in which we were not only
internationally but morally interested, the questions would be fully
considered.

Well, gentlemen, I cannot say that it was so. As an individual I have
not the right to reproach my country upon that point. That was not my
first feeling in the matter. I felt, I knew, slavery was doomed from the
civilized world. My heart, my instincts, my sense of the well-being of
every civilized state was against the continuance of that institution.
[Applause.] I knew, though it was possible--aye, I would fain say
probable--that the condition of the slave, under many conditions, under
many circumstances, might be better than that of the free laborer of the
world, that the condition of the slave owner was incompatible with the
highest form of moral culture and highest ambition. I always think that
question had political as well as moral and religious considerations,
and that, through the unhappy condition of this continent, the question
of slavery got so intermixed with the question of property that, however
humane, however wise men were, yet nevertheless it would bring with it
an incidental condition of cruelty abhorrent to mankind, and that,
therefore, that institution could not continue to the end. [Applause.]

But, making a clean breast of it, that was not the bottom of my
sy