of thousands of hapless victims into the ever-yawning and
never-satisfied grave!"--[Loud and long applause.] The experience which
they had had, that all the dangers, all the bloodshed and violence which
were threatened, were merely imaginary, and that none of these evils had
come upon them although slavery had been totally abolished by us,
should, he thought, be an encouragement to their American friends to go
home and tell their countrymen that in this great city the views now put
forward were advocated long ago--that the persons who now held them said
the same years ago of the disturbances and the evils which would arise
from pressing the question of immediate and total abolition--that the
same kind of arguments and the same predictions of evil were uttered in
England--and although she had not the experience, although she had not
the opportunity of pointing to the past, and saying the evil had not
come in such a case, still, even then, they were willing to face the
evil, to stick to the righteous principle, and to say, come what would,
justice must be done to the slave, and slavery must be wholly and
immediately abolished. [Cheers.] He had said so much on the question of
slavery, because he was very sure it would be much more agreeable to
their modest and retiring and distinguished guest that one should speak
about any other thing than about herself. Uncle Tom's Cabin needed no
recommendation from him. [Loud cheers.] It was the most extraordinary
book, he thought, that had ever been published; no book had ever got
into the same circulation; none had ever produced a tithe of the
impression which it had produced within a given time. It was worth all
the proslavery press of America put together. The horrors of slavery
were not merely described, but they were actually pictured to the eye.
They were seen and understood fully; formerly they were mere dim
visions, about which there was great difference of opinion; some saw
them as in a mist, and others more clearly; but now every body saw and
understood slavery. Every body in this great city, if they had a voice