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 greater wrong to ourselves?--that we
cannot injure him without also injuring ourselves yet more? I observe
there is a certain class of writers in America who are fond of
representing the feeling of this country towards America as one of
jealousy, if not of hatred.. I think, my lord, that no American ever
travelled in this country without being conscious at once that this is a
total mistake--that this is a total misapprehension. I venture to say
that there is no nation on the face of the earth in which we feel half
so much interest, or towards which we feel the tenth part of the
affection, which we do towards our brethren in the United States of
America. And what is more than that--there is no nation towards which we
feel one half so much admiration, and for which we feel half so much
respect, as we do for the people of the United States of America.
[Cheers.] Why, sir, how can it be otherwise? How is it possible that it
should be the reverse? Are they not our bone and our flesh? and their