establishment of an empire from ocean to ocean that should have fewest
customers and the largest non-buying population. [Applause, "No, no!"
A voice: "I thought it was the happy people that populated fastest."] `

Now, what can England make for the poor white population of such a
future empire, and for her slave population? What carpets, what linens,
what cottons can you sell them? What machines, what looking-glasses,
what combs, what leather, what books, what pictures, what engravings? [A
voice: "We 'll sell them ships."] You may sell ships to a few, but what
ships can you sell to two thirds of the population of poor whites and
blacks? [Applause.] A little bagging and a little linsey-woolsey, a
few whips and manacles, are all that you can sell for the slave. [Great
applause and uproar.] This very day, in the slave States of America
there are eight millions out of twelve millions that are not, and cannot
be your customers from the very laws of trade. [A voice: "Then how are
they clothed?" and interruption.] * * *

But I know that you say, you cannot help sympathizing with a gallant
people. [Hear, hear!] They are the weaker people, the minority; and you
cannot help going with the minority who are struggling for their rights
against the majority. Nothing could be more generous, when a weak party
stands for its own legitimate rights against imperious pride and power,
than to sympathize with the weak. But who ever sympathized with a weak
thief, because three constables had got hold of him? [Hear, hear!] And
yet the one thief in three policemen's hands is the weaker party.
I suppose you would sympathize with him. [Hear, hear! laughter, and
applause.] Why, when that infamous king of Naples--Bomba, was driven
into Gaeta by Garibaldi with his immortal band of patriots, and Cavour
sent against him the army of Northern Italy, who was the weaker party
then? The tyrant and his minions; and the majority was with the noble