Be rough and rude, and torn with many a thorn:
All England would thee hail, if some white day
Thou, harassed by thy country’s bitter scorn,
Shouldst seek our friendly shore, and rest awhile
Thy wearied soul in this our happy Isle.
“L. W. F.
“Wolverhampton, England.”
This speech took its place in foreign bibliography. French writers who discussed American Slavery cited it, among whom was that excellent ally of our country, M. Édouard Laboulaye, who wrote always with equal knowledge and friendship. After quoting the famous words by which Wesley describes and blasts Slavery, he gives a definition from this speech.
“The Americans of the North, who calculate even to the beatings of the heart, have summed up this multifold crime in five axioms. It is, say they, man become the property of his fellow-man, marriage abolished, paternity destroyed, intelligence systematically stifled, labor forced and unpaid,—in other terms, tyranny, confiscation, and robbery. Such are the essential vices of Slavery, vices independent of the goodness or the wickedness of the master, vices irremediable,—for to correct them is to acknowledge that the Slave has some rights, it is to make a man of him, it is to commence emancipation. Such, without exaggeration and without declamation, is the ‘Barbarism of Slavery,’ as the eloquent Senator of Massachusetts has justly called it.”