BRITISH ANTI-SLAVERY.
The Annual meeting of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society was held on Monday evening, in Freemasons' Hall—a very fine one. There were about One Thousand persons present—perhaps less, certainly not more. I think Joseph Sturge, Esq., was Chairman, but I did not arrive till after the organization, and did not learn the officers' names. At all events, Mr. Sturge had presented the great practical question to the Meeting—"What can we Britons do to hasten the overthrow of Slavery?"—and Rev. H. H. Garnett (colored) of our State was speaking upon it when I entered. He named me commendingly to the audience, and the Chairman thereupon invited me to exchange my back seat for one on the platform, which I took. Mr. Garnett proceeded to commend the course of British action against Slavery which is popular here, and had already been shadowed forth in the set resolves afterward read to the meeting. The British were told that they could most effectually war against Slavery by refusing the courtesies of social intercourse to slaveholders—by refusing to hear or recognise pro-slavery clergymen—by refusing to consume the products of Slave Labor, &c. Another colored American—a Rev. Mr. Crummill, if I have his name right,—followed in the same vein, but urged more especially the duty of aiding the Free Colored population of the United-States to educate and intellectually develop their children. Mr. S. M. Peto, M. P. followed in confirmation of the views already expressed by Mr. Garnett, insisting that he could not as a Christian treat the slaveholder otherwise than as a tyrant and robber. And then a very witty negro from Boston (Rev. Mr. Heuston, I understood his name), spoke quite at length in unmeasured glorification of Great Britain, as the land of true freedom and equality, where simple Manhood is respected without regard to Color, and where alone he had ever been treated by all as a man and a brother.
By this time I was very ready to accept the Chairman's invitation to say a few words. For, while all that the speakers had uttered with regard to Slavery was true enough, it was most manifest that, whatever effect the course of action they urged might have in America, it could have no other than a baneful influence on the cause of Political Reform in this country. True, it did not always say in so many words that the Social and Political institutions of Great Britain are perfect, but it never intimated the contrary, while it generally implied and often distinctly affirmed this. The effect, therefore, of such inculcations, is not only to stimulate and aggravate the Phariseeism to which all men are naturally addicted, but actually to impede and arrest the progress of Reform in this Country by implying that nothing here needs reforming. And as this doctrine of "Stand by thyself for I am holier than thou," was of course received with general applause by a British audience, the vices of speaker and hearer reäcted on each other; and, judging from the specimens I had that evening, I must regard American, and especially Afric-American lecturers against Slavery in this country as among the most effective upholders of all the enormous Political abuses and wrongs which are here so prevalent.
When the stand was accorded me, therefore, I proceeded, not by any means to apologize for American Slavery, not to suggest the natural obstacles to its extinction, but to point out, as freely as the audience would bear, some modes of effective hostility to it in addition to those already commended. Premising the fact that Slavery in America now justifies itself mainly on the grounds that the class who live by rude manual toil always are and must be degraded and ill-requited—that there is more debasement and wretchedness on their part in the Free States and in Great Britain itself than there is in the Slave States—and that, moreover, Free laborers will not work in tropical climates, so that these must be cultivated by slaves or not at all—I suggested and briefly urged on British Abolitionists the following course of action:
1. Energetic and systematic exertions to increase the reward of Labor and the comfort and consideration of the depressed Laboring Class here at home; and to diffuse and cherish respect for Man as Man, without regard to class, color or vocation.
2. Determined efforts for the eradication of those Social evils and miseries here which are appealed to and relied on by slaveholders and their champions everywhere as justifying the continuance of Slavery; And
3. The colonization of our Slave States by thousands of intelligent, moral, industrious Free Laborers, who will silently and practically dispel the wide-spread delusion which affirms that the Southern States must be cultivated and their great staples produced by Slave Labor or not at all.
I think I did not speak more than fifteen minutes, and I was heard patiently to the end, but my remarks were received with no such "thunders of applause" as had been accorded to the more politic efforts of the colored gentlemen. There was in fact repeatedly evinced a prevalent apprehension that I would say something which it would be incumbent on the audience to resent; but I did not. And I have a faint hope that some of the remarks thus called forth will be remembered and reflected on. I am sure there is great need of it, and that denunciations of Slavery addressed by London to Charleston and Mobile will be far more effective after the extreme of destitution and misery uncovered by the Ragged Schools shall have been banished forever from this island—nay, after the great body of those who here denounce Slavery so unsparingly shall have earnestly, unselfishly, thoroughly tried so to banish it.