A Discourse for the Time, delivered January 4, 1852 in the First Congregational Unitarian Church

by William Henry Furness

When he spoke in this city the other evening, he repeated what he had said more than once before, that he had come hither resolved to interfere with no domestic concern of ours, with none of our party questions. But there is one 'domestic concern,' one 'party question,' which, while it is, in an obvious sense, a 'domestic concern,' does, in fact, necessarily and vitally involve those rights of Humanity for which this great man pleads, and which he is considered as representing when he urges upon us the claims of his oppressed country. In reason, and in the nature of things, it is connected with him and with his great purpose.

So clearly is this so, that they, who see what a monstrous Wrong our 'domestic concern' is, what a world of evil it has done and is doing, have watched our illustrious guest with trembling solicitude. For his own sake they are appalled lest he should waver from a faithful application of his own cherished faith; not that they desire him to join them, but they justly expect from him as a true man, that he should allow no shadow of doubt to rest upon his principles and his position.

For myself, I cannot help thinking, that he looks upon American Slavery as a thing, which we, ourselves, are at this moment busily engaged in abolishing. He finds men, eminent in office and in ability, ranked on the Anti-Slavery side. He knows that they are backed by the great authority of our Declaration of Independence, and assisted by the powerful influence of the freest institutions on the face of the earth; and he naturally regards it as needless and arrogant to interfere in the affairs of so mighty a nation—a nation so vigorous as to be able, one would think, to settle any difficulties that may lie in its way, without assistance from abroad.

But, although he has expressed his determination not to meddle with our domestic institutions, our domestic institutions threaten to meddle with him. Scarcely had he landed on our shores, when a voice was heard in our National Councils, proposing his arrest for incendiary speech; a proposal, the gross insult of which, not only to him, but to us all, was only relieved by its unutterable folly. This is not the only hint of the insolent interference in his concerns, with which the upholders of Oppression on this side of the world have menaced him. He looks, I believe, upon American Slavery as an affair which he, he especially who helped to elevate the peasantry of his own country, knows that we have the power to settle. But, however much he may have heard about it, he does not yet know that we have not the will to settle it. He does not yet know how deep-seated it is, and how mighty and extensive its influence is in deadening our hearts, and controlling our national action. Although he is a man of profound sagacity, yet, with all the information that may have been furnished him, it can only be by degrees, and by actual observation, that his mind will win its way to a true and terrible conviction of the actual state of the case. But he will—he must see how the matter stands; and he will declare, most fervently do I trust, what he cannot help seeing. The fact must become as plain to him as noonday, that there is no one thing in which the oppressed nations of Europe have a deeper interest, than in the abolition of American Slavery; because this is the one thing which prevents the full expression of our sympathy in their behalf, and neutralizes that moral aid, which, if we rendered it to the full extent of our power, would make all material aid entirely superfluous. Some of his words the other evening were very significant. Having said that he had done nothing, and would do nothing to interfere with our domestic affairs, he added that remarkable declaration:—'I more and more perceive, in the words of Hamlet, that there are more things in heaven and earth, than were dreamed of in my philosophy.'

How could he have dreamed that a people who had made such a solemn declaration of human rights before all the world, a people so lavish in the praise of Liberty, were clinging with such desperation to Oppression, as if it were the very life and soul of their Union and their Power. No matter how much he may have been told, and he is in nothing more remarkable than in the extent of his information, he has not yet known—he cannot know—it could not have entered into his generous heart to imagine, that this Domestic Institution of ours is the one thing that exerts the most marked and predominating influence on our domestic and our foreign policy. He does not see, but he must, that it is the one thing that will make his appeal to our National Government utterly in vain, and that his silence in regard to it will avail him nothing. It must become plain to him that we are ready enough to intervene when the Slave Power requires it for the increase and extension of its own strength. For that we are ready to go to war with our neighbors, and rob them of their territory. In that behalf our statesmen have sought to enlist the interests and sympathies of foreign nations. And that it is, whose interests will prevent us from a full and generous expression of our interest in the downtrodden of other lands. We are interfering with human rights at home, we are constitutionally bound to interfere with them, and we hold it for our advantage to do so; and we cannot intervene to prevent interference with them abroad. On this account alone, could a man of such rare power, of such wonderful eloquence, coming among us upon such a mission, fail. Yes, this favorite domestic institution, corrupting the whole administration of our government at home and abroad,—this it is that will disappoint and defeat the Hungarian patriot's idolised hope. He has come hither as to the very temple of Freedom, and he finds coiled up under her very altar, as its guardian, the serpent of Oppression, and already its deadly hiss has rung in his surprised ear.

American Slavery has much to answer for; but if it adds this to the mountain of its iniquities, if it is the cause why the hope of bleeding and fettered Europe is blasted, if it break the noble heart of Hungary's devoted servant and chief, and more than all, if it cause him to falter in the cause of universal humanity, what tongue now silent will not join in execrating it? what heart, hitherto cold, will not consecrate itself to the work of its abolition?

The nations of the old world, degraded, trampled upon, and bleeding under the relentless feet of arbitrary power, long and pray for emancipation. The glorious vision of Liberty flits before their aching sight. They stretch out their hearts and hands to us. But the supporters of the old and oppressive forms of government sneer at our boasted universal freedom, as well they may, and point to our millions of bondmen. They can say, with truth, that Liberty does not exist here or anywhere as a realized fact; that it is a chimera and an abstraction, utterly impracticable; that the people are longing for a dream that has never been and can never be fulfilled. Neither the foreign oppressor, nor the foreign oppressed have any foundation in fact for the faith and the hope of liberty; and much I fear we should do little for the deliverance of other nations, even if, as we now stand, clinging to Slavery, we were actually to intervene in their behalf. If we saw any chance of strengthening and extending our 'domestic institution,' we might in that case be ready enough to give them our help.

O how plain is it that the one thing which the world claims of us, the one thing that the great Hungarian has to ask of us, for his own people and for all Europe, is that we should prove that Liberty without Slavery is a practicable thing. Let this fact be realized, and the world's redemption is sure. Show mankind twenty-five millions of human beings, living together under such free and simple institutions as ours, with not a single slave among them, and then all that we need do is done, and our simple existence as a nation becomes an irresistible intervention against the violation of human rights. To induce us to do this, the Hungarian patriot may well go down on those knees which he would not bend to Emperor or Czar, and adjure us for the love of God and man, by all the dearest hopes and interests of the human race, by the great name of the holy Jesus, to make our liberty complete, to redeem our long-violated pledge, to wipe away the blot that eclipses the sun of our Freedom, and prove, as we may, that all men are children of one Father, brethren of one household, born to the glorious liberty of the sons of the living God. If, in any way, he should be the means in the hands of a gracious Providence of inducing us to do this, he will do more for us than we could do for him, though we were to place all the gold of the East, and of the West, at his disposal.