Who, among our statesmen, would not shrink from the
baneful reputation of having supported by his legislative influence the
slave-trade, the traffic in human flesh? Let them then beware; for the
time is near at hand when the present defenders of slavery will sink
under the same fatal reputation, and leave to posterity a memory which
will blacken through all future time, a legacy of infamy.
"Let us not betake us to the common arts and stratagems of nations, but
fear God, and put away the evil which provokes Him; and trust not in man,
but in the living God; and it shall go well for England!" This counsel,
given by the purehearted William Penn, in a former age, is about to be
followed in the present. An intense and powerful feeling is working in
the mighty heart of England; it is speaking through the lips of Brougham
and Buxton and O'Connell, and demanding justice in the name of humanity
and according to the righteous law of God. The immediate emancipation of
eight hundred thousand slaves is demanded with an authority which cannot
much longer be disputed or trifled with.
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