THE LORD PROVOST rose, and stated that a number of letters of apology
had been received from parties who had been invited to take part in the
meeting, but who had been unable to attend. Among these he might
mention Professor Blackie, the Rev. Mr. Gilfillan, of Dundee, Rev. J.
Begg, D.D., the Earl of Buchan, Dr. Candlish, and Sir W. Gibson Craig,
all of whom expressed their regret that they could not be present. One
of them, he observed, was from a gentleman who had long taken an
interest in the antislavery cause,--Lord Cockburn,[B]--and his note was
so warm, and sympathetic, and hearty on the subject about which they had
met, that he could not resist the temptation of reading it. It
proceeded, "I regret, that owing to my being obliged to be in Ayrshire,
it will not be in my power to join you in the expression of respect and
gratitude to Mrs. Stowe; she deserves all the honor that can be done
her; she has done more for humanity than was ever accomplished before by
a single book of fiction. [Cheers.] It did not require much to raise our
British feeling against slavery, but by showing us what substantially
are facts, and the necessary tendency of this evil in its most mitigated
form, she has greatly strengthened the ground on which this feeling
rests. Her work may have no immediate or present influence on the states
of her own country that are now unhappily under the curse, and may
indeed for a time aggravate its horrors; but it is a prodigious
accession to the constantly accumulating mass of views and evidence,
which by reason of its force must finally prevail." [Cheers.] The Lord
Provost proceeded to say, that they had now assembled chiefly to do
honor to their distinguished guest, Mrs. Stowe. [Applause.] They had
met, however, also to express their interest in the cause which it had
been the great effort of her life to promote--the abolition of slavery.
They took advantage of her presence, and the effect which was produced
on the public mind of this country, to reiterate their love for the
abolition cause, and their detestation of slavery. Before they were
aware that Mrs. Stowe was to grace the city of Edinburgh with her
presence, a committee had been organized to collect a penny
offering--the amount to be contributed in pence, and other small sums,
from the masses of this country--to be presented to her as some means of
mitigating, through her instrumentality, the horrors of slavery, as they
might come under her observation. It was intended at once as a mark of
their esteem for her, of their confidence in her, of their conviction
that she would do what was right in the cause, and, at the same time, as
an evidence of the detestation in which the system of slavery was held
in this free country. That penny offering now, he was happy to say, by
the spontaneous efforts of the inhabitants of this and other towns,
amounted to a considerable sum; to certain gentlemen in Edinburgh
forming the committee the whole credit of this organization was due, and
he believed one of their number, the Rev. Mr. Ballantyne, would present
the offering that evening, and tell them all about it. He would not,
therefore, forestall what he would have to say on the subject. They were
also to have the pleasure of presenting Mrs. Stowe with an address from
the committee in this city, which would be presented by another reverend
friend, who would be introduced at the proper time. As there would be a
number of speakers to follow during the evening, his own remarks must
be exceedingly short; but he could not resist the temptation of saying
how happy he felt at being once more in the midst of a great meeting in
the city of Edinburgh, for the purpose of expressing their detestation
of the system of slavery. They could appeal to their brethren in the
United States with clean hands, because they had got rid of the
abomination themselves; they could therefore say to them, through their
friends who were now present, on their return home, and through the
press, which would carry their sentiments even to the slave states--they
could say to them that they had washed their own hands of the evil at
the largest pecuniary sacrifice that was ever made by any nation for the
promotion of any good cause. [Loud applause.] Some parties said that
they should not speak harshly of the Americans, because they were full
of prejudice with regard to the system which they had seen growing up
around them. He said so too with all his heart; he joined in the
sentiment that they should not speak harshly, but they might fairly
express their opinion of the system with which their American friends
were surrounded, and in which he thought all who supported it were
guilty participators. [Hear, hear!] They could denounce the wickedness,
they could tell them that they thought it was their duty to put an end
to it speedily. The cause of the abolition of slavery in our own
colonies long hung without any visible progress, notwithstanding the
efforts of many distinguished men, who did all they could to mitigate
some of its more prominent evils; and yet, so long as they never struck
at the root, the progress which they made was almost insensible. They
knew how many men had spent their energies, and some of them their
lives, in attempting to forward the cause; but how little effect was
produced for the first half of the present century! The city of
Edinburgh had always, he was glad to say, taken a deep interest in the
cause; it was one of the very first to take up the ground of total and
entire abolition. [Cheers.] A predecessor of his own in the civic chair
was so kind as to preside at a meeting held in Edinburgh twenty-three
years ago, in which a very decided step was proposed to be taken in
advance, and a resolution was moved by the then Dean of Faculty, to the
effect that on the following first of January, 1831, all the children
born of slave parents in our colonies were from that date to be declared
free. That was thought a great and most important movement by the
promoters of the cause. There were, however, parties at that crowded
meeting who thought that even this was a mere expedient--that it was a
mere pruning of the branches, leaving the whole system intact. One of
these was the late Dr. Andrew Thomson--[cheers]--who had the courage to
propose that the meeting should at once declare for total and immediate
abolition, which proposal was seconded by another excellent citizen, Mr.
Dickie. Dr. Thomson replied to some of the arguments which had been put
forward, to the effect that the total abolition might possibly occasion
bloodshed; and he said that, even if that did follow, it was no fault of
his, and that he still stuck to the principle, which he considered right
under any circumstances. The chairman, thereupon, threatened to leave
the chair on account of the unnecessarily strong language used, and when
the sentiments were reiterated by Mr. Dickie, he actually bolted, and
left the meeting, which was thrown into great confusion. A few days
afterwards, however, another meeting was held--one of the largest and
most effective that had been ever held in Edinburgh--at which were
present Mr. John Shank More in the chair, the Rev. Dr. Thomson, Rev. Dr
Gordon, Dr. Ritchie, Mr. Muirhead, the Rev. Mr. Buchanan of North Leith,
Mr. J. Wigham, Jr., Dr. Greville, &c. The Lord Provost proceeded to read
extracts from the speeches made at the meeting, showing that the
sentiments of the inhabitants of Edinburgh, so far back as 1830, as
uttered by some of its most distinguished men,--not violent agitators,
but ministers of the gospel, promoters of peace and order, and every
good and every benevolent purpose,--were in favor of the immediate and
total abolition of slavery in our colonies. He referred especially to
the speech of Dr. Andrew Thomson on this occasion, from which he read
the following extract: "But if the argument is forced upon me to
accomplish this great object, that there must be violence, let it come,
for it will soon pass away--let it come and rage its little hour, since
it is to be succeeded by lasting freedom, and prosperity, and happiness.
Give me the hurricane rather than the pestilence. Give me the hurricane,
with its thunders, and its lightnings, and its tempests--give me the
hurricane, with its partial and temporary devastations, awful though
they be--give me the hurricane, which brings along with it purifying,
and healthful, and salutary effects--give me the hurricane rather than
the noisome pestilence, whose path is never crossed, whose silence is
never disturbed, whose progress is never arrested by one sweeping blast
from the heavens--which walks peacefully and sullenly through the length
and breadth of the land, breathing poison into every heart, and carrying
havoc into every home--enervating all that is strong, defacing all that
is beautiful, and casting its blight over the fairest and happiest
scenes of human life--and which from day to day, and from year to year,
with intolerant and interminable malignity, sends its thousands and tens
of thousands of hapless victims into the ever-yawning and
never-satisfied grave!"--[Loud and long applause.] The experience which
they had had, that all the dangers, all the bloodshed and violence which
were threatened, were merely imaginary, and that none of these evils had
come upon them although slavery had been totally abolished by us,
should, he thought, be an encouragement to their American friends to go
home and tell their countrymen that in this great city the views now put
forward were advocated long ago--that the persons who now held them said
the same years ago of the disturbances and the evils which would arise
from pressing the question of immediate and total abolition--that the
same kind of arguments and the same predictions of evil were uttered in
England--and although she had not the experience, although she had not
the opportunity of pointing to the past, and saying the evil had not
come in such a case, still, even then, they were willing to face the
evil, to stick to the righteous principle, and to say, come what would,
justice must be done to the slave, and slavery must be wholly and
immediately abolished. [Cheers.] He had said so much on the question of
slavery, because he was very sure it would be much more agreeable to
their modest and retiring and distinguished guest that one should speak
about any other thing than about herself. Uncle Tom's Cabin needed no
recommendation from him. [Loud cheers.] It was the most extraordinary
book, he thought, that had ever been published; no book had ever got
into the same circulation; none had ever produced a tithe of the
impression which it had produced within a given time. It was worth all
the proslavery press of America put together. The horrors of slavery
were not merely described, but they were actually pictured to the eye.
They were seen and understood fully; formerly they were mere dim
visions, about which there was great difference of opinion; some saw
them as in a mist, and others more clearly; but now every body saw and
understood slavery. Every body in this great city, if they had a voice
in the matter, would be prepared to say that they wished slavery to be
utterly extinguished. [Loud cheers.]
PROFESSOR STOWE then rose, and was greeted with loud cheers. He begged
to read the following note from Mrs. Stowe, in acknowledgment of the
honor:--
"I accept these congratulations and honors, and this offering, which it
has pleased Scotland to bestow on me, not for any thing which I have
said or done, not as in any sense acknowledging that they are or can be
deserved, but with heartfelt, humble gratitude to God, as tokens of
mercy to a cause most sacred and most oppressed. In the name of a people
despised and rejected of men--in the name of men of sorrows acquainted
with grief, from whom the faces of all the great and powerful of the
earth have been hid--in the name of oppressed and suffering humanity, I
thank you. The offering given is the dearer to me, and the more hopeful,
that it is literally the penny offering, given by thousands on
thousands, a penny at a time. When, in travelling through your country,
aged men and women have met me with such fervent blessings, little
children gathered round me with such loving eyes--when honest hands,
hard with toil, have been stretched forth with such hearty welcome--when
I have seen how really it has come from the depths of the hearts of the
common people, and know, as I truly do, what prayers are going up with
it from the humblest homes of Scotland, I am encouraged. I believe it is
God who inspires this feeling, and I believe God never inspired it in
vain. I feel an assurance that the Lord hath looked down from heaven to
hear the groaning of the prisoner, and according to the greatness of his
power, to loose those that are appointed to die. In the human view,
nothing can be more hopeless than this cause; all the wealth, and all
the power, and all the worldly influence is against it. But here in
Scotland, need we tell the children of the Covenant, that the Lord on
high is mightier than all human power? Here, close by the spot where
your fathers signed that Covenant, in an hour when Scotland's cause was
equally poor and depressed--here, by the spot where holy martyrs sealed
it with their blood, it will neither seem extravagance nor enthusiasm to
say to the children of such parents, that for the support of this cause,
we look, not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are not
seen; to that God, who, in the face of all worldly power, gave liberty
to Scotland, in answer to your fathers' prayers. Our trust is in Jesus
Christ, and in the power of the Holy Ghost, and in the promise that he
shall reign till he hath put all things under his feet. There are those
faithless ones, who, standing at the grave of a buried humanity, tell us
that it is vain to hope for our brother, because he hath lain in the
grave three days already. We turn from them to the face of Him who has
said, 'Thy brother shall rise again.' There was a time when our great
High Priest, our Brother, yet our Lord, lay in the grave three days; and
the governors and powers of the earth made it as sure as they could,
seeding the stone and setting a watch. But a third day came, and an
earthquake, and an angel. So shall it be to the cause of the oppressed;
though now small and despised, we are watchers at the sepulchre, like
Mary and the trusting women; we can sit through the hours of darkness.
We are watching the sky for the golden streaks of dawning, and we
believe that the third day will surely come. For Christ our Lord, being
raised from the dead, dieth no more; and he has pledged his word that he
shall not fail nor be discouraged till he have set judgment on the
earth. He shall deliver the poor when He crieth, the needy, and him that
hath no helper. The night is far spent--the day is at hand. The
universal sighing of humanity in all countries, the whole creation
groaning and travailing in pain together--the earnest expectation of the
creature waiting for the manifestation of the sons of God--show that the
day is not distant when he will break every yoke, and let the oppressed
go free. And whatever we are able to do for this sacred cause, let us
cast it where the innumerable multitude of heaven cast their crowns, at
the feet of the Lamb, saying, 'Worthy is the Lamb that was slain to
receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and
glory, and blessings.'"
The Rev. Professor then continued. "My Lord Provost, Ladies and
Gentlemen: This cause, to be successful, must be carried on in a
religious spirit, with a deep sense of our dependence on God, and with
that love for our fellow-men which the gospel requires. It is because I
think I have met this spirit since I reached the shores of Great
Britain, in those who have taken an interest in the cause, that I feel
encouraged to hope that the expression of your feeling will be effective
on the hearts of Christians on the other side of the Atlantic. There are
Christians there as sincere, as hearty, and as earnest, as any on the
face of the earth. They have looked at this subject, and been troubled;
they have hardly known what to do, and their hearts have been
discouraged. They have almost turned away their eyes from it, because
they have scarcely dared encounter it, the difficulties appeared to them
so great. Wrong cannot always receive the support of Christians; wrong
must be done away with; and what must be--what God requires to be--that
certainly will be. Now, in this age, man is every where beginning to
regard the sufferings of his fellow-man as his own. There is an interest
felt in man, as man, which was not felt in preceding ages. The
facilities of communication are bringing all nations in contact, and
whatever wrong exists in any part of the world, is every where felt.
There are wrongs and sufferings every where; but those to which we are
accustomed, we look upon with most indifference, because being
accustomed to them, we do not feel their enormity. You feel the
enormity of slavery more than we do, because you are not immediately
interested, and regard it at a distance. We regard some of the wrongs
that exist in the old world with more sensibility than you can regard
them, because we are not accustomed to them, and you are. Therefore, in
the spirit of Christian love, it belongs to Christian men to speak to
each other with great fidelity. It has been said that you know little or
nothing about slavery. O, happy men, that you are ignorant of its
enormities. [Hear, hear!] But you do know something about it. You know
as much about it as you know of the widow-burning in India, or the
cannibalism in the Fejee Islands, or any of those crimes and sorrows of
paganism, that induced you to send forth your missionaries. You know it
is a great wrong, and a terrible obstacle to the progress of the gospel;
and that is enough for you to know to induce you to act. You have as
much knowledge as ever induced a Christian community in any part of the
world to exert an influence in any other part of the world. Slavery is a
relic of paganism, of barbarism; it must be removed by Christianity; and
if the light of Christianity shines on it clearly, it certainly will
remove it. There are thousands of hearts in the United States that
rejoice in your help. Whatever expressions of impatience and petulance
you may hear, be assured that these expressions are not the heart of the
great body of the people. [Cheers.] A large proportion of that country
is free from slavery. There is an area of freedom ten times larger than
Great Britain in territory.[C] [Cheers.] But all the power over the
slave is in the hands of the slaveholder. You had a power over the
slaveholder by your national legislature; our national legislature has
no power over the slaveholder. All the legislation that can in that
country be brought to bear for the slave, is legislation by the
slaveholders themselves. There is where the difficulty lies. It is
altogether by persuasion, Christian counsel, Christian sympathy,
Christian earnestness, that any good can be effected for the slave. The
conscience of the people is against the system--the conscience of the
people, even in the slaveholding states; and if we can but get at the
conscience without exciting prejudice, it will tend greatly towards the
desired effect. But this appeal to the conscience must be
unintermittent, constant. Your hands must not be weary, your prayers
must not be discontinued; but every day and every hour should we be
doing something towards the object. It is sometimes said, Americans who
resist slavery are traitors to their country. No; those who would
support freedom are the only true friends of their country. Our fathers
never intended slavery to be identified with the government of the
United States; but in the temptations of commerce the evil was
overlooked; and how changed for the worse has become the public
sentiment even within the last thirty or forty years! The enormous
increase in the consumption of cotton has raised enormously the market
value of slaves, and arrayed both avarice and political ambition in
defence of slavery. Instruct the conscience, and produce free cotton,
and this will be like Cromwell's exhortation to his soldiers, '_Trust
in God, and keep your powder dry_.'" [Continued cheers.]
THE REV. DR. R. LEE then said: "I am quite sure that every individual
here responds cordially to those sentiments of respect and gratitude
towards our honored guest which have been so well expressed by the Lord
Provost and the other gentlemen who have addressed us. We think that
this lady has not only laid us under a great obligation by giving us one
of the most delightful books in the English language, but that she has
improved us as men and as Christians, that she has taught us the value
of our privileges, and made us more sensible than we were before of the
obligation which lies upon us to promote every good work. I have been
requested to say a few words on the degradation of American slavery; but
I feel, in the presence of the gentleman who last addressed you, and of
those who are still to address you, that it would be almost presumption
in me to enter on such a subject. It is impossible to speak or to think
of the subject of slavery without feeling that there is a double
degradation in the matter; for, in the first place, the slave is a man
made in the image of God--God's image cut in ebony, as old Thomas Fuller
quaintly but beautifully said; and what right have we to reduce him to
the image of a brute, and make property of him? We esteem drunkenness as
a sin. Why is it a sin? Because it reduces that which was made in the
image of God to the image of a brute. We say to the drunkard, 'You are
guilty of a sacrilege, because you reduce that which God made in his own
image "into the image of an irrational creature."' Slavery does the very
same. But there is not only a degradation committed as regards the
slave--there is a degradation also committed against himself by him who
makes him a slave, and who retains him in the position of a slave; for
is it not one of the most commonplace of truths that we cannot do a
wrong to a neighbor without doing a greater wrong to ourselves?--that we
cannot injure him without also injuring ourselves yet more? I observe
there is a certain class of writers in America who are fond of
representing the feeling of this country towards America as one of
jealousy, if not of hatred.. I think, my lord, that no American ever
travelled in this country without being conscious at once that this is a
total mistake--that this is a total misapprehension. I venture to say
that there is no nation on the face of the earth in which we feel half
so much interest, or towards which we feel the tenth part of the
affection, which we do towards our brethren in the United States of
America. And what is more than that--there is no nation towards which we
feel one half so much admiration, and for which we feel half so much
respect, as we do for the people of the United States of America.
[Cheers.] Why, sir, how can it be otherwise? How is it possible that it
should be the reverse? Are they not our bone and our flesh? and their
character, whatever it is, is it any thing more than our own, a little
exaggerated, perhaps? Their virtues and their vices, their faults and
their excellences, are just the virtues and the vices, the faults and
the excellences, of that old respectable freeholder, John Bull, from
whom they are descended. We are not much surprised that a nation which
are slaves themselves should make other men slaves. This cannot very
much surprise us: but we are both surprised and we are deeply grieved,
that a nation which has conceived so well the idea of freedom--a nation
which has preached the doctrines of freedom with such boldness and such
fulness--a nation which has so boldly and perfectly realized its idea of
freedom in every other respect--should in this only instance have sunk
so completely below its own idea, and forgetting the rights of one class
of their fellow-creatures, should have deprived them of freedom
altogether. I say that our grief and our disapprobation of this in the
case of our brethren in America arises very much from this, that in
other respects we admire them so much, we are sorry that so noble a
nation should allow a blot like this to remain upon its escutcheon. I am
not ignorant--nobody can be ignorant--of the great difficulties which
encompass the solution of this question in America. It is vain for us to
shut our eyes to it. There can be no doubt whatever that great
sacrifices will require to be made in order to get rid of this great
evil. But the Americans are a most ingenious people; they are full of
inventions of all sorts, from the invention of a machine for protecting
our feet from the water, to a machine for making ships go by means of
heated air; from the one to the other the whole field of discovery is
occupied by their inventive genius. There is not an article in common
use among us but bears some stamp of America. We rise in the morning,
and before we are dressed we have had half a dozen American articles in
our hands. And during the day, as we pass through the streets, articles
of American invention meet us every where. In short, the ingenuity of
the people is proclaimed all over the world. And there can be no doubt
that the moment this great, this ingenious people finds that slavery is
both an evil and a sin, their ingenuity will be successfully exerted in
discovering some invention for preventing its abolition from ruining
them altogether. [Cheers.] No doubt their ingenuity will be equal to the
occasion; and I may take the liberty of adding, that their ingenuity in
that case will find even a richer reward than it has done in those other
inventions which have done them so much honor, and been productive of so
much profit. I say, that sacrifices must be made; there can be no doubt
about that; but I would also observe, that the longer the evil is
permitted to continue, the greater and more tremendous will become the
sacrifice which will be needed to put an end to it; for all history
proves that a nation encumbered, with slavery is surrounded with danger.
[Applause.] Has the history of antiquity been written in vain? Does it
not teach us that not only domestic and social pollutions are the
inevitable results, but does it not teach us also that political
insecurity and political revolutions as certainly slumber beneath the
institution of slavery as fireworks at the basis of Mount Ætna?
[Cheers.] It cannot but be so. Men no more than steam can be compressed
without a tremendous revulsion; and let our brethren in America be sure
of this, that the longer the day of reckoning is put off by them, the
more tremendous at last that reckoning will Be." [Loud, applause.]
* * * * *
In regard to this meeting at Edinburgh, there was a ridiculous story
circulated and variously commented on in certain newspapers of the
United States, that _the American flag was there exhibited, insulted,
torn, and mutilated_. Certain religious papers took the lead in
propagating the slander, which, so for as I know or can learn, _had no
foundation_, unless it be that, in the arranging of the flag around its
staff, the stars might have been more distinctly visible than the
stripes. The walls were profusely adorned with drapery, and there were
numerous flags disposed in festoons. Truly a wonderful thing to make a
story of, and then parade it in the newspapers from Maine to Texas,
beginning in Philadelphia!