MADAM: The Committee of the Glasgow University Abstainers' Society,
representing nearly one hundred students, embrace the opportunity which
you have so kindly afforded them, of expressing their high esteem for
you, and their appreciation of your noble efforts in behalf of the
oppressed. They cordially join in the welcome with which you have been
so justly received on these shores, and earnestly hope and pray that
your visit may be beneficial to your own health, and tend greatly to the
furtherance of Christian philanthropy.
The committee have had their previous convictions confirmed, and their
hearts deeply affected, by your vivid and faithful delineations of
slavery; and they desire to join with thousands on both sides of the
Atlantic, who offer fervent thanksgiving to God for having endowed you
with those rare gifts, which have qualified you for producing the
noblest testimony against slavery, next to the Bible, which the world
has ever received.
While giving all the praise to God, from whom cometh every good and
perfect gift, they may be excused for mentioning three characteristics
of your writings regarding slavery, which awakened their admiration--a
sensibility befitting the anguish of suffering millions; the graphic
power which presents to view the complex and hideous system, stripped of
all its deceitful disguises; and the moral courage that was required to
encounter the monster, and drag it forth to the gaze and the execration
of mankind.
The committee feel humbled in being called to confess and deplore, as
existing among ourselves, another species of slavery, not less ruinous
in its tendency, and not less criminal in the sight of God--we mean the
slavery by strong drink. We feel too much ashamed of the sad preëminence
which these nations have acquired in regard to this vice to take any
offence at the reproaches cast upon us from across the Atlantic. Such
smiting shall not break our head. We are anxious to profit by it. Yet
when it is used as an argument to justify slavery, or to silence our
respectful but earnest remonstrances, we take exception to the
parallelism on which these arguments are made to rest. We do not justify
our slavery. We do not try to defend it from the Scriptures. We do not
make laws to uphold it. The unhappy victims of our slavery have all
forged and riveted their own fetters. We implore them to forbear; but,
alas! in many cases without success. We invite them to be free, and
offer our best assistance to undo their bonds. When a fugitive slave
knocks at our door, escaping from a cruel master, we try to accost him
in the spirit or in the words of a well-known philanthropist, "Come in,
brother, and get warm, and get thy breakfast." And when distinguished
American philanthropists, who have done so much to undo the heavy
burdens in their own land, come over to assist us, we hail their advent
with rejoicing, and welcome them as benefactors. We are well aware that
a corresponding feeling would be manifested in the United States by a
portion, doubtless a large portion, of the population; but certainly not
by those who justify or palliate their own oppression by a reference to
our lamentable intemperance.
We rejoice, madam, to know that as abstainers we can claim an important
place, pot only in your sympathies, but in your literary labors. We
offer our hearty thanks for the valuable contributions you have already
furnished in that momentous cause, and for the efforts of that
distinguished family with which you are connected.
We bear our testimony to the mighty impulse imparted to the public mind
by the extensive circulation of those memorable sermons which your
honored father gave to Europe, as well as to America, more than
twenty-five years ago. It will be pleasing to him to know that the force
of his arguments is felt in British universities to the present time,
and that not only students in augmenting numbers, but learned
professors, acknowledge their cogency and yield to their power.
Permit us to add that a movement has already begun, in an influential
quarter in England, for the avowed purpose of combining the patriotism
and Christianity of these nations in a strenuous agitation for the
suppression, by the legislature, of the traffic in alcoholic drinks.
In conclusion, the committee have only further to express their cordial
thanks for your kindness in receiving their address, and their desire
and prayer that you may be long spared to glorify God, by promoting the
highest interests of man; that if it so please him, you may live to see
the glorious fruit of your labors here cm earth, and that hereafter you
may meet the blessed salutation, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one
of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me."
NORMAN S. KERR, _Secretary_.
STEWART BATES, _President_.
GLASGOW, 25th April, 1853.