The REV. PROFESSOR STOWE rose amid loud and repeated cheers, and said, "It is extremely painful for me to speak on the subject of American slavery, and especially out of the borders of my own country. [Hear, hear!] I hardly know whether painful or pleasurable emotions predominate, when I look upon the audience to which I speak. I feel a very near affinity to the Congregationalists of England, and especially to the Congregationalists of London. [Cheers.] My ancestors were residents of London; at least, from the time of Edward III.; they lived in Cornhill and Leadenhall Street, and their bones lie buried in the old church of St. Andrew UnderShaft; and, in the year 1632, on account of their nonconformity, they were obliged to seek refuge in the State of Massachusetts; and I have always felt a love and a veneration for the Congregational churches of England, more than for any other churches in any foreign land. [Cheers.] I can only hope, that my conduct, as a religious man and a minister of Christ, may not bring discredit upon my ancestors, and upon the honorable origin which I claim. [Hear! and cheers.] I wish to say, in the first place, that in the United States the Congregational churches, as a body, are free from slavery. [Cheers.] I do not think that there is a Congregational church in the United States in which a member could openly hold a slave without subjecting himself to discipline.* True, I have met with churches very deficient in their duty on this subject, and I am afraid there are members of Congregational churches who hold slaves secretly as security for debt in the Southern States. At the last great Congregational Convention, held in the city of Albany, the churches took a step on the subject of slavery much in advance of any other great ecclesiastical body in the country. I hope it is but the beginning of a series of measures that will eventuate in the separation of this body from all connection with slavery. [Hear, hear!] I am extensively acquainted with the United States; I have lived in different sections of them; I am familiar with people of all classes, and it is my solemn conviction, that nine tenths of the people feel on the subject of slavery as you do ; † [cheers ;] perhaps not so intensely, for familiarity with wrong deadens the conscience; but their convictions are altogether as yours are; and in the slaveholding states, and among slaveholders themselves, conscience is against the system. [Cheers.] There is no legislative control of the subject of slavery, except by slaveholding legislators themselves. Congress has no right to do any thing in the premises. They violated the constitution, as I believe, in passing the Fugitive Slave Act. [Cheers.] I do not believe they had any right to pass it. [Hear, hear!] I stand here not as the representative of any body whatever. I only represent myself, and give you my individual convictions, that have been produced by a long and painful connection with the

I have been told since my return, that there are some slaveholding Congregational churches in the south; but they have no connection with our New England churches, and certainly are not generally known as Congregationalists distinct from the Presbyterians.

This has always been supposed and claimed in the United States. Now the time has come to test its truth. If there is this antislavery feeling in nine tenths of the people, the impudent iniquity of the Nebraska bill will call it forth.

subject. [Hear, hear!] As to the resolution, I approve it entirely. Its sentiment and its spirit are my own. [Cheers.] At the close of the revolutionary war, which separated the colonies from the mother country, every state of the Union was a slaveholding state; every colony was a slaveholding colony; and now we have seventeen free states. [Cheers.] Slavery has been abolished in one half of the original colonies, and it was declared that there should be neither slavery nor the slave trade in any territory north and west of the Ohio River; so that all that part is entirely free from actual active participation in this curse, laying open a free territory that, I think, must be ten times larger in extent than Great Britain. [Loud cheers ] The State of Massachusetts was the first in which slavery ceased. How did it cease? By an enactment of the legislature? Not at all. They did not feel there was any necessity for such an enactment. The Bill of Rights declared, that all men were born free, and that they had an equal right to the pursuit of happiness and the acquisition of property. In contradiction to that, there were slaves in every part of Massachusetts; and some philanthropic individual advised a slave to bring into court an action for wages against his master during all his time of servitude. The action was brought, and the court decided that the negro was entitled to wages during the whole period. [Cheers.] That put an end to slavery in Massachusetts, and that decision ought to have put an end to slavery in all states of the Union, because the law applied to all. They abolished slavery in all the Northern States in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Connecticut, and Rhode Island; and it was expected that the whole of the states would follow the example. When I was a child, I never heard a lisp in defence of slavery. [Hear, hear, hear!] Every body condemned it; all looked upon it as a great curse, and all regarded it as a temporary evil, which would soon melt away before the advancing light of truth. [Hear, hear!] But still there was great injustice done to those who had been slaves. Every body regarded the olored race as a degraded race; they were looked upon as inferior; they were not apon terms of social equality. The only thing approaching it was, that the colored. :hildren attended the schools with the white children, and took their places on the same forms; but in all other respects they were excluded from the common advanages and privileges of society. In the places of worship they were seated by themelves; and that difference always existed till these discussions came up, and they Jegan to feel mortified at their situation; and hence, wherever they could, they had worship by themselves, and began to build places of worship for themselves; and low you will scarcely find a colored person occupying a seat in our places of worship. This stain still remains, and it is but a type of the feeling that has been generated by lavery. This ought to be known and understood, and this is just one of the outIroppings of that inward feeling that still is doing great injustice to the colored race; ut there are symptoms of even that giving way.

"I suppose you all remember Dr. Pennington - [cheers]-a colored minister of great talent and excellence [Hear, hear!]-though born a slave, and for many years was a

VOL. I.

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fugitive slave. [Hear, hear.] Dr. Pennington is a member of the presbytery of New York; and within the last six months he has been chosen moderator of that presbytery. [Loud cheers.] He has presided in that capacity at the ordination of a minister to one of the most respectable churches of that city. So far so good-we rejoice in it, and we hope that the same sense of justice which has brought about that change, so that a colored man can be moderator of a Presbytery in the city of New York, will go on, till full justice is done to these people, and until the grievous wrongs to which they have been subjected will be entirely done away. [Cheers.] But still, what is the aspect which the great American nation now presents to the Christian world? Most sorry am I to say it; but it is just this—a Christian republic upholding slavery — the only great nation on earth that does uphold it—a great Christian republic, which, so far as the white people are concerned, is the fairest and most prosperous nation on earth — that great Christian republic using all the power of its government to secure and to shield this horrible institution of negro slavery from aggression; and there is no subject on which the government is so sensitive there is no institution which it manifests such a determination to uphold. [Hear, hear!] And then the most melancholy fact of all is, that the entire Christian church in that republic, with few exceptions, are silent, or are apologists for this great wrong. [Hear, hear!] It makes my heart bleed to think of it; and there are many praying and weeping in secret places over this curse, whose voices are not heard. There is such a pressure on the subject, it is so mixed up with other things, that many sigh over it who know not what to say or what to do in reference to it. And what kind of slavery is it? Is it like the servitude under the Mosaic law, which is brought forward to defend it? Nothing like it. Let me read you a little extract from a correspondent of a New York paper, writing from Paris. I will read it, because it is so graphic, and because I wish to show from what sources you may best ascertain the real nature of American slavery. The commercial newspapers, published by slaveholders, in slaveholding states, will give you a far more graphic idea of what slavery actually is, than you have from Uncle Tom's Cabin; for there the most horrible features are softened. This writer says, 'And now a word on American representatives abroad. I have already made my complaint of the troubles brought on Americans here by that "incendiary" book of Mrs. Stowe's, especially of the difficulty we have in making the French understand our institutions. But therewas one partially satisfactory way of answering their questions, by saying that Uncle Tom's Cabin was a romance. And this would have served the purpose pretty well, and spared our blushes for the model republic, if the slaveholders themselves would only withhold their testimony to the truth of what we were willing to let pass as fiction. But they are worse than Mrs. Stowe herself, and their writings are getting to be quoted here quite extensively. The Moniteur of to-day, and another widely-circulated journal that lies on my table, both contain extracts from those extremely incendiary perlodicals, The National Intelligencer, of February 11, and The N. O. Picayune, of February 17. The fint gives an auctioneer's advertisement of the sale of "a negro boy of

eighteen years, a negro girl aged sixteen, three horses, saddles, bridles, wheelbarrows,” &c. Then follows an account of the sale, which reads very much like the description, in the dramatic feuilletons here, of a famous scene in the Case de l'Oncle Tom, as played at the Ambigu Comique. The second extract is the advertisement of "our esteemed fellow-citizen, Mr. M. C. G.," who presents his "respects to the inhabitants of O. and the neighbouring parishes," and " informs them that he keeps a fine pack of dogs trained to catch negroes," &c. It is painful to think that there are men in our country who will write, and that there are others found to publish, such tales as these about our peculiar institution. I put it to Mr. G., if he thinks it is patriotic. As a "fellowcitizen," and in his private relations, G. may be an estimable man, for aught I know, a Christian and a scholar, and an ornament to the social circles of O. and the neighboring parishes. But as an author, G. becomes public property, and a fair theme for criticism; and in that capacity, I say G. is publishing the shame of his country. I call him G., without the prefatory Mister, not from any personal disrespect, much as I am grieved at his course as a writer, but because he is now breveted for immortality, and goes down to posterity, like other immortals, without titular prefix.' [Cheers.] Now, here is where you get the true features of slavery. What is the reason that the churches, as a general thing, are silent- that some of them are apologists, and that some, in the extreme Southern States, actually defend slavery, and say it is a good institution, and sanctioned by Scripture? It is simply this-the overwhelming power of the slave system; and whence comes that overwhelming power? It comes from its great influence in the commercial world. [Hear!] Until the time that cotton became so extensively an article of export, there was not a word said in defence of slavery, as far as I know, in the United States. In 1818, the Presbyterian General Assembly passed resolutions unanimously on the subject of slavery, to which this resolution is mildness itself; and not a man could be found to say one word against it. But cotton became a most valuable article of export. In one form and another, it became intimately associated with the commercial affairs of the whole country. The northern manufacturers were intimately connected with this cotton trade, and more than two thirds raised in the United States has been sold in Great Britain; and it is this cotton trade that supports the whole system. That you may rely upon. The sugar and rice, so far as the United States are concerned, are but small interests. The system is supported by this cotton trade, and within two days I have seen an article written with vigor in the Charleston Mercury, a southern paper of great influence, saying, that the slaveholders are becoming isolated, by the force of public opinion, from the rest of the world. They are beginning to be regarded as inhuman tyrants, and the slaves the victims of their cruelty; but, says the writer, just so long as you take our cotton, we shall have our slaves. Now, you are as really involved in this matter as we are - [Hear, hear!] - and if you have no other right to speak on the subject, you have a right to speak from being yourselves very active participators in the wrong. You have a great deal of feeling on the subject, honorable and generous feeling, I know-an earnest, philanthropic, Christian

feeling; but if you have nothing to do, that feeling will all evaporate, and leave an apathy behind. Now, here is something to be done. It may be a small beginning, but, as you go forward, Providence will develop other plans, and the more you do, the further you will see. I am happy to know that a beginning has been made. There are indications that a way has been so opened in providence that this exigency can be met. Within the last few years, the Chinese have begun to emigrate to the western parts of the United States. They will maintain themselves on small wages; and wherever they come into actual competition with slave labor, it cannot compete with them. Very many of the slaveholders have spoken of this as a very remarkable indication. If slavery had been confined to the original slave states, as it was intended, slavery could not have lived. It was the intention that it should never go beyond those boundaries. Had this been the case, it would increase the number of slaves so much that they would have been valueless as articles of property. I must say this for America, that the slaves increase in the slave states faster than the white people; and it shows that their physical condition is better than was that of the slaves at the West Indies, or in Cuba, where the number actually diminished. We must have more slave territories to make our slaves valuable, and there was the origin of that iniquitous Mexican war, whereby was added the vast territory of Texas; and then it was the intention to make California a slave state; but, I am happy to say, it has been received into the Union as a free state, and God grant it may continue so. [Hear, hear!] What has been the effect of this expansion of slave territory? It has doubled the value of slaves. Since I can remember, a strong slave man would sell for about four hundred or six hundred dollars- that is, about one hundred pounds; but now, during the present season, I have known instances in which a slave man has been sold for two hundred and thirty pounds. There are more slaves raised in Virginia and Maryland than they can use in those states in labor, and, therefore, they sell them at one hundred, two hundred, or three hundred pounds, as the case may be, for cash. All that Mrs. Tyler intimates in that letter about slavery in America, and the impression it is calculated and intended to convey, that they treat their slaves so well, and do not separate their families, and so forth, is all mere humbug. [Laughter and cheers.] It is well known that Virginia has more profit from selling negroes than from any other source. The great sources of profit are tobacco and negroes, and they derive more from the sale of negroes than tobacco. You see the temptation this gives to avarice. Suppose there is a man with no property, except fifteen or twenty negro men, whom he can sell, each one for two hundred pounds, cash; and he has as many negro women, whom he can sell for one hundred and fifty pounds, cash, and the children for one hundred pounds each: here is a temptation to avarice; and it is calculated to silence the voice of conscience; and it is the expansion of the slave territory, and the immense mercantile value of the cotton, that has brought so powerful an influence to bear on the United States in favor of slavery. [Hear, hear.] Now, as to free labor coming into competition with slave labor: You will see, that