The Sun.
London, England, 1863-10-17 00:00:00

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P,A7R
• •
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-(ott: --cannibals, not reaching up even to
civilisation of the Feejee islanders. T „„„4-47
Qtal
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-gaci
411 k,
race which the Europeans came in co nbtAitit ysi- ,S/4 •
15,7 •
ANC upon tbat continent. But what has been thislfatea s
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of the two races. The Indian race—the noble race
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—incapable
wild and nomadic pursuits, has been driven back
to narrower circles, with diminished means of
of domestic life, incapable of any but
subsistence ; not to degradation, but almost to
extinction. Those noble tribes have, in fact, almost
disappeared before the advancing wave of our civi-
lisation. The other race—the negro race—with all
its foulness, with all its prosaic vulgarity, naturally
servile, timid, and domesticated, has been—in spite
of the institution of slavery, if yea please—raised
up higher and higher in the sock.; scale, until it
furnishes heroes and heroines for modern romances,
socialain l
y
v e oe f e
mEuropean
of
the o
d i a
mequality.which has
The h
into
for modern songs, and invited bf statesmen
institution which has done so much for this race
e
been thrown upon it deducted. Bat lam told that
having brought them to that point of civilisation It
is our duty—a duty that we owe to Christendom—
to emancipate them. (Hear.) Well, I have to
British
answer that British statesmen, Tphilosophers,
and British travellers, all unite is the testimony
that the emancipation of that race ,at this time,
and especially by the mode pointed o,ut by those
people in the North who are so clamorous' for con-
stitutional government, would be an appallikg curse
to both races. (Hear, hear.) Whether that be so
or not, I think I may with safety-say that the =AY
boons which have been conferred upon that ram',
that the earnest conduct as Christians and fellow-
men which we have observed to the inferior race—
inferior inconsequence of centuries
of barbarism and
ignorance—are sufficient guarantees to civilisation
that if the time should ever come when we have
reason to believe that liberty would be a boon to
them and not a curse, we shall be prepared to con-,
far that boon upon them also. And ,indeed, the
time should ever come when they are capable of en-
joying freedom, and when they themselves assert
their right, we could not if we would withh?
• ld that
boon. It is said by those who have been misrepre-
senting the South, and said for years to English
audiences by men who have never lived in the
South—and who do not know as much of her
people and of her institutions as you do, because
they are blinded by fanaticism—who have always
hated us when union was not their pretext, but
when under the banner of disunion they poured
forth a:stream of falsehood and vituperation on us
—these men have stated publicly in England that
the negro in the South was deprived of all the rights
of a human being by the law of the Southern States,
that he was/considered entirely in the light of a
chattel. Now, I assert to you that that statement
is untrue. On the contrary, the laws of every
Southern State regard them as brethren and as
Christians, and they have had thrown around them all
the guarantees of personal security which are thrown
around every other class. The law denouncees the
penalty of death on him who murders a negro, and de-
nounces the pnnishment of imprisonment in a peni-
tentiary against any person committing a penal act
against him. (Hear, hear.) Gentlemen, I will
close what I have to say simply by thanking you
for the demonstrations of interest and sympathy
which you have made for our country. I know
they exist in every English mind, and they cannot
be kept out by any barriers of Custom-house regu-
lations, by the regulations of States, or neutrality
proclamations. (Hear, hear.) Like an ethereal
essence, it has already leaped over its bounds, and
tends to raise the hearts of our people to higher
thoughts and more heroic deeds; and that, gentle-
men, is the secret of the enmity which has been
shown in the North to your people; but I hope the
time may soon come when the South can answer for
England. (Loud applause.)
Various other toasts of a local character were
then given and responded to, and the proceedings
did not terminate till a late hour.

PRICE...
STAMPED

effects, and cannot be misled by subtle refinements
and vague theories. When you speak of civil liberty
to an Englishman, visions of certain great guarana
tees, great historical institutions, rise up to his
mind, such as the habeas corpus, trial by jury, the
supremacy of the law, the subordination of the mili-
tary to the civil power—these constitute iu the Eng-
lish mind the true exponent of civil liberty—(cheers)
—and their history teaches them that wherever a
despot or a tyrant under any disguise seeks to pros-
trate the liberties of the people, and to trample
down their rights, these great guarantees are the
first object of attack. (Hear, hear.) I repeat, that
when a despot seeks to oppress a free people he finds
in these great bulwarks the first impediment, and
seeks to hew them from his path. Now, test the
contest in America by that. I say we are contend-
ing for civil liberty and constitutional government,
Cast your eyes over the Northern States. Do you
see the great bulwarks of Anglican iiberty existing
there ? Why, the chief of the Cabinet, the Secretary
of State, is said to have boasted to the representative
of your Government, as his own evidence of his
strength, that sitting in his private chamber he
could touch a bell to his left which would consign
to prison a citizen of the far distant State of Michi-
gan, and that by touching the bell to his right he
could imprison another in the distant States of
Maine or New Hampshire. Why is it that the citi-
zens of that great country are not exempt from ille-
gal arrest ? Why is it that the houses of Americans
are not, like the houses of Englishmen, their castles,
but are subject to illegal and unwarrantable
searches? I will tell you that Government is not
seeking to establish civil liberty ; but cruel despotism
glooms over the land, and liberty stands naked and
defenceless before it. Spies, police officers, provost
marshals, dog the heels of the purest and the wisest
statesmen, and report every chance word they may
utter. The legislators of sovereign States broken
up by armed men, together with judges, are dragged
from the bench and imprisoned. Men are arrested
without the warrant of law, and undergo a long and
in fact indefinite imprisonment without the slightest
examination into their case. Conscripts are march-
ing through the streets menacled together, and shot
before the armies ; and all this is done in the name
of constitutional liberty and free government. If
you look to the other side of the Potomac—a plain
invaded by a million of armed men at different
times—you will not see that spectacle. You will
see in the Confederate States a constitution in peace-
ful operation, safe in the affections of the people.
You will see the majesty of the law unimpaired and
operating with undiminished vigour. Yon will see
the courts of law everywhere, except where hostile
armies stand confronting each other, open to every
citizen, the judges deciding in many cases against
the Government and its officers, and all bowing to the
justice of ;its decrees. When, gentlemen, the
Southern States by a spontaneous vote of their peo-
ple, too spontaneous to have been the result of pre-
concert or conspiracy, by a vote that leapt from the
nation as freely as the water from the fountains of
the earth, withdrew the powers which they dele-
legated to a common Government which was using
those powers to its destruction, there was not a
break in the social institutions of the country, nor
even a pause in the internal administration of the
Government—not a cord of civil society loosened,
but everything went on precisely as if there had
been no change in our political relations. Why was
that? It was because it was a movement inaugu-
rated in the interests of order and for the conserva-
tism of liberty and law, and the supremacy of the
Constitution ; for even while the question stood in
abeyance before the convention was made at Mont-
gomery which formed the new Government, the
people obeyed the law, although they held in a
nerveless hand, with power to enforce it, a sceptre
of sovereignty over the hearts of a people mightier
than that which an Emperor now waves over his
subjects, Thus stands the issue between these two
peoples. lam willing for you, gentlemen, as Eng-
lishmen, to decide who arc the representatives in
America of intelligent liberty and constitutional
government. They have made sacrifices for that in-
dependence—sacrifices of everything but their civil
liberties. They have preserved them unimpaired
under trials which might have caused a less Con-
servative people not to stand by their Government
and their laws. The two armies have o ten met in
conflict, and the result of that conflict it does not
become me to describe. Englishmen have formed
their own opinion on that point, and the South has
had the good fortune to fight battles and let her ene-
mies write an account of them. My friends spoke of
his hospitality to those who come from a down-
trodden and oppressed nationality. I thank him
for his kindness and hospitality to the Southerners ;
but they are not downtrodden and oppressed, and,
by the blessing of God, they never will be. (Hear,
hear.) No ; liberty may sometimes be crushed
under the armed heels of despots; but if you will
go to that Southern country, and see men,
~
old and young, standing up with hearts pure
their bayonets glistening in the sun, unstained
by anything but the blood of the enemy—might
going side by side with right. But, gentlemen,
is well to know this fact—that the South, so much
abused, pallid and bleeding, her life-blood almost
drained from her, is this day contending not alone
for her own liberties, but for the liberty of the
very people who are sending armed millions to sub-
by murder,. and. by civil in-
ject her by rapine,
surrection. More than that, she is striking a blow
for freedom everywhere, and seeking to rid the
world of the most intolerant, aggressive, and
overwhelming Power that ever disturbed the
repose of Europe
or the peace of the civilised
world—a
power which stands as the embodiment
of brute force, which will yet, if it stands on its
defence, be a fireship among the nations, and even
now, in anticipation of its triumphs, laughs to scorn
the faith of treaties, the obligations of humanity,
and the laws of civilised warfare. (Hear.)
It has been said by those whose interest it is to mis-
represent the South, that although she may be en-
gaged in defending her own independence, her great
object is to perpetuate the degradation of another
race whom she has enslaved. I have no desire to
comment upon any of the social institutions of the
South to Englishmen. Ido not stand here to de-
fend any of her institutions. With all your opi-
nions made up and pronounced upon the subject of
some of those institutions, I believe that you are
fair men, that you are willing to hear the truth ;
and I can assure you that the truth has not been
told to England on this
subject. With the full and
distinct understanding, that between you and me
there exists adversity of opinion on the subject, not
asking you to take my view, I do assert in the face
of this intelligent audience, and before the world,
that that statement is a calumny on the South, and
that the white race of the South has been the guar-
dian, the protector of the black man there, that he
has elevated him in the scale of rational existence,
and that he has Christianised him to an extent that
he has never attained to through any other pro-
cess of education to which he has been subjected.
I have no objection to dissent on the part of
others to these statements, 'for I always
feel in
the ring of honest [dissent that there is a true
heart. But I do ask you to listen, not to opinions, to
;
misrepresentations, to exaggerations, but to
nndts.
Since the American continent was ili,q.aver
ms come in-con
occupied by the European race, it _as
the
noble
tact with two savage races. 005
Indian race, which it found elready occupying the
highestipetu7s ; goin
type of savage
continent, and which was tbe
m ,nhood—a race noble, free, g
the
poetic embodi-
ment ment of the savage man.
into history, as it would go, lut it has come into con-
tact with another race,
race
ours, b whichbroughtutbwyaasnagency
agency a
of
there, not by any
which / will not at present discuss.
That race Was
the African race,
and one which all historians and
all
philosophers have pronounced to be the lowest
the natural man in his nati
type of
who knew not Cod, who
racenO rßtiengtfirill