The Sun.
London, England, 1862-12-19 00:00:00

working men have seen themselves going down
from prosperity to ruin, from independence to a
subsistence on charity, I believe—l say that I
believe that the unenfranchisecl, but not hopeless,
millions of this country, will never sympathise
with a revolt which is intended to destroy the
liberty of a continent, and to build on its
ruins t mighty fabric of human bondage. (Cheers.)
But, gentlemen who differ from me, when speaking
in private on this matter, generally end by saying
that the Republic is too great and too powerful. But
if we were at Now York or Boston, and speaking
of England instead of America, and if any one were
to say that England has grown too big—not her
31,000,000 at home, but her 150,000,000 in Asia,
nobody knows how many millions in nearly every
other part of the globe—what would be our feeling ?
Surely an American may fairly say that he has not
covered the ocean with fleets of force, or left the
bones of his citizens to bleach on the turf of a hundred
European battle-fields. He could say a thousand
times more fairly than we could say it of his coun-
try, that England was large and powerful, and it
had been thought perilous for nations that she should
be so great. (Cheers.) But every declaration of this
kind, whether from an Englishman who professes to
be strictly English, or an American strictly Ameri-
can—whether an Englishman says here, in a bold,
arrogant strain that " Britannia rules the waves"—
(laughter)—or an American of manifest destiny says
all creation mast, at least, look up to the stars and
stripes—or Frenchmen or French colonists, who
think their eagles having overrun Europe once have
a right surely to repeat the experiment—l say, all
these ideas and all this language is to be condemned.
(Cheers.) It is not truly patriotic, it is not natural,
and it is not moral. If any man wishes the republic
to be severed on that ground, in my opinion he is
only doing what tends to keep alive jealousies
which, to his mind, will never die, and if they do
not die wars must necessarily be eternal. (Hear.)
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does any one believe the South does ? When the
South was in power, and it has been in power the last
50 years, hostility towards this country was che-
rished and stimulated to the utmost degree by some
of those very men who are now the leaders of the
insurrection. (Cheers.) Take the case of the
Alabama. The Government were informed of the
character of that vessel, but such were the delays
occasioned by the want of vigilance on the part of
the officials, that although a telegraphic message
was sent to Liverpool to order that the vessel should
be arrested, she had sailed an hour or two before the ,
message arrived there. She has never been in a
Confederate port. They have not got any ports.
She hoists the English flag when she wants to come
alongside of a ship. She sets the ship on fire at
night, and seeing another ship bearing down to
rescue the unfortunate people who are exposed to
the combined horrors of fire and shipwreck, she
seizes that also and burns it. (Cries of " Shame.")
If we were citizens of New York, I think it would
require a little more calmness than is shown in this
country on foreign questions to look at all that as if
it were a matter with which we had no concern.
(Cheers.) People do not know in America what we
know of pub.ie opinion here. There are men in this
country, and men in our Cabinet, who are as great
friends of freedom and as much resolved against
slavery as I am. I know, for a certainty, that there
are men in the highest aristocracy who hold the
same opinion that I do on the subject; but they do
not know in America what is the opinion of the
great body of the working classes of England.
There has been every effort that money and malice
could make to stimulate among the suffering people
of Lancashire an opinion in favour of the Slave
States; but they have not been able to get it. I
admire the people for their fidelity to their princi-
ples and to freedom; and I say that the conduct
they have taken ought to weigh in the minds of the
people of America against miles of leading articles
written in the London papers by men who would
barter every human right that they might serve
the party with whom they are associated. How
comes it that on the continent of Europe
there is neither a Liberal newspaper nor a
Liberal politician who has ever thought of
saying one word against this portentous and
monstrous shape that now asks to be received into
the family of creation ? Take the great and liberal
statesman, Count Cavour—take Garibaldi, than
whom there is no more generous and disinterested
lover of freedom. Ask that patriotic Hungarian
to whose marvellous eloquence you once listened in
this hall—ask Victor Hugo, the poet of freedom,
the exponent of the yearnings of all mankind for
better times—ask any man in Europe who opens
his lips for freedom, or dips his pen in ink for that
holy cause—ask him, and he will have no difficulty
in telling you on which side your sympathies should
lie. (Cheers.) I maintain, after all that is said,
that the people do not err. We know, and the
workman knows, that in the last 15 years 2,500,000
men, women, and children have left the United
Kingdom for America, where they have found a
home in the free States, and every man of them is
in a position of much higher comfort and prospects
than he would have been had he remained in this
country. As one of her poets has justly said—
" For her free latch-string never was drawn
Against the poorest child of Adam's skin."

There are now 6,000,000 of grown men subjects of
the free States excluded by the Constitution of their
country from the franchise. There is a free Church,
a free school, a free land, a free vote, a free career
for the child of the humblest parent of the land of
countrymen who work for their living. Remember
that there will be one wild shriek that will startle
all humankind if that American Republic is over-
thrown. Slavery has been the one huge foul blot
on its fame; it is odious outrage against human
right and divine law. The pride and passion of man
would not permit its extinction ; but that was no
more stupendous means for bringing about the aboli-
tion of slavery than the suicide the South has corn-
mitted. Ido not believe that any man here thinks
the cause of the North hopeless, or the restoration
of the Union impossible ; and although the Chan-
eellor of the Exchequer made use of an equivocal
expression three months ago on that point, he has
been ever since trying to make people understand
what he meant. He believes the state of the North
hopeless. He is welcome to that opinion. Ido not
hold it, but I blame men who are eager to admit
into the family of nations a State which offers itself
based upon a principle which I will undertake
to say is more odious and blasphemous than has
' ever before been dreamt of in any Christian or
pagan, civilised or savage times. The principle is,
that in any country forty times as large as Eng-
land slavery shall for ever be perpetuated. I can-
not believe that such a fate will befal a land so fair.
I cannot believe that civilisation in its journey with
the sun will sink into endless night to gratify the
ambition of the leaders of this revolt, who seek to
to a throne, and shut the
wade through slavery
gates of mercy on mankind. I have another and
far brighter vision before my face. It may be but
a vision. But I will still cherish it. I see one vast
confederation stretching from the North in one un.
broken line to the glowing South, and from the
wild billows of the Atlantic to the calmer waters of
the Pacific main. I see one people, one law, one
language, and one faith, over all that wide conti-
nent—the home of freedom and the refuge for the
oppressed of every race, every faith, and every clime.
The hon. gentleman resumed his seat amidst loud
cheering.

UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGIL—A poll for the
election of Honorary President of the Associated Societies
of Edinburgh University took place on Tuesday evening.
The votes recorded were as follows :—For the Lord Advo-
cate, 115; for the Very Rev. Dean Ramsay, 100 ; for the
Rev. Charles Kingsley, 81. The Lord Advocate, being
highest on the poll, was elected. The office has been held
, successively by Sir E. B. Lytton, Sir John M'Neill, and
Professor Ay toun.
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