The Sun.
London, England, 1844-05-18 00:00:00

" TO JOSEPII STURGE.

"My dear Friend,—l can truly, say, in answer to your
letter, it is with grief that I am again hindered, by the infir-
mities of old age, and the painful diseases often consequent
upon these, from attending your meeting, which is to be held
on the 17th instant. You may easily conceive, knowing, as
you do, my entire devotion, during a. longlife; to the sacred
cause, which it is the object of your meeting to promote, that
nothinggiven e more pleasure than to have
attend wouldedit,an avdhtohe me
seen ao many friends, whose hearts
have long beaten in unison with my own on this great subject
" It is very pleasing to me, on reviewing the occurrences
of the past year, to be able to state, through yon, to the
audience, an event which I consider to have been a prodigious
gain to our cause. I allude to the defeat of the application
-of the American shareholders under the 10th article of the
treaty lately made at Washington between our Government
and the President of the. United States. It was evident to
me, .on reading the treaty, that it was intended to be appli-
cable to the refugee slaves, as well as to the white population,
who might have fled from justice there. Hence, there was
reason tofear that the American planters would take advantage
of it to go into Canada, and search for and claim such of their
fugitive slaves as might be found, and thus get them restored
to slavery; and this was afterwards found to be the case.
Now who were these poor fugitives from the horrors of
slavery? They consisted, originally, of about 24,000
persons, who escaped at different times. Some of them, when
they' fled, were pursued by bloodhounds, and torn to
pieces; others were taken alive and carried back,
and subjected to cruel torture, even to death ; and others, du-
ring their journey of many hundred miles, perished by hunger,
fatigue, and diseases contracted in their way, so that not
more than twelve thousand, or one half, reached their desti-
nation. These settled themselves, by permission of our Go-
vernment, in Canada, where they have erected villages, cul-
tivated the land, built schools for their children, and places of
worship for themselves and families, and conducted them-
selves upon the whole in such an exemplary manner, as to
have gained the esteem of the inhabitants among whom they
lived. It was to' be feared then that the American planters
(and so it turned out) would, under the treaty now men-
tioned, claim these fugitives by charging them with crimes,
often fictitious, and thus that all their industry would have
been lost, their villages broken up, their land left desolate, and
themselves taken back to a cruel slavery. Ido not remem-
ber a time during all my anxiety, for now nearly sixty years
on this subject, whee, I felt so much and such continued, pain
for the fate of the poor people now described. I well know
the tortures to which they would have been exposed if given
up to their enraged masters.
",I was brooding over these melancholy presages, when on a
more minute examination of the 10th article of the treaty,
my mind began to be relieved. It seemed to me, on looking
over those artieles-which related to the mode of restoring fu-
gitivecriminals, tkat they were so worded, as to afford- some—
thing like a safeguard to the liberty of the intended victims.
These victims were happily to be examined before a British