Anti-slavery bugle. [volume] (New-Lisbon, Ohio) 1845-1861, 1859-07-23
Tbe Autt 5lauerp Bu9le.
SPEECH OF REV. NJ. B. BIRD,
AT THE
FARMINGHlM CELEBR1TI TION.

8 Mr.. CHAIRMAN,-I certainly very much rejoice
in the anti-savery character of this meeting, and
1 am thankful to have the opportunity.cf saying q
word on an important question. | am not in the
habit of entering into any thing like reasoning as
to whether man has right to hold property in
man, 1t seems 20 me that the time has almost
gone by for reasoning on such a subject as that
With regard to slavery; am think, in all the
length aud breadth Of the idea, disciple of John
Wesley, and hold, with that man of immortal
memory, that slavery is the sum of oil villanies'.
look upon it as the offspring of hell and would
that could drive it back again to its own INFER
nal home. (Applause.A Alas! am but puny
mortal in this particular; but l remember the
words of your great thinker, tremble for
my country when remember that God is just, and
that His justice will not sleep forever
With regard to slavery l would observe that in
the very nature Of things, it is an unsafe, dan
gerous institution. Think, my friends, by way of
illustration, of the position of IIayti when it was
colony. The white French colonists were high in
authority, living in all the pomp and magnfcence
of wealth and grandeur, and but little dreaming
of What was beneath their feet. They little
thought that that system which they iaoliEed was
about to produce dreadful earthquake. I cannot
enter into description of those scenes of blood
shed and murder, and confusion worse confound-
ed which we're the result of that system which
some men idolize, and which we call slavery. 1t
is unsafe, because it is unnatural because it is
false; because it is an outrage upon the eternal
principles of right 1t cannot be safe to-day sup
ported by sech props as it is.
Mr.. Bird then spoke Of the attempt to tar and
feather Rev. Henry Bleby, at Jamaica, whose visit
to this country will be pleasantly remembered by
many Of our reaters Mr.. B. escaped, but guam
tity of tar had fallen upon his cravat, and the mis-
sionary Knibb, who was then about visiting Eng
land took his cravat, and exhibited il throughout
England as a specimen Of the white savageism ex-
listing in Jamaica. The result was, as might we'll
be supposed, that the mind of the whole was fired
with the most decide indignation. 1t is truth,
said Mr. B., that the Shareholders themselves fire.
quently, perhaps may say generally, do more to
bring down the system which they worship than
any one else, by the acts of violence and outrage
and injustice of which they are guilty.
Mr.. Bird then referred to the revolution in IIayti
and the causes from, which it sprung. He said
that the French settlers condescsnded to have chill
drep by their black slaves, and those children were
sent to France where they received excellent edu-
cation, and became, in the nature of things, men.
At length, one cf these young men, Oge, return
ing from France, demanded for the class he repre-
sented, that they should be recognized as men,
Tie result was, that he was seized and stretched
upon the wheel, and those white savages, with the
Cross in their hands, in the name of Charity and
Christianity broke the limbs of their unhappy
victim hat he expired without mnrmur This
was the dreadful starting point of Hayten liberty
Who were the wretched and miserable authors OF
the blood and murder, the dreadful struggles and
atrocities and fendish crimes which followed p
Let every man blush at the remembrance-they
were white men calling themselves Christians
baptized Christians. But IIayti was reused, and
her sons called to arms Dessalines, after dead
ay struggle, after seeing his own countrymen
torn to pieces, and drowned and butchered and
treated in every way in manner becoming fends
rather than men, became, very naturally, fend
himself. Some had seemed to think il awful that
he should have cut up some eight hundred white
people, men, women and children but when a
man was thus transformed into fiend by the in
Justice and tyranny of others, we need not wonder
at any crimes to which he might be driven. Dess-
alines, however, proclaimed the liberty and inde-
pendence of Hayt, in the year 1904. lie, in his
tara fell, shot by his own people. WhyH-
Simply because the HytiOns were determined that
they would not submit to injustice, either from a
white or q black man.
In regard to the statement that IIayti is retro
grading Mr.. Bird said that in his judgement, even
If the people had gone back to savageism, that