Sunny Memories of Foreign Lands (Vol.1&2). Harriet Beecher Stowe

of the cotton growers was talked of; but had the cotton consumer no conscience? [Cheers.] It seemed to him that the British public had more direct access to the consumer than to the grower of cotton." Professor Stowe then read an extract from a paper published in Charleston, South Carolina, showing the influence of the American cotton trade on the slavery question. "The price of cotton regulated the price of slaves, who were now worth an average of two hundred pounds. A cotton plantation required in some cases two hundred, and in others four hundred slaves. This would give an idea of the capital needed. With free labor there was none of this outlay—there was none of those losses by the cholera, and the 'underground railroad,' to which the slave owners were subjected. [Hear, hear!] The Chinese had come over in large numbers, and could be hired for small wages, on which they managed to live well in their way. If people would encourage free-grown cotton, that would be the strongest appeal they could make to the slaveholder. There were three ways of abolishing slavery. First, by a bloody revolution, which few would approve. [Hear, hear!] Secondly, by persuading slaveholders of the wrong they commit; but this would have little effect so long as they bought their cotton. [Hear, hear!] And the third and most feasible way was, by making slave labor unprofitable, as compared with free labor. [Hear!] When the Chinese first began to emigrate to California, it was predicted that slavery would be 'run out' that way. He hoped it might be so. [Cheers.] The reverend gentleman then reverted to his previous visit to this country, seventeen years ago, and described the rapid strides which had been made in the work of education—especially the education of the poor—in the interval. It was most gratifying to him, and more easily seen by him than it would be by us, with whom the change had been gradual. He had been told in America that the English abolitionists were prompted by jealousy of America, but he had found that to be false. The Christian feeling which had dictated efforts on behalf of ragged schools and factory children, and the welfare of the poor and distressed of every kind, had caused the same Christian hearts to throb for the American slave. It was that Christian philanthropy which received all men as brethren—children of the same father, and therefore he had great hopes of success. [Cheers.]"

      My remarks on the cotton business of Britain were made with entire sincerity, and a single-hearted desire to promote the antislavery cause. They are sentiments which I had long entertained, and which I had taken every opportunity to express with the utmost freedom from the time of my first landing in Liverpool, the great cotton mart of England, and where, if any where, they might be supposed capable of giving offence; yet no exception was taken to them, so far as I know, till delivered in Exeter Hall. There they were heard by some with surprise, and by others with extreme displeasure. I was even called proslavery, and ranked with Mrs. Julia Tyler, for frankly speaking the truth, under circumstances of great temptation to ignore it.

      Still I have the satisfaction of knowing that both my views and my motives were rightly understood and properly appreciated by large-hearted and clear-headed philanthropists, like the Earl of Shaftesbury and Joseph Sturge, and very fairly represented and commented upon by such religious and secular papers as the Christian Times, the British Banner, the London Daily News and Chronicle; and even the thundering political Times seemed disposed, in a half-sarcastic way, to admit that I was more than half right.

      But it is most satisfactory of all to know that the best of the British abolitionists are now acting, promptly and efficiently, in accordance with those views, and are determined to develop the resources of the British empire for the production of cotton by free labor. The thing is practicable, and not of very difficult accomplishment. It is furthermore absolutely essential to the success of the antislavery cause; for now the great practical leading argument for slavery is, Without slavery you can have no cotton, and cotton you must and will have. The latest work that I have read in defence of slavery (Uncle Tom in Paris, Baltimore, 1854) says, (pp. 56-7,) "Of the cotton which supplies the wants of the civilized world, the south produces 86 per cent.; and without slave labor experience has shown that the cotton plant cannot be cultivated."

      How the matter is viewed by sagacious and practical minds in Britain, is clear from the following sentences, taken from the National Era:—

      "Cotton is King.—Charles Dickens, in a late number of his Household Words, after enumerating the striking facts of cotton, says,—

      "'Let any social or physical convulsion visit the United States, and England would feel the shock from Land's End to John o'Groat's. The lives of nearly two millions of our countrymen are dependent upon the cotton crops of America; their destiny may be said, without any sort of hyperbole, to hang upon a thread.

      "'Should any dire calamity befall the land of cotton, a thousand of our merchant ships would rot idly in dock; ten thousand mills must stop their busy looms, and two million mouths would starve for lack of food to feed them.'

      "How many non-slaveholders elsewhere are thus interested in the products of slaves? Is it not worthy the attention of genuine philanthropists to inquire whether cotton cannot be profitably cultivated by free labor?"

      Soirée At Willis's Rooms—May 25.

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      Mr. Joseph Sturge took the chair, announcing that he did so in the absence of the Earl of Shaftesbury, who was prevented from attending.

      It was announced that letters had been received from the Duke of Newcastle and the Earls of Carlisle and Shaftesbury, expressing their sympathy with the object of the meeting, and their regret at being unable to attend.

      The Secretary, Samuel Bowley, Esq., of Gloucester, then read the address, which was as follows:—

      "Madam: It is with feelings of the deepest interest that the committee of the British and Foreign Antislavery Society, on behalf of themselves and of the society they represent, welcome the gifted authoress of Uncle Tom's Cabin to the shores of Great Britain.

      "As humble laborers in the cause of negro emancipation, we hail, with emotions more easily imagined than described, the appearance of that remarkable work, which has awakened a world-wide sympathy on behalf of the suffering negro, and called forth a burst of honest indignation against the atrocious system of slavery, which, we trust, under the divine blessing, will, at no distant period, accomplish its entire abolition. We are not insensible to those extraordinary merits of Uncle Tom's Cabin, as a merely literary production, which have procured for its talented authoress such universal commendation and enthusiastic applause; but we feel it to be our duty to refer rather to the Christian principles and earnest piety which pervade its interesting pages, and to express our warmest desire, we trust we may say heartfelt prayer, that He who bestowed upon you the power and the grace to write such a work may preserve and bless you amid all your honours, and enable you, under a grateful and humble sense of his abundant goodness, to give him all the glory.

      "We rejoice to find that the great principles upon which our society is based are so fully and so cordially recognized by yourself and your beloved husband and brother—First, that personal slavery, in all its varied forms, is a direct violation of the blessed, precepts of the gospel, and therefore a sin in the sight of God; and secondly, that every victim of this unjust and sinful system is entitled to immediate and unconditional freedom. For, however we might acquiesce in the course of a nation which, under a sense of its participation in the guilt of slavery, should share the pecuniary loss, if such there were, of its immediate abolition, yet we repudiate the right to demand compensation for human flesh and blood, as (to employ the emphatic words of Lord Brougham) we repudiate and abhor 'the wild and guilty fantasy that man can hold property in man.' And we do not hesitate to express our conviction, strengthened by the experience of emancipation in our own colonies, that on the mere ground of social or political expediency, the immediate termination of slavery would be far less dangerous and far less injurious than, any system of compromise, or any attempt at gradual emancipation.

      "Let it be borne in mind, however,—and we record it with peculiar interest on the present occasion,—that it was the pen of a woman that first publicly enunciated the imperative duty of immediate emancipation. Amid vituperation and ridicule, and, far worse, the cold rebuke of Christian friends, Mrs. Elizabeth Heyrick boldly sent forth the