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