as a lyceum lecture some years after his return.
It was the spirit and quality, rather than quantity, of the thing that
was noticeable.

I observe that American newspapers are sneering about his preface to
Uncle Tom's Cabin; but they ought at least to remember that his
sentiments with regard to slavery are no sudden freak. In the first
place, he comes of a family that has always been on the side of liberal
and progressive principles. He himself has been a leader of reforms on
the popular side. It was a temporary defeat, when run as an
anti-corn-law candidate, which gave him leisure to travel in America.
Afterwards he had the satisfaction to be triumphantly returned for that
district, and to see the measure he had advocated fully successful.

While Lord Carlisle was in America he never disguised those antislavery
sentiments which formed a part of his political and religious creed as
an Englishman, and as the heir of a house always true to progress. Many
cultivated English people have shrunk from acknowledging abolitionists
in Boston, where the ostracism of fashion and wealth has been enforced
against them. Lord Carlisle, though moving in the highest circle,
honestly and openly expressed his respect for them on all occasions. He
attended the Boston antislavery fair, which at that time was quite a
decided step. Nor did he even in any part of our country disguise his
convictions. There is, therefore, propriety and consistency in the
course he has taken now. It would seem that a warm interest in
questions of a public nature has always distinguished the ladies of this
family. The Duchess of Sutherland's mother is daughter of the celebrated
Duchess of Devonshire, who, in her day, employed on the liberal side in
politics all the power of genius, wit, beauty, and rank. It was to the
electioneering talents of herself and her sister, the Lady Duncannon,
that Fox, at one crisis, owed his election. We Americans should remember
that it was this party who advocated our cause during our revolutionary
struggle. Fox and his associates pleaded for us with much the same
arguments, and with the same earnestness and warmth, that American
abolitionists now plead for the slaves. They stood against all the power
of the king and cabinet, as the abolitionists in America in 1850 stood
against president and cabinet.

The Duchess of Devonshire was a woman of real noble impulses and
generous emotions, and had a true sympathy for what is free and h