great
evil. But the Americans are a most ingenious people; they are full of
inventions of all sorts, from the invention of a machine for protecting
our feet from the water, to a machine for making ships go by means of
heated air; from the one to the other the whole field of discovery is
occupied by their inventive genius. There is not an article in common
use among us but bears some stamp of America. We rise in the morning,
and before we are dressed we have had half a dozen American articles in
our hands. And during the day, as we pass through the streets, articles
of American invention meet us every where. In short, the ingenuity of
the people is proclaimed all over the world. And there can be no doubt
that the moment this great, this ingenious people finds that slavery is
both an evil and a sin, their ingenuity will be successfully exerted in
discovering some invention for preventing its abolition from ruining
them altogether. [Cheers.] No doubt their ingenuity will be equal to the
occasion; and I may take the liberty of adding, that their ingenuity in
that case will find even a richer reward than it has done in those other
inventions which have done them so much honor, and been productive of so
much profit. I say, that sacrifices must be made; there can be no doubt
about that; but I would also observe, that the longer the evil is
permitted to continue, the greater and more tremendous will become the
sacrifice which will be needed to put an end to it; for all history
proves that a nation encumbered, with slavery is surrounded with danger.
[Applause.] Has the history of antiquity been written in vain? Does it
not teach us that not only domestic and social pollutions are the
inevitable results, but does it not teach us also that political
insecurity and political revolutions as certainly slumber beneath the
institution of slavery as fireworks at the basis of Mount AEtna?
[Cheers.] It cannot but be so. Men no more than steam can be compressed
without a tremendous revulsion; and let our brethren in America be sure
of this, that the longer the day of reckoning is put off by them, the
more tremendous at last that reckoning will Be." [Loud, applause.]

* * * * *

In regard to this meeting at Edinburgh, there was a ridiculous story
circulated and variously commented on in certain newspapers of the
United States, that _the American flag was there exhibited, insulted,
torn, and mutilated_. Certa