k about the English government
sympathizing with the oppressed of other nations. It is nonsense--a
ridiculous inconsistency. No part of the English government can be
pointed out, in which there is not worse slavery in some form or
other, than there is in the United States:--yes, worse, far worse,
than negro-slavery in the Southern States. What says Southy, the
English poet, of the great mass of the English poor? He says that
"they are deprived, in childhood, of all instruction, and enjoyment.
They grow up without decency--without comfort--without hope--without
morals, and without shame." The North British Review expressed similar
sentiments. If I am correctly informed, negro slavery, itself, is not
extinct in the British dominions. I am aware that they call it an
apprenticeship, but it is slavery notwithstanding. Yes, it is
involuntary slavery and nothing else. But yet she would have us
believe that she feels an intense interest in African slavery, in the
United States. How does it happen that she is so interested about
slavery among us, but is deaf to the cry of her own enslaved and
starving millions, in British India, and other parts of her dominions?
It is said that in 1838, five hundred thousand perished of famine, in
a single district, in British India; and that too within the reach of
English granaries locked up, and guarded by a military force! This is
a fair sample of English benevolence; _alias_, English cupidity. And
what says Allison the English historian of wretched Ireland? Her
history and her sufferings are familiar to every one. He avows the
opinion, in his History of Europe, "that it would be a real blessing
to its inhabitants, in lieu of the destitution of freedom, to obtain
the protection of slavery." And Murray the English traveler says of
the slaves of the United States, "if they could forget that they are
slaves, their condition is decidedly better than the great mass of
European laborers." And what said Dr. Durbin a few years ago of the
British nation? He told us that "the mass of the people were slaves,
and the few were masters without the responsibility of masters." He
proceeds to tell us, that the condition of the slaves of the United
States, is in every respect better than millions in Ireland and
England. This is the testimony of a distinguished minister of the
Methodist Episcopal Church, (North,) whom, nobody will suspect of any
undue partiality for Southern slave-holders. When we look at the