t justify many things, but
for the great cause of human progress I am heart and soul,
_and so are you_."

Dr. Livingstone was asked at this time to attend a public meeting on
behalf of American freedom. It was not in his power to go, but, in
apologizing, he was at pains to express his opinion on the capacity of
the negro, in connection with what was going on in the United States:

"Our kinsmen across the Atlantic deserve our warmest
sympathy. They have passed, and are passing, through trials,
and are encompassed with difficulties which completely dwarf
those of our Irish famine, and not the least of them is the
question, what to do with those freedmen for whose existence
as slaves in America our own forefathers have so much to
answer. The introduction of a degraded race from a barbarous
country was a gigantic evil, and if the race cannot be
elevated, an evil beyond remedy. Millions can neither be
amalgamated nor transported, and the presence of degradation
is a contagion which propagates itself among the more
civilized. But I have no fears as to the mental and moral
capacity of the Africans for civilization and upward
progress. We who suppose ourselves to have vaulted at one
bound to the extreme of civilization, and smack our lips so
loudly over our high elevation, may find it difficult to
realize the debasement to which slavery has sunk those men,
or to appreciate what, in the discipline of the sad school of
bondage, is in a state of freedom real and substantial
progress. But I, who have been intimate with Africans who
have never been defiled by the slave-trade, believe them to
be capable of holding an honorable rank in the family of
man."

Wherever slavery prevailed, or the effects of slavery were found, Dr.
Livingstone's testimony against it was clear and emphatic. Neither
personal friendship nor any other consideration under the sun could
repress it. When his friends Sir Roderick and Mr. Webb afterward
expressed their sympathy with Governor Eyre, of Jamaica, he did not
scruple to tell them how different an estimate he had formed of the
Governor's conduct.

We continue our extracts from his Journal and letters:

_24th May._--Came down to Scotland by last night's train;
found mother very poorly; and, being now eighty-two, I fear
she may not have long to live among us."