.

The main object to which my labors in Great Britain were directed, was
the concentration of the moral and religious sentiment of its people
against American slavery. England is often charged with having
established slavery in the United States, and if there were no other
justification than this, for appealing to her people to lend their moral
aid for the abolition of slavery, I should be justified. My speeches in
Great Britain were wholly extemporaneous, and I may not always have been
so guarded in my expressions, as I otherwise should have been. I was ten
years younger then than now, and only seven years from slavery. I cannot
give the reader a better idea of the nature of my discourses, than by
republishing one of them, delivered in Finsbury chapel, London, to an
audience of about two thousand persons, and which was published in the
_London Universe_, at the time. [9]

Those in the United States who may regard this speech as being harsh
in its spirit and unjust in its statements, because delivered before
an audience supposed to be anti-republican in their principles and
feelings, may view the matter differently, when they learn that the case
supposed did not exist. It so happened that the great mass of the people
in England who attended and patronized my anti-slavery meetings, were,
in truth, about as good republicans as the mass of Americans, and with
this decided advantage over the latter--they are lovers of republicanism
for all men, for black men as well as for white men. They are the people
who sympathize with Louis Kossuth and Mazzini, and with the oppressed
and enslaved, of every color and nation, the world over. They constitute
the democratic element in British politics, and are as much opposed to
the union of church and state as we, in America, are to such an union.
At the meeting where this speech was delivered, Joseph Sturge--a
world-wide philanthropist,{293} and a member of the society of
Friends--presided, and addressed the meeting. George William Alexander,
another Friend, who has spent more than an Ameriacn(sic) fortune in
promoting the anti-slavery cause in different sections of the world, was
on the platform; and also Dr. Campbell (now of the _British Banner_) who
combines all the humane tenderness of Melanchthon, with the
directness and boldness of Luther. He is in the very front ranks of
non-conformists, and looks with no unfriendly eye upon America. George
Thompson, too, was there; and America