which cannot be thought of
without a shudder, I was fully justified in turning, if possible, the
tide of the moral universe against the heaven-daring outrage.

Four circumstances greatly assisted me in getting the question of
American slavery before the British public. First, the mob on board
the "Cambria," already referred to, which was a sort of national
announcement of my arrival in England. Secondly, the highly
reprehensible course pursued by the Free Church of Scotland, in
soliciting, receiving, and retaining money in its sustentation fund for
supporting the gospel in Scotland, which was evidently the ill-gotten
gain of slaveholders and slave-traders. Third, the great Evangelical
Alliance--or rather the attempt to form such an alliance, which should
include slaveholders of a certain description--added immensely to the
interest felt in the slavery question. About the same time, there was
the World's Temperance Convention, where I had the misfortune to come
in collision with sundry American doctors of divinity--Dr. Cox among the
number--with whom I had a small controversy.

It has happened to me--as it has happened to most other men engaged in a
good cause--often to be more indebted to my enemies than to my own skill
or to the assistance of my friends, for whatever success has attended my
labors. Great surprise was{295} expressed by American newspapers, north
and south, during my stay in Great Britain, that a person so illiterate
and insignificant as myself could awaken an interest so marked in
England. These papers were not the only parties surprised. I was myself
not far behind them in surprise. But the very contempt and scorn, the
systematic and extravagant disparagement of which I was the object,
served, perhaps, to magnify my few merits, and to render me of some
account, whether deserving or not. A man is sometimes made great, by
the greatness of the abuse a portion of mankind may think proper to heap
upon him. Whether I was of as much consequence as the English papers
made me out to be, or not, it was easily seen, in England, that I could
not be the ignorant and worthless creature, some of the American
papers would have them believe I was. Men, in their senses, do not take
bowie-knives to kill mosquitoes, nor pistols to shoot flies; and the
American passengers who thought proper to get up a mob to silence me,
on board the "Cambria," took the most effective method of telling the
British public that I had someth