followed; and even on the very night when
the latter bill passed, the abolitionists were taunted by Gladstone, the
great Demerara slaveholder, with having toiled for forty years and done
nothing. The Roman Catholic relief bill, establishing freedom of thought in
England, had the same experience. It passed in 1829 by a majority of a
hundred and three in the House of Lords, which had nine months before
refused by a majority of forty-five to take up the question at all.

The English corn laws went down a quarter of a century ago, after a similar
career of failures. In 1840 there were hundreds of thousands in England who
thought that to attack the corn laws was to attack the very foundations of
society. Lord Melbourne, the prime minister, said in Parliament, that "he
had heard of many mad things in his life, but, before God, the idea of
repealing the corn laws was the very maddest thing of which he had ever
heard." Lord John Russell counselled the House to refuse to hear evidence
on the operation of the corn laws. Six years after, in 1846, they were
abolished forever.

How Wendell Phillips, in the anti-slavery meetings, used to lash
pro-slavery men with such formidable facts as these,--and to quote how Clay
and Calhoun and Webster and Everett had pledged themselves that slavery
should never be discussed, or had proposed that those who discussed it
should be imprisoned,--while, in spite of them all, the great reform was
moving on, and the abolitionists were forcing politicians and people to
talk, like Sterne's starling, nothing but slavery!

We who were trained in the light of these great agitations have learned
their lesson. We expect to march through a series of defeats to victory.
The first thing is, as in the anti-slavery movement, so to arouse the
public mind as to make this the central question. Given this prominence,
and it is enough for this year or for many years to come. Wellington said
that there was no such tragedy as a victory, except a defeat. On the other
hand, the next best thing to a victory is a defeat, for it shows that the
armies are in the field. Without the unsuccessful attempt of to-day, no
success to-morrow.

When Mrs. Frances Anne Kemble came to this country, she was amazed to find
Americans celebrating the battle of Bunker Hill, which she had always heard
claimed as a victory for King George. Such it was doubtless called; but
what we celebrated was the fact that the Americans there threw up
brea