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the antislavery movement with which this society is identified, that,
looking back over its whole course, and considering the men connected
with it in the mass, it has been marked by sound judgment, unerring
foresight, the most sagacious adaptation of means to ends, the strictest
self-discipline, the most thorough research, and an amount of patient
and manly argument addressed to the conscience and intellect of the
nation, such as no other cause of the kind, in England or this country,
has ever offered. I claim, also, that its course has been marked by a
cheerful surrender of all individual claims to merit or leadership,--the
most cordial welcoming of the slightest effort, of every honest attempt,
to lighten or to break the chain of the slave. I need not waste time by
repeating the superfluous confession that we are men, and therefore do
not claim to be perfect. Neither would I be understood as denying that
we use denunciation, and ridicule, and every other weapon that the human
mind knows. We must plead guilty, if there be guilt in not knowing
how to separate the sin from the sinner. With all the fondness for
abstractions attributed to us, we are not yet capable of that. We are
fighting a momentous battle at desperate odds,--one against a thousand.
Every weapon that ability or ignorance, wit, wealth, prejudice, or
fashion can command, is pointed against us. The guns are shotted to
their lips. The arrows are poisoned. Fighting against such an array, we
cannot afford to confine ourselves to any one weapon. The cause is not
ours, so that we might, rightfully, postpone or put in peril the victory
by moderating our demands, stifling our convictions, or filing down
our rebukes, to gratify any sickly taste of our own, or to spare the
delicate nerves of our neighbor. Our clients are three millions of
Christian slaves, standing dumb suppliants at the threshold of the
Christian world. They have no voice but ours to utter their complaints,
or to demand justice. The press, the pulpit, the wealth, the literature,
the prejudices, the political arrangements, the present self-interest
of the country, are all against us. God has given us no weapon but
the truth, faithfully uttered, and addressed, with the old prophets'
directness, to the conscience of the individual sinner. The elements
which control public opinion and mould the masses are against us. We can
but pick off here and there a man from the triumphant majority. We have
facts