rute,
spoiled of his humanity, plundered of his rights, and
often hurried to a premature grave, the miserable victim
of avarice and heedless tyranny! Men have presumptuously
dared to wrest from their fellows the most precious of
their rights--to intercept as far as they may the bounty
and grace of the Almighty--to close the door to their
intellectual progress--to shut every avenue to their
moral and religious improvement, to stand between them
and their Maker! It is against this crime the committee
protest as men and as Christians, and earnestly but
respectfully call upon you, Sir, to use the influence
with which you are invested, to bring it to a peaceful
and speedy close; and, may you in closing your public
career, in the latest hours of your existence on earth,
be consoled with the reflection that you have not
despised the afflictions of the afflicted, but that
faithful to the trust of your high stewardship, you have
been "just, ruling in the fear of the Lord," that you
have executed judgment for the oppressed, and have aided
in the deliverance of your country from its greatest
crime, and its chiefest reproach.

"'On behalf of the Committee,

"'THOMAS CLARKSON.

"'British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, for the
Abolition of Slavery and the Slave-trade throughout the
world.

"'27, _New Broad Street, London, March 5th_, 1841.'

"I thought it most candid to address a letter to the President
informing him of the character of the foregoing memorial, rather
than take advantage of a merely formal introduction to present
it, without a previous explanation. To this letter no reply was
received, and no allusion was made to it by the President at a
subsequent introduction, which we had to him. It may be proper
to mention in this connection, that memorials of a similar
character, bearing upon slavery and the slave-trade, signed by
the venerable Clarkson, have been presented to different Heads
of Governments, in other parts of the world, and have been
uniformly received with marked respect.

"Previous to our departure, we visited a private slave-trading
establishment in the city, and looked in upon a group of human
beings herded together like cattle