Andrew
Stevenson, for whom you apologise, can testify. Indeed, the great power
and pressure of that sentiment are the only apology left to this
disgraced and miserable man for uttering a bald falsehood in vindication
of Virginia morals. He above all other men, must feel the truth of the
distinguished Thomas Fowel Buxton's declaration, that "England is turned
into one great Anti-Slavery Society." Now, Sir, it is such a change, as
abolitionists have been the instruments of producing in Great Britain,
that we hope to see produced in the free States. We hope to see public
sentiment in these States so altered, that such of their laws, as uphold
and countenance slavery, will be repealed--so altered, that the present
brutal treatment of the colored population in them will give place to a
treatment dictated by justice, humanity, and brotherly and Christian
love;--so altered, that there will be thousands, where now there are not
hundreds, to class the products of slave labor with other stolen goods,
and to refuse to eat and to wear that, which is wet with the tears, and
red with the blood of "the poor innocents," whose bondage is continued,
because men are more concerned to buy what is cheap, than what is
honestly acquired;--so altered, that our Missionary and other religious
Societies will remember, that God says: "I hate robbery for
burnt-offering," and will forbear to send their agents after that
plunder, which, as it is obtained at the sacrifice of the body and soul
of the plundered, is infinitely more unfit, than the products of
ordinary theft, to come into the Lord's treasury. And, when the warm
desires of our hearts, on these points, shall be realized, the fifty
thousand Southerners, who annually visit the North, for purposes of
business and pleasure, will not all return to their homes,
self-complacent and exulting, as now, when they carry with them the
suffrages of the North in favor of slavery: but numbers of them will
return to pursue the thoughts inspired by their travels amongst the
enemies of oppression--and, in the sequel, they will let their
"oppressed go free."

It were almost as easy for the sun to call up vegetation by the side of
an iceberg, as for the abolitionists to move the South extensively,
whilst their influence is counteracted by a pro-slavery spirit at the
North. How vain would be the attempt to reform the drunkards of your
town of Lexington, whilst the sober in it continue to drink intoxicating
liq