for we know the force of public
opinion." He concluded by saying that "the slave trade, although
somewhat checked, will never be thoroughly got rid of till Slavery dies
out in Asia, and in partially civilized countries. How this is to be
effected, when it can be done, and through what agencies, are questions
not to be settled by an off-hand sentence at a public meeting. But that
it ought to be done--that it can be done, and that in time it will be
done--are matters about which I entertain no doubt; and, that being so,
I have much pleasure in proposing this resolution."

The resolution ran as follows:--"That this meeting, while fully
recognising the great steps made by nearly all civilised nations in the
path of human freedom, has yet to contemplate with feelings of the
deepest sorrow the vast extent of Slavery still maintained among
Mohammedan and heathen nations, producing, as its consequence, the
indescribable horrors of the Central and East African Slave-trade, as
fatal to human life on shore as the dreadful Middle Passage formerly was
at sea; in view of this appalling state of things, this meeting pledges
itself to support the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society in its
efforts to urge the Governments of all Slave-holding countries to put an
end to Slavery as the only certain method of stopping the Slave-trade."

Mr. Forster said that this resolution had been drawn with a temperance
of language which he feared he would not have been able to command. He
thought that the services which England had rendered to some nations
still encouraging Slavery and the Slave-trade, entitled her voice to be
raised with great authority. But he recognised the difficulties, which
should nerve them to greater earnestness in strengthening public opinion
in this country on the subject. "I greatly rejoice," said Mr. Forster,
"to see this meeting, and I believe this means a new departure, and a
determination to carry on the work, and to strengthen the hands of this
Society for what it has yet to do."

Cardinal Manning, in an earnest and eloquent appeal, also urged the
claims of the Society. "The reports published by it, as to the actual
state of Slavery and the Slave-trade, are too sadly true. We are told
that Livingstone, whose name cannot be mentioned in this hall or
anywhere without awaking the sympathy of all Christian men, has left it
on record as his belief that half-a-million of human lives are annually
sacrificed by this Afri