eech on
the motion of Thomas Fowell Buxton for the immediate emancipation of the
slaves gave a new tone to the discussion of the question. He entered
into no petty pecuniary details; no miserable computation of the
shillings and pence vested in beings fashioned in the image of God. He
did not talk of the expediency of continuing the evil because it had
grown monstrous. To use his own words, he considered "slavery a crime to
be abolished; not merely an evil to be palliated." He left Sir Robert
Peel and the Tories to eulogize the characters and defend the interests
of the planters, in common with those of a tithe-reaping priesthood,
building their houses by oppression and their chambers by wrong, and
spoke of the negro's interest, the negro's claim to justice; demanding
sympathy for the plundered as well as the plunderers, for the slave as
well as his master. He trampled as dust under his feet the blasphemy
that obedience to the law of eternal justice is a principle to be
acknowledged in theory only, because unsafe in practice. He would,
he said, enter into no compromise with slavery. He cared not what cast
or creed or color it might assume, whether personal or political,
intellectual or spiritual; he was for its total, immediate abolition. He
was for justice,--justice in the name of humanity and according to the
righteous law of the living God.

Ardently admiring our free institutions, and constantly pointing to our
glorious political exaltation as an incentive to the perseverance of his
own countrymen in their struggle against oppression, he has yet omitted
no opportunity of rebuking our inexcusable slave system. An enthusiastic
admirer of Jefferson, he has often regretted that his practice should
have so illy accorded with his noble sentiments on the subject of
slavery, which so fully coincided with his own. In truth, wherever man
has been oppressed by his fellow-man, O'Connell's sympathy has been
directed: to Italy, chained above the very grave of her ancient
liberties; to the republics of Southern America; to Greece, dashing the
foot of the indolent Ottoman from her neck; to France and Belgium; and
last, not least, to Poland, driven from her cherished nationality, and
dragged, like his own Ireland, bleeding and violated, to the deadly
embrace of her oppressor. American slavery but shares in his common
denunciation of all tyranny; its victims but partake of his common pity
for the oppressed and persecuted a