r such a _rara avis_, and therefore have besought
him to come hither to-night to instruct us by his wisdom and move us
by his eloquence. I trust that, whatever you may think of some other
parts of the lecture of WENDELL PHILLIPS, you will, when this
evening's performance is over, be ready at least to confess that in
what he said of the Brooklyn preacher he was not more eulogistic than
truthful.

MR. BEECHER, on presenting himself, was received with loud and hearty
applause. He spoke as follows:

The questions which have provoked discussion among us for fifty years
past have not been questions of fundamental principles, but of the
_application_ of principles already ascertained. Our debates have been
between one way of doing a thing and another way of doing it--between
living well and living better; and so through, it has been a question
between good and better. We have discussed policies, not principles.
In Europe, on the other hand, life-questions have agitated men. The
questions of human rights, of the nature and true foundations of
Government, are to-day, in Europe, where they were with our fathers in
1630.

In this respect, there is a moral dignity, and even grandeur, in the
struggles, secretly or openly going on in Italy, Austria, Germany, and
France, which never can belong to the mere questions of mode and
manner which occupy us--boundary questions, banks, tariffs, internal
improvements, currency; all very necessary but secondary topics. They
touch nothing deeper than the pocket. In this respect, there would be
a marked contrast between the subjects which occupy us, and the
grander life-themes that dignify European thought, were it not for one
subject--_Slavery_. THAT is the ONLY _question, in our day and in our
community, full of vital struggles turning upon fundamental
principles_.

If Slavery were a plantation-question, concerning only the master and
the slave, disconnected from us, and isolated--then, though we should
regret it, and apply moral forces for its ultimate remedy, yet, it
would be, (as are questions of the same kind in India or South
America,) remote, constituting a single element in that globe of
darkness of which this world is the core, and which Christianity is
yet to shine through and change to light. But it is _not_ a
plantation-question. It is a national question. The disputes implied
by the violent relations between the owner and the chattel may only
_morally_ touch us.--But the disput