magic spell of enchantments, like the former, when he sung, "Give to the winds thy fears, But to get on he would have to unmask the villanies of many, unbind the delusions of others; and if he had to confront the religious war fanatics, or the “Union emancipationists," he would have to bend his fists in the face of their unbounded arrogance and insolence, and where they have got consciences, to strike them in those tender parts as fast as he came at them. Hurrah for a Martin Luther.-Yours, &c. JOSHUA R. BALME 56 Islington, January 4, 1864. TRUE POLICY DEFINED. Ar the beginning of the present war there were two courses for our Northern people to pursue, rather than have appealed to the arbitrement of the sword; the first was to have made proposals of compensation for the liberation of the slave; the second was a dissolution of partnership. The Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, who is now trying to go down the centuries with his Janus-face, and like some great wizard, to ingratiate himself into the affections of mankind, and win their admiration and applause; when referring, in his Harper's Ferry Sermon, to such a liberty, he called it a "regulated liberty," and expatiating on the same, he said, "a liberty possessed with the consent of their masters, a liberty under the laws and institutions of the country-a liberty which should make them common beneficiaries of those institutions and principles which make us wise and happy-such a liberty would be a great blessing to them." And if such proposals had been rejected, with advantage to themselves and posterity, they could have said, in the adoption of the latter course, the law of compact which bound us together is now repealed the covenant of death and agreement with hell in the Union is broken-" wayward sisters go in peace." This would have given us a moral power amongst the nations that would have been felt for ages to come-won for us the title of peace-makers, and not that of peace-breakers-chained the blessings of a glorious prosperity to our multitudinous wants—and averted the dreadful calamities that have befallen us in the present terrible war. All this was made very plain to us by Wm. Loyd Garrison and Wendel Philips, Esqs., men "whose shoes," Mr Beecher said, "he was not worthy to unloose." In a lecture which George Thompson delivered in Glasgow, January 27th, 1860, after shewing that the republican party had no wish to abolish slavery, he observed, "Besides this political party there is a nonpolitical party, of which Mr Garrison is the founder and head. By this party the constitution is denounced as an unholy and iniquitous compact, which must be dissolved, as the first effectual step towards the abolition of slavery. Hence they are avowedly disunionists, and inscribe upon their flag, "no union with slaveholders, no compromise with slavery." In accordance with their settled views of what is right and necessary, they seek the separation of the free from the slave states. With this party it has been my privilege to co-operate for five and twenty years, and with ever increasing admiration of their disinterestedness and fidelity." When, therefore, the South seceded from the North these advocates with their sympathisers and admirers ought to have hailed the separation with the most thrilling emotions of joy. This was their settled view of what was right and necessary." Listen to this, Revs. Baptist Noel and Newman Hall, Professors Newman, Cairns, and all ye misguided zealots who put your fingers on certain clauses of an obsolete constitution, and pronounce them with a whisper, and then with the deepest and broadest emphasis peal them in the ears of your auditors. "This secession, also, would be the first effectual step towards liberty." How? Mr Thompson in the same lecture said, "but for the guarantee of slavery in the constitution of the United States, the slaveholders of the South would be unable to hold their slaves. Were it not for the protection afforded by it, the slaves would run away! The Southern States admit their inability to hold their slaves, except through the protection afforded them by the Northern States." The men, therefore, who held the above views were doubly bound to demand the dissolution of the Union; but alas, for the men referred to above, who instead of hailing the disruption as a means of attaining the consummation of their wishes in the dissolution of the Union, have made it the means of increasing the mad outbursts of passion which is producing such scenes of violence and blood; and George Thompson, who recently pointed his admirers to a rare phenomenon amongst his bumps, the great philanthropic development of his conscien tiousness, at a farewell banquet at the Adelphi, Liverpool; as illustrated in his anti-corn law league experiences—this man has undergone a sad change in connexion with the organ of combativeness, which is being stimulated to such a wonderful expansion and growth in the way of destructiveness, so that he can scarcely think, speak, or dream of anything but standing amidst the myriad slain of the battle-field, where the air is filled with the moans of widows and orphans, and the soil soddened with the gore of the dying and the dead; not, however, to take his place in the ranks of those who have fallen, but to desecrate the spot where John Brown fell a hero and a martyr, and pollute his fair fame by associating his glorious name with the present revolutionary scenes of massacre and blood, than which no one more than John Brown would have condemned and abhorred-since no man was more reluctant to shed human blood, or more careful to avoid the policies of men who bartered truth for falsehood, virtue for ambition, or had no shield or protection but refuges of lies. Should Mr. Thompson's wish be gratified, by standing on the spot where stood the scaffold on which John Brown perished, with gathered thousands of emancipated slaves before him;" and could John Brown rise from the dead, and make his appearance before him, in their presence, what a withering rebuke he would give George Thompson if he dared to utter the mean and contemptible falsehoods to which he gave utterance in his speech at the Adelphi. |