Supper at Halifax, Yorkshire; although no animosity or unkind feeling was shewn or indulged in by the writer, their friends on both sides of the Atlantic made haste, not to explain their conduct, or to justify it, but to cover up their guilt by heaping on the writer calumny and abuse; and fourthly, the writer's opposition to the war party has been the signal for the most savage and vehement attacks on himself by ProFederals in this country, which has rendered it necessary that he should take his sling from his side and try to make his mark on the foreheads of some of the Goliaths, who have threatened to give his flesh unto the fowls of the air and the beasts of the field; consequently, the writer has had to fight his way through the ranks of opposing foes, and to fall back on the special providences of Jehovah, outside the "organized bands" of freedom in this country; and he can assure the reader that his confidence in the arm of God's strength has not failed-that his little of the sparkling essence of life has not entirely evaporated, as will be seen in the following pages-that his opponents have not succeeded in closing every avenue of sympathy or door of usefulness against him, not even with their resort to a boundless assumption of falsehood, and wilful misrepresentation and abuse,and also, that they can no more expedite the cause of truth and righteousness by such means than they can by availing themselves of the "shifting policy" of unprincipled demagogues and rulers, by giving to them their active countenance and support. Recently two visitors extraordinary from this city have made their appearance in the New World. One of these, Mr. Patterson, assures his cousins in America, "that the people of this country are in favour of the war for the Union ;" and the other, Mr. W. H. Newett, has been lifting up his flag of union and peace on behalf of the "two great Protestant nations, England and America, in the midst of that fearfully corrupt and demoralized national convention, called the 'Young Men's Christian Association of America and the British Provinces,'-an association which has never disfellowshipped the negro-hater or negrotrader, or protested against their abominable frauds and crimes, or detestable wickedness; and yet, forsooth, churches and evangelical bodies of Christians, who receive black spirits and white spirits, red spirits and grey, and cry, mingle, mingle, mingle you that may, except what they call 'strackle-brained abolitionists."" Oh! yes, churches and bodies, such as the above, are to go hand in hand to evangelize the world! What a coalition! Should such be realized in the present condition of our churches and conventional organizations in America, to use the softest sentiments of charity, they cannot be "clear as the sun, fair as the moon, or terrible like an army with banners," against the "modern infidelity" of the age, or the outside heathenism or barbarism of the world. If such a union is designed to be emblematic of the Christian principles which control and beautify every thought and action of the Christian's life, there must be something rotten in the state of the churches as well as in Denmark, or they must be strangely ignorant of the mind and will of Jehovah concerning the terms of fellowship, or what is necessary to subserve the interests of true piety, or of Christ's cause. But what corrupt ecclesiastical organizations and an allpowerful north cannot accomplish in America, "God and the negro," says the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, "are to do ;" and, if we are to receive the testimony of Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, already the work is done. In a letter published in the Scotsman, Edinburgh, she says, "The great work of liberation is substantially done. Thank God we live to feel that slavery is ended. No more coffles! no more slave markets! no more scourgings! no more fugitive slave laws! Instead, free labour, and an intelligent well-trained black army!" So that what the forty thousand pulpits and the millions of free men in the North have no disposition or power to accomplish, the creation of the "intelligent, well-trained black army" has already "substantially done." The army of General Lee thundering at the gates of Washington, however, shews that the work is not yet substantially done in the way she so fervently desires, or by the terrible means she is helping to call into requisition. How different is Mrs. Stowe and the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher to the late Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton, who avowed that he could not "contemplate with firmness so horrible a termination of slavery," when dreading an insurrection amongst the slaves in the West Indies; but the above would-be philanthropists not only contemplate insurrectionary scenes on the slave plantations with firmness, but feast their eyes on them with fiendish delight, and are now jubilant over the work of massacre and blood, which has been inaugurated in the south by stirring up revolt amongst the slaves against their former masters! Everything, however, must have an end, even the present terrible war with its mask to cover up ulterior designs and mock philanthropy; and when it comes to a close it will be the wonder of the age, "where the strength of the war party could ever have lain, just as in France, after the fall of Robespierre, people asked each other who could have been the Jacobins ?" And when the names of William Lloyd Garrison, Dr. Cheever, M. D. Conway, Henry Ward Beecher, and Mrs. Stowe are given, how they will call forth the derisive cheers and convulsive laughter of mankind; but I must not forget that on this day everything is coleur de rose in America-that the whole nation is covered with the blaze of heroism and glory. But what a change in the three last fourths of July to those which preceded them; how different their celebration; and how unenviable the feelings of those who can look upon the struggle now going on in "the freest nation in the world" so-called, with approbation or delight. SUN STREET, LIVERPOOL, |