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in what part of the Lord's harvest-field our friend has been toiling: whether his voice cheered the starving Hindoo crushed beneath British selfishness, or Hungary battling against treason and the Czar; whether he pleaded at home for bread and the ballot, or held up with his sympathy the ever-hopeful enthusiasm of Ireland,--every true word spoken for suffering man, is so much done for the negro bending beneath the weight of American bondage.
[Cheers.] It is said that the earthquake of Lisbon tossed the sea in billows on the coast of Cuba; so no indignant heart is beating anywhere whose pulses are not felt on the walls of our American Bastile.
[Cheers.] When, therefore, we recount to Mr. Thompson our success and marvellous progress, we are but returning to him the talent he committed to our trust; not only in that for many of us his eloquence breathed into our souls the breath of Antislavery life, but inasmuch, also, as we have been aware, with the Roman consul whom the gods aided, that, at all times and in all trials, “he rode at our right hand.”
Our friend has dwelt long and most impressively on the objection brought against him, as a foreigner, for taking sides on American questions.1 Ah, the evil is not that he takes sides; it is that he takes the wrong side!
[Cheers.] How much better Father Mathew played his
1 Mr. Choate said in his speech at Faneuil Hall, “If the philanthropist wishes to say anything about slavery, let him strike his blow in Cuba, let him strike it below the line, let him go where the stars and stripes do not wave over it.” Is there not a story of one who listening to a sermon which asserted that all the world would be reformed, if every man would reform one sinner, cried out, “True, I'll go right home and reform my brother Bill!” and if there be such a story, is not the advice of the eloquent gentleman flat plagiarism? Besides, George Thompson has come to his Cuba, come where his “stars and stripes [The Union Jack] do not wave,” and yet the Choates of the island do not seem to agree with their Boston relative, that this is his “appropriate sphere!”
Lee and Shepard, 1891.
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