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[276] for repeal of the Acts) to make their reports, he asked for a few words of encouragement from their American guest, the thought of whose career ought to relieve any momentary depression on their part. Especially did he invite him to give an account of his early labors and sufferings; but Mr. Garrison, on rising, brushed aside, with a smile, those ‘light afflictions’ which ‘were but for a moment and were hardly worth talking about,’ and indulged instead in an account of the labors and sacrifices of George Thompson in America, as an introduction to the reasons why his own participation with them in the present struggle was not improper.

‘I have heard of your doings,’ he said,

when on the other1 side of the Atlantic, and my heart went out to you. I felt myself one with you in spirit, one with you in your aim. I often said,—you did not hear me, but I said it in my heart, many times,—with my heart's voice I said, “God bless the noble men and women now striving to cleanse the land of England from the foul pollution implied by such atrocious laws as they are working to abolish.” Generally, where I stand up to speak, I am “ native and to the manner born,” but here I am a foreigner, standing on foreign soil; and I ask myself, “ What right have I to be here, an intermeddler, an agitator, if you will?” . . . But I have in my own mind long come to this conclusion, that “the earth is the Lord's” ; and wherever on His footstool I may be placed, if iniquity is to be arraigned, and immorality is to be confronted, I claim my right before God to denounce it. And so I feel at home here, and that I have a perfect right to speak; and I do denounce the iniquitous and infamous Acts as disgraceful to Great Britain and the Government thereof. (Loud applause.) I bid you God-speed; and if I were to continue here I would try whether I could help you in any way whatsoever, however feebly; and whatever I could do, I would be very sure to do. Your cause is righteous. This question of pollution—what! not to be confronted! not to be talked about! Men and women to be separate when they talk about it! Why separate? If they are virtuous, shall they not speak of that which is not virtuous and denounce it in common? It struck me as rather singular when I heard . . . [of] certain gentlemen so exceedingly virtuous, so exceedingly afraid of anything indelicate in the presence of ladies, that they cannot discuss this

1 The Shield, London, July 7, 1877.

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