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[72] slavery question, or on the issues between the North and the South. The great meetings which have been held in London and various parts of the country, during the last six weeks, to express sympathy with the anti-slavery policy of the American Government, indicate what is the true state of public feeling on this side of the Atlantic. We have endured the misrepresentations of certain organs of our press too long, and we have now determined to endure them no longer. But always remember that, from the beginning, the best of our journals have remained true to the anti-slavery cause; that the Star, Daily News,1 Westminster Review, Spectator, Nonconformist, British Standard, Dial, Birmingham Post,2 Manchester Examiner, Newcastle Chronicle, Caledonian Mercury, Belfast Whig,3 and a host of other representatives of the fourth estate, have never departed from the pure faith. The working classes also have proved to be sound to the core, whenever their opinion has been tested. Witness the noble demonstration of Manchester operatives the other day, when three thousand of these noble sons of labor (many of whom were actual sufferers from the cotton famine) adopted by acclamation an address to President Lincoln, sympathizing with his Proclamation. A friend of mine who was present on the occasion tells me that the heartiness and enthusiasm of the workingmen were something glorious; that he heard them say to one another that they would rather remain unemployed for twenty years than get cotton from the South at the expense of the slave. Mr. Thompson has been in other parts of Lancashire4 lately, and the meetings he has addressed have been attended with the same results. Our experience in London has been equally satisfactory. It would have done you good if you had heard Baptist Noel's speech, or attended the great meeting of the working classes which we held on the 31st of December— the eve of freedom. Newman Hall's speech on this occasion was one of the best I ever listened to. He stated, in the fairest


1 The chief proprietor of the Morning Star was Samuel Lucas, a brother-inlaw of John Bright; its editors, Justin McCarthy and F. W. Chesson. The Daily News was edited by Thomas Walker, with the powerful aid of Harriet Martineau, who wrote scores of editorials on the American question.

2 The Birmingham Post published an instructive series of letters on the American question from the pen of Mr. Samuel A. Goddard, an American gentleman long resident in that city, and a brother of Mrs. Mary May. They were subsequently collected in a volume (London, 1870).

3 The Belfast Whig was the most influential journal in the north of Ireland. Its editor, Mr. Frank Harrison Hill, afterwards succeeded Thomas Walker as editor of the Daily News.

4 George Thompson.

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