Lectures at the North.
Rev. Henry Ward Beecher has delivered a lecture in
Boston, in which he denounces the
South with his characteristic violence, and says: ‘Let the
South secede; I don't care.’--The man
Beecher has a vast amount of practical philosophy.
As long as he has his pockets stuffed with the proceeds of the pulpit and lecture hall, amounting to some ten thousand dollars, the country, reverently speaking, may go to the devil. "Old
John Brown " said some true things, in his last hours, of
Beecher. --The marginal comments by
John Brown on one of
the Rev. H. W.
Beecher's anti-slavery sermons, published about the time of
Brown's hanging, in the New York
Herald, ought by all means to be revived. "Why don't he come South and preach?" quoth old John.
In New York, the lecture season has been inaugurated by a lecture in the Cooper Institute, by
Charles Sumner. The New York
Express says:
‘
"We had occasion, a few days since, to say a word or two, by way of against the manifest inclination, on the part of the invitation committees of some of our Library Associations and Literary Societies, to invite addresses from men who are chiefly celebrated only as anti-slavery demagogues and sectional agitators.
We are not sure that any of these associations or societies are officially responsible for the appearance of
Mr. Chas. Sumner at the Cooper institute, this evening; but, in the present distracted state of the public mind, we would rather not see the Mercantile are Association, and the Young Men's Christian Association, co-operating in any way to bring such men upon the platform.
On such occasions we know the subject of discourse is professedly not of a partizan nor a sectional one, but the practice, on the contrary, is to infuse as much unit-slavery into it as circumstances or the patience of the auditory will permit.
"If men who have contributed so much to inflame human passions, and to place the two great divisions of our country in a hostile attitude towards each other, substituting animosity and discord for brotherly love, will insist upon coming before the people, when the storm is howling in God's name let them come; but let it be not to make matters worse, but to join their efforts to ours, to restore peace, remove anxiety, restore confidence, and save the
Union!"
’
The subject of
Sumner's lecture was
La Fayette, and in the course of it he managed to thrust his offensive views about slavery upon the audience.
Yet it is such men as this that are called upon to instruct the people, whilst the conservative men of the
North, the Cushings, the Hunts, the Dickinsons, &c., are studiedly kept in the back ground.
