Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/265

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MONCURE DANIEL CONWAY.
251

imprecatious around us went on, our way was made smooth."

In 1863 Mr. Conway was commissioned by the friends of abolition to come to England to try to influence English as he had American opinion in favor of the Federal cause, and in this good work he was engaged when the Confederacy suddenly collapsed. At that juncture South-place Chapel was in need of a pastor; and who so able to discharge the duties as this transatlantic iconoclast and idealist, who brought with him to the old world the best manhood of the new?

In 1875 he revisited the West on a lecturing-tour, and was received by his long-estranged family, and by his countrymen generally, with open arms. He was offered the pastorate of Theodore Parker's old church in Boston, but preferred to return to England, where the battle with theological obscurantism and political oligarchy is more arduous. England has sent so many of her good and brave men to America, that it is but right that the latter should begin to return the compliment.

Mr. Conway, needless to say, remains a stanch republican. Like all intelligent American citizens whom I have known, the more he has studied our political institutions, the less he has been captivated by them. His little work, "Republican Superstitions," is the best commentary on the working of "our glorious constitution" that I know. Therein he shows, with incontrovertible logic, and complete mastery of details, that it is precisely the monarchical elements, thoughtlessly or superstitiously imported. into the Constitution of the United States by its framers, that have