Page:History of the Anti corn law league.pdf/23

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GEORGE THOMPSON.
7

of September, 1832, Mr, George Thompson, who had been zealously and effectually labouring in the cause of negro emancipation at Liverpool, made his appearance in Manchester, and delivered a lecture in Irwell-street Chapel, surrounded by a number of estimable persons of the Society of Friends, and before him as respectable and numerous an audience as ever had been congregated in Manchester. He was young and vigorous, self-possessed, clear and distinct in his articulation, with a voice modulated to be heard in a whisper or peeling like a bell; perfect master of all the facts and arguments of his case, and with great power of appeal to the moral end religious feelings of his auditors, He proceeded, in a strain of impassioned eloquence, to dwell upon the various evils which were peculiar to British colonial slavery, or were fostered, multiplied, and ripened under its influence. I can do no more than barely enumerate the frightful catalouge, every item of which was powerfully illustrated by the lecturer. Slavery cursed the soil—originated and perpetuated the sale of human beings—doomed helpless, innocent, and unoffending infants to interminable thraldom—depressed the body by labour, while it prostrated the mind by excluding the ordinary and required motives to exertion—entailed physical sufferings of every possible description—operated to produce a fearful process of depopulation—was characterised by gross inequality of law and right—by shameless maladministration even of those partial laws, and threw in the way of the slave almost insuperable obstacles to redress—created and continued an odious and inveterate distinction of caste—engendered ignorance in its worst forms, and most fearful consequences—extinguished self-respect in the bosom of the negro, while it inspired hateful feelings of arrogance and despotism in the breast of the master—rendered the negro dark sullen, and revengeful—reduced the master from a state of refinement to one of debasement and de-