s' Unions of London to enable the working men to express their sentiments

hat the cause which we are assembled to discuss is one which excites my warmest sympathies. This meeting is remarkable, inasmuch as it is not what is commonly called a public meeting, but it is a meeting, as you have seen from the announcements and advertise

e amongst the great nations of the earth-we see it plunged at once into the midst of a sanguinary revolution, whose proportions are so gigantic as to dwarf all other revolutionary records and events of which we have any knowledge. But I do not wonder at this revolution. No man can read the history of the United States from the time when t

sm of the American people have induced them constantly to make concessions to slavery, because they knew that when they ceased to make concessions they ran the peril of that disruption which has now arrived; and they dreaded the destruction of their country even more than they hated the evil of slavery. But these concessions failed, as I believe concessions to evil always do

r all, it was no great matter that had caused this contest in the United States. I say that a whole continent is at stake. It is not a question of boundary; it is not a question of tariff; it is not a question of supremacy of party, or even of the condition of four millions of negroes. It is more than that. It is

not in our power to bring it to a close; but I know not that we are called upon to shut our eyes and to close our hearts to the great issues which are depending upon it. Now we are met here, let us ask each other some questions. Has England any opinion with regard to this American question? Has England any sympathy, on one side or the other, with either party in this great struggle? But, to come nearer, I would ask whether this meeting has any op

lege has beheld an afflicting spectacle for many years past. It has beheld thirty millions of men, happy and prosperous, without emperor, without king, w

the lore which

use to look with jealousy upon a country which, amongst all the great nations of the globe, is that one where labour has met with the highest honour, and where it has reaped its greatest reward. Are you aware of the fact, that in fifteen years, which is but as yesterday when it is past, two and a half millions of your countr

ss is not hopelessly thwarted by the law. In the other section of that country, labour is not only not honoured, but it is degraded. The labourer is made a chattel. He is no more his own than the horse that drags a carriage through the next street; nor is his wife, nor i

d therefore, if you confine slavery to negroes, you lose your s

so; you have to maintain what you believe to be the just rights of industry and of your separate trades; and sometimes, as you know, you do things which many people do not approve, and which, probably, when you come to think more coolly of them, you may even doubt t

uch capital and as much the property of the capitalist and employer as the capitalist's cattle and horses are property, and then

hich it was more becoming the working men and members of Trades' Unions and Trade S

will not be ruined. I am not sure that very large numbers of its population will not have to remove to seek other employment, either in this or some other country. I am not one of those who underrate this great calamity. On the

ed in the effort of the slaveholders of that country to break up what they themselves admit to be the freest and best government that ever existed, for the sole purpose of making perpetual the institution of slavery. But if t

began to bring in the produce of their plantations, and he had a fair chance of re-establishing his business; but the moment this was discovered by the commanders of the Southern forces at some distance from the city, they issued the most peremptory orders that every boat-load of cotton on the rivers, every

o ship to Europe, and the proceeds of that cotton might be returned, and the trade be re-opened. But you have not found cotton come down to New Orleans, although its coming there under those terms would be of no particular advantage to the North. It has been withheld with this single object, to create in the manufacturing districts of France and England a state of

en portions of that loan. Now the one great object of that loan is this, to pay in this country for vessels which are being built-Alabamas-from which it is hoped that so much irritation will arise in the minds of the people of the Northern States, that England may be dragged into war to take sides with the South and with slavery. The South was natu

what would be as satisfactory to myself with regard to some others. There may be men outside, there are men sitting amongst your legislators, who will build and equip corsair ships to prey upon the commerce of a friendly power,-who will disregard the laws and the honour of their country,-who will trample on the Proclamation of their sovereign,-and who, for the sake of the glittering profit which

en of London, the representatives, as you are here to-night, of the feelings and the interests of the millions who cannot hear my voice. I wish you to be true to yourselves. Dynasties may fall, aristoc

ause which no after-penitence can ever lift from it. You will not do this. I have faith in you. Impartial history will tell that, when your statesmen were hostile or coldly neutral, when many of your rich men were corrupt, when your press-which ought to

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