THE EXPLORING PARTY

dozen little children playing upon my hearth. How many Members are there who can say with me, that the most innocent, the most pure, the most holy joy which in their past years they have felt, or in their future years they have hoped for, has not arisen from contact and association with our precious children Well, then, if that be so if, when the hand of Death takes one of those flowers from our dwelling, our heart is overwhelmed with sorrow and our household is covered with gloom; what would it be if our children were brought up to this infernal system one hundred and fifty thousand of them every year brought into the world in these Slave States, amongst these gentlemen, amongst this chivalry, amongst these men that we can make our friends Do you forget the thousand fold griefs and the countless agonies which belonged to the silent conflict of slavery before the war began it is all very well for the hon. and learned Gentleman to tell me, to tell this House he will not tell the country with any satisfaction to it that slavery, after all, is not so bad a thing. The brother of my hon. Friend the Member for South Durham told me that in North Carolina he himself saw a woman whose every child, ten in number, had been sold when they grew up to the age at which they would fetch a price to their master. I have not heard a word to night of another matter the Proclamation of the President of the United States. The hon. and learned Gentleman spoke somewhere in the country, and he had not the magnanimity to abstain from a statement which I was going to say he must have known had no real foundation. I can make all allowance for the passion and I was going to say the malice but I will say the ill will of the hon. and learned Gentleman; but I make no allowance for his ignorance. I make no allowance for that, because if he is ignorant it is his own fault, for God has given him an intellect which ought to keep him from ignorance on a question of this magnitude. I now take that Proclamation. What do you propose to do You propose by your resolution to help the South, if possible, to gain and sustain its independence. Nobody doubts that. The hon. and learned Gentleman will not deny it. But what becomes of the Proclamation I should like to ask any lawyer in what light we stand as regards that Prodamation To us there is only one country in what was called the United States; there is only one President, there is only one general Legislature, there is only one law; and if that Prodamation be lawful anywhere, we are not in a condition to deny its legality, because only one law; and if that Prodamation be lawful anywhere, we are not in a condition to deny its legality, because at present we know no President Davis, nor do we know the men who are about him. We have our Consuls in the South, but recognizing only one Legislature, one President, one law. So far as we are concerned, that Proclamation is a legal and effective document. I want to know, to ask you, the House of Commons, whether you have turned back to your own proceeding in and traced the praises which have been lavished up on you for thirty years by the great and good men of other countries, and whether, after what you did at that time, you believe that you will meet the views of the thoughtful, moral, and religious people of England, when you propose to remit to slavery three millions of negroes in the Southern States, who in our views, and regarding the Proclamation of the only President of the United States as a legal document, are certainly and to all intents and purposes free [Oh! The hon. and learned Gentleman may say oh and shake his head lightly, and be scornful at this. He has managed to get rid of all those feelings under which all men, black and white, like to be free. He has talked of the cant and hypocrisy of these men. Was Willberforce, was Clarkson, was Buxton, I might run over the whole list, were these men hypocrites, and had they nothing about them but cant I could state something about the family of my hon. Friend below me (Mr. Forster), which I almost fear to state in his presence; but his revered father a manunsurpassed in character, not equaled by many in intellect, and approached by few in service laid down his life in a Slave State in America, while carrying to the governors and legislatures of every Slave State the protest of himself and his sect against the enormity of that odious system. In conclusion, Sir, I have only this to say, that I wish to take a generous view of this question, a view, I say, generous with regard to the people with whom we are in amity, whose Minister we receive here, and who receive our Minister in Washington. We see that the Government of the United States has for two years past been contending for its life, and we know that it is contending necessarily for human freedom. That Government affords the remarkable example offered for the first time in the history of the world of a great Government coming forward as the organized defender of law, freedom, and equality. Surely hon. Gentlemen opposite cannot be so ill informed as to say that the revolt of the Southern States is in favour of freedom and equality. In Europe often, and in some parts of America, when there has been insurrection, it has generally been of the suffering against the oppressor, and rarely has it been found, and not more commonly in our history than in the history of any other country, that the Government has stepped forward as the organized defender of freedom of the wide and general freedom of those under its rule. With such a Government, in such a contest, with such a foe, the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Sheffield, who professes to be more an Englishman than most Englishmen, asks us to throw into the scale against it the weight of

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