contrasted with the present anti-slavery struggle. The venerable CLARKSON, at the close of his instructive History, makes the following remarkable statement - remarkable, because it exactly applies to the moral separation which is now taking place in our land on the great question of emancipation. Of the conflict in Great Britain, he says —

It has been useful, also, in the discrimination of moral character. In private life, it has enabled us to distinguish the virtuous from the more vicious part of the community. I have had occasion to know many thousand persons in the course of my travels on this subject; and I can truly say, that the part which these took on this great question was always a true criterion of their moral character. It has shown the general philanthropist. It has unmasked the vicious, in spite of his pretension to virtue. It has separated the moral statesman from the wicked politician. It has shown us who, in the legislative and executive offices of our country, are fit to save, and who to destroy a nation.'

Sir, the ground that you and your colleagues maintain is, that the free States are not involved in the guilt of slavery; that we have no right, morally, (for as to our political right, there is no difference of opinion,) to meddle with it; that the slave States alone are criminal, if there be any criminality attaching to the system; that the doctrine of immedi ate emancipation is impracticable and dangerous; and that anti-slavery associations are unwarrantable and seditious. Abolitionists hold that the North and the South are alike involved in guilt, whether past, present or prospective; that, therefore, it is the right and the duty of the people, every where, to seek the overthrow of slavery by moral means, and to wash the blood from their hands individually; that it is unjust and pharisaical for one portion of the country to say to another, -Stand by, for I am holier than thou;' and that the doctrine of immediate emancipation is the doctrine of common sense, common honesty, and the Bible.

Sir, you have a strange method of proving that we of the North are not involved in the guilt of slavery. You expressly declare

1. The Constitution provides for the suppressing of insurrections; we should rally under the Constitution, we should respond to its call: nay, we should not wait for such a requisition, but on the instant should rush forward with fraternal emotions to defend our brethren from desolation and massacre.' That is, we have agreed to keep the slaves in bondage, and to crush or exterminate them if they should rise, as did our fathers, to obtain their freedom by violence: therefore, we are guiltless of their oppression!

2. The Constitution recognises and provides for the continuance of slavery' therefore, we are not guilty!

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3. It does sanction, it does UPHOLD slavery:' therefore, we are not responsible!

4. 'Few parts of the Constitution were more carefully and deliberately weighed:' therefore, we are sinless!

Now, Sir, in presenting these facts to prove the innocence of the North, it seems to me that you must really believe that justice has fled to brutish beasts, and men have lost their reason.' Or do you mean to mock us, as those who cannot discriminate between honesty and knavery-liberty and oppression? What would you think, if an associate of thieves should be arrested and brought up for trial, and, to prove his own and their innocence, should begin to specify what robberies they had perpetrated, what more they meant to effect, and what part each had to perform in plundering the community? You are a lawyer, Sir, and can readily decide how this testimony would operate. Your plea is just as rational as well might the assassin bring the body of his victim into court, and brandish the reeking knife over his head, to prove that he ought not to be accused of murder! 'As for our iniquities, we know them.'

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Oh, Sir, when has a nation sinned so perversely, so understandingly, against so much light, as our own? Say not, as did certain transgressors of old, We are delivered to do all these abominations.' The whole world must see, that, for our own aggrandizement, we have most basely sacrificed the rights and liberties of an immense multitude of our fellowcreatures consigning them to a bondage, one hour of which is fraught with more misery than ages of that which our fathers rose in rebellion to oppose.'

'Go, look through the kingdoms of earth,
From Indus, all round to the Pole,

And something of goodness, of honor and worth,
Shall brighten the sins of the soul :-

But we are alone in our shame,

The world cannot liken us there;

Oppression and vice have disfigured our name,

Beyond the low reach of compare ;

Stupendous in guilt, we shall lend them through time
A proverb, a bye-word, for treach'ry and crime!'

Now that space for repentance is yet mercifully granted to us, let us abase ourselves, as did the inhabitants of Nineveh, and God will rebuke the destroyer for our sake, and open the windows of heaven, and pour upon us such blessings that there shall not be room to receive them.

'Thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel, If ye thoroughly amend your ways and your doings; if ye thor oughly execute judgment between a man and his neighbor; if ye oppress not the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow, and shed not innocent blood; then will I cause you to dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, for ever and ever.

Departure of George Thompson for England.

He has gone! The paragon of modern eloquence - the benefactor of two nations the universal philanthropist is no longer in our midst! Abandoning the field of his welldeserved and ever increasing popularity-bidding adieu to his native shores, and to a vast multitude of as dear and' estimable friends as one man ever possessed- he com. mitted himself, with his family, to the perils of the deep, and fearlessly ventured, in the cause of the bound and bleeding slave, to encounter the still greater perils which he was conscious awaited him upon these shores. It was no ordinary sacrifice of ease, preferment, interest and popularity, that he made, when he resolved to plead the heaven-originated cause of universal emancipation in a land of republican despots and Christian kidnappers. He exchanged comfort for severe hardship; he sought abasement rather than exaltation; for safety, he substituted peril; he sacrificed his interest for the pleasure of doing good; and he consented to leave his popularity among good men at home, that he might be honored with the abuse and proscription of wicked men abroad. His departure from England was viewed with regret, yet admiration, by a noble and philanthropic people. They would have gladly retained him in their midst, had they not been convinced that Providence had a great work for him to perform in this hemisphere they did not love themselves less, but they loved the perishing slaves more. Wherever he went to bid them farewell, they rushed in crowds to hang upon the thrilling accents of his lips, to pay him the respect of grateful hearts, and to bestow on him the testimonials of their love. Never, perhaps, did man break through stronger ties to make himself an exile, and a by-word and gazing-stock among the

plunderers and oppressors of the human race. A physical Lafayette had come to these shores on an errand of patriotism, and the applause was úniversal. A moral Lafay ette came hither on a mission of peaceful liberty and holy love, and the hosts of heaven rejoiced, and gave glory to God. Both excited the fear and hatred of tyrants: the former was dreaded for his rank and influence the latter for his Christian courage and spiritual might. The former came equipped with carnal weapons, to sunder the chains of political oppression by the arm of violence: the latter came with the whole armor of God, having his loins girt about with truth, and having on the breast-plate of righteousness, and his feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace, and taking the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit, to effect a two-fold emancipation, both of the body and the soul. The former slaughtered opposing forces, to vindicate the rights of man: the latter toiled unceasingly to maintain the justice of God in the peaceful deliverance of the captive, through conviction of sin and the spirit of repentance. The former aimed to overthrow an unjust exercise of monarchical power; the latter, to extirpate the most dreadful form of despotism that the world had ever witnessed chattel slavery.

He has gone! And with him will go the prayers and blessings, the gratitude and love, the respect and admiration, of all those who cherish an innate and holy hatred of oppression, and who hold no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness. Around the hearts of thousands in this country, his memory is entwined with the ties of a deathless affection; for they have known him, and can testify of his extraordinary worth. What a rich freight of gratitude would accompany him, more to be desired than the treasures of royal argosies, from millions who yet pine in slavery, if they could understand how much he has suffered