LIKXEAN SOCIETY OF LOXDO>'. 39 



His son's letter, dated May 10, 1913, gives a graphic picture 

 of the persecution suifered by G. W. Sleeper. His outspoken 

 views, — prominent in the booklet which is the subject of the 

 present address — " drew down upon him the wrath of ' the bigots 

 of his iron time.' Undismayed, he defied them all. Clergy — 

 government — society — relatives — all ! His friends shrank away 

 (not even his relations could understand him ; they declared him a 

 lunatic), his enemies prevailed, he was mobbed and assaulted in the 

 streets and halls, his bosom friend, Hilton, pulled his beard in 

 public, his lectures were suppressed : all that frantic malignity 

 could do to obliterate his written and spoken thought was resorted 

 to."' These statements are supported by the preface to the booklet 

 quoted below and on page 42. At the same time it is only fair 

 to remember that the language of the lectures was highly provo- 

 cative and aggressive, and would have been likely to produce a 

 remarkable effect upon hearers in the middle of the last century, 

 and indeed in much later years. The preface to a later lecture 

 "Education and its Offspring Civilization" (Providence, 1S60) 

 speaks of the alteration of notices and attempts to efface records 

 so as make it appear that it was never given before the " Franklin 

 Lyceum" of Providence. The appendix to the same lecture 

 reproduces minutes and press notices in order to prove the fact of 

 its delivery. Apart from the far greater detail given in the later 

 pamphlet there is a striking similarity in the description of the 

 conditions under which both were written. In both, the expressed 

 object of the writer is to print addresses which neither audience 

 nor Press would receive. 



The Auti£exticity of G. W. Sleeper's Pamphlet (1849). 



The author's conclusions on a number of extremely important 

 subjects have been given in his own words in the first part of this 

 address. If it be true that these conclusions were reached by 

 1849, the fact is of the highest interest in the history of scientific 

 thought. The author claims indeed that his ideas were older still 

 by several years, for he says in the introduction — 



•' The orio-inal ideas on which these lectures were founded, 

 entered my mind when I was barely seventeen, and during 

 their gradual development the major portion of both of the 

 lectures were committed to paper in the course of the past six 

 years. The first public delivery of either occurred in Boston 

 about two years ago, " 



The above statement is consistent with the history of G. "VV. 

 Sleeper, who was born on Oct. 15, 1826, and would therefore have 

 been seventeen in 184.3, six years before the date printed on the 

 pamphlet. In 1847 he would have been twenty-one — a verii early 

 age, it nuist be admitted, for the amount of thought and reading 

 implied by the two lectures. 



