LETTERS TO MR. JOHN TAYLOR. 265 



TO MR. JOHN TAYLOR. 



NEW HAVEN, February 7, 1855. 



I HAVE never seen the correspondence of C. J. 



Fox, and the comments of Lord John Russell. However 

 dazzling the popularity of men may be while they are 

 garnished and gilded by fame, they generally obtain their 

 deserts after death ; and if posterity do not, in Egyptian form, 



pass judgment upon them, they do it in effect I once 



heard Fox speak in the House of Commons, and most of the 

 great men you have named were there that night and took 

 part in the debate. In my late visit I found most of those 

 great men in Westminster Abbey ! Sic transit ! .... In 

 this country, also, the great struggle between despotism and 

 freedom is going on. The slave-power, elated and bold 

 on account of the repeal of the Missouri Compromise 

 last winter, now avows designs of the most audacious char- 

 acter, even the renewal of the slave-trade from Africa. 

 But the spirit of the North is raised ; and, unless our do- 

 mestic traitors, of whom we have too many, should betray 

 us, I trust that we shall set bounds to the aggression. The 

 recent election of Mr. Seward, the eminent Senator from 

 New York, to the United States Senate for six years, from 

 March, 1855, is a test victory for that State, truly the 

 Empire State ; and in the next Congress the House of 

 Representatives will be decidedly anti-slavery 



TO MR. JOHN TAYLOR. 



NEW HAVEN, July 23, 1855. 



THE slave aristocracy are now banded together 



to extend the slave system and its political sway over all 

 our new territories, and over all that may be hereafter 

 acquired, and they avow the determination to perpetuate 

 the system, and boldly claim for it a divine origin, the 

 sanction of all ages, the prerogative even of benevo- 

 lence, and of being necessary to liberty, and especially to a 



