Mr. Btickingham'' s Address. 



to Liberty, civil, political, and religious, which God and Nature implanted in my breast 

 from the cradle — which experience fanned into maturity with manhood — and which 

 Providence, I trust, will keep alive in my heart to the latest period of my advancmg age. 

 Animated by this love of Liberty, which you, the people of America, as you know how 

 to cherish among yourselves, will not be disposed to condemn in others, I continued, 

 even under the burning clime and despotic rule of an Eastern tyranny, to think, to feel, 

 and to speak, as every Englishman, proud of his country, his ancestors, and his laws, 

 ought to do, so long as he bears that honored name. For thus presuming to carry with 

 me from the land of my fathers that spirit, which made Englandfor so many years the 

 Hope of the world, and which, infused into the early settlers of your own still freer 

 country, and continued in their proud posterity, makes it now the Asylum and the 

 Home of the Oppressed ; for this, and for this alone, I was banished by a summary and 

 arbitrary decree, without trial, hearing, or defence; my property destroyed, to the 

 extent of not less than two hundred thousand dollars, and the prospective certainty of 

 another two hundred thousand dollars at least cut ofT, and annihilated at a single 

 blow. 



With the details of this atrocity it is not my purpose or intention to trouble you ; but 

 while I record (he fact, as one which forms an important link in the chain of circum- 

 stances that impel me hither, I may add, that the almost universal indignation of the 

 people of England has been expressed against this gross injustice— that a Parhamen- 

 tary Committee, composed of men of all parties in politics, unanimously pronounced 

 its condemnation — and that the highest authorities among our public men have ex- 

 pressed their abhorrence of the deed ; but from the impunity enjoyed by the East India 

 Company in their oppressions abroad, and the impossibility of making them subject to 

 our legal jurisdiction at home, no redress has, to this hour, been obtained, nor, accord- 

 ing to all human probability, is any ever likely to be procured. 



Prom the period of my arbitrary and unjust banishment from India, up to the reform 

 of our Parliament in England, I was incessantly and successfully engaged in directing 

 the attention of my countrymen to the evils of the East India Monopoly, and enlisting 

 their interests and their sympathies in demanding its extinction. With this view I was 

 occupied about six years in addressing the British public through the pages of the 'Ori- 

 ental Herald,' and four years in a patriotic pilgrimage through England, Scotland, and 

 Ireland, on a crusade against the abominations of the East ; in the course of which I tra- 

 versed all parts of the three divisions of our kingdom, visited almost every town of the 

 least importance in each, and addressed, in public speeches, lectures, and discourses, on 

 this important subject, not less than a million of my assembled countrymen, in audien- 

 ces varying from five hundred to two thousand each, including persons of all ranks, 

 from the peasant to the peer, of both sexes, of every age, and of every pohtical and 

 religious persuasion. 



The result of all this was the kindling a flame throughout the entire nation, which 

 burnt brighter and brighter as the hour of consummation approached, and at length 

 became perfectly irresistible. More than an hundred provincial associations were formed, 

 among which Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, Glasgow and Birmingham took the lead, 

 to demand the abolhion of the East India Company's commercial monopoly, and the 

 amelioration of its civil government; and not less than 100,000Z was raised and ex- 

 pended in the legitimate promotion of this object, through public meetings, deputations, 

 and the powerful agency of the press. 



The reform of Parliament being accomplished, I was invited, under circumstances of 

 the most flattering nature to myself, but on which I will not dwell, to become the repre- 

 sentative of the town of Sheffield, in which, and to which, I was then personally an 



