CHAP. XVIII.] ANTI-SLAVERY MEETINGS. 241 



government, that one of the reasons for acknowledging the inde 

 pendence of Texas was its tendency to promote the abolition of 

 slavery, had done much to alienate the planters, and increase the 

 anti-English feeling in the south. He also observed, that any 

 thing like foreign dictation or intermeddling excited a spirit of 

 resistance, and asked whether I thought the emancipation of the 

 West Indian slaves would have been accelerated by meetings in 

 the United States or Germany to promote that measure. He 

 then adverted to the letters lately published by Mr. Colman, on 

 English agriculture, in which the poverty, ignorance, and sta 

 tionary condition of the British peasantry are painted in most 

 vivid colors. He also cited Lord Ashley s speeches on the mise 

 ries endured underground by women and boys in coal-mines, and 

 said that the parliamentary reports on the wretched state of the 

 factory children in England had been largely extracted from in 

 their papers, to show that the orators of Exeter Hall might find 

 abuses enough at home to remedy, without declaiming against 

 the wrongs of their negroes, whose true condition and prospects 

 of improvement were points on which they displayed consummate 

 ignorance. Finding me not disposed to controvert him, he 

 added, in a milder tone, that, for his part, he thought the south 

 ern planters owed a debt of gratitude to England for setting the 

 example to American philanthropists of making pecuniary com 

 pensation to those whose slaves they set free. 



When I had leisure to think over this conversation, and the 

 hint conveyed to my countrymen, how they might best devote 

 their energies toward securing the progress of the laboring classes 

 at home, it occurred to me that some of Channing s discourses 

 against slavery might be useful to a minister who should have 

 the patriotism to revive the measure for educating the factory 

 children, proposed in 1843 by Sir James Graham, and lost in 

 consequence of the disputes between the Church and the Dissent 

 ers. It would be easy to substitute employer for owner, and 

 laborer for slave, and the greater part of the eloquent appeal of 

 the New England orator would become appropriate : 



&quot; Mutato nomine de te 

 Fabula narratur.&quot; 

 VOL. I. L 



