Our readers may remember that his excellency Governor Hill,
the Reverend Wilbur Fisk, D. D., President of Wesleyan University, the
Honorable Charles G. Atherton, one of our free and enlightened delegation in
Congress, and sundry other dignitaries in church and state, as well as the
Honorable their Graces the Concord mob — while Mr. Thompson was in this
country, and soon after our brutality drove him from these guilty shores, — took
great liberties with his name, and attempted liberties with his person. We call
the attention of these distinguished functionaries to some of their sayings and
doings, and will then subjoin some few of the testimonials recently come to us
from England, or which will be new to them, we presume, as they would not be
likely to encounter them in the course of their more lofty readings.
“This fugitive from justice,” said his excellency Isaac Hill
— this “bankrupt in character and in purse,” said his highness the Reverend
Doctor Fisk, a gratuitous vindicator of slavery — “a miscreant who had fled
from the indignation of an outraged people,” declaimed the pert Mister Atherton
— amen to the whole of it, repeated their Graces the mob.
Hear Thomas Fowell Buxton, the Wilberforce of the British
parliament — one of the ornaments of philanthropy for all christendom. It was
at a great anti-slavery meeting in the city of Norwich, in the neighborhood of
where this fugitive from justice had been brought up. He had just spoken on the
platform where Buxton and other great men of England sat. “I come here,” says
Thomas Fowell Buxton, “to declare my assent to the great doctrine of immediate
abolition of the apprenticeship, as well as to hear a speech from George
Thompson, with whose sentiments I fully concur, and with whom I hope to labor
through years to come, shoulder to shoulder, for the abolition of slavery and
the slave trade throughout the world.” “Fugitive from justice” indeed — “bankrupt
in character,” with a witness!
Hear Ralph Wardlaw, of Glasgow, one of the ablest, profoundest
divines and writers in Europe. After Mr. Thompson's victory in Scotland over
Rev. Robert J. Breckenridge of Baltimore, who honored the challenge of this “fugitive
from justice” in the very land from which he fled, — fought with him in
presence of 1200 of the very flower of the city of Glasgow, and fell before him
there — at a public meeting held in Dr. Heugh's chapel in commemoration of this
victory, Dr. Wardlaw said of Mr. Thompson, “With the ability, the zeal, the
eloquence, the energy, the steadfastness of principle, the exhaustless and
indefatigable perseverance of Our Champion, we were more than satisfied.” — “We
sent him to America,” said Dr. Wardlaw. “He went with the best wishes of the
benevolent, and the fervent prayers of the pious. He remained in the faithful,
laborious and perilous execution of the commission entrusted to him, as long as
it could be done without the actual sacrifice of life. He returned. We hailed
his arrival,” &c. “Fugitive from justice,” says the New Hampshire governor.
“We sent him,” says Dr. Wardlaw. “Bankrupt in character,” says the Rev. Dr.
Fisk. “He returned,” says Dr. Wardlaw, “and we hailed his arrival.”
And now hear Henry Brougham, in the House of Lords. We put
him against the American Brougham, who called George Thompson “miscreant!”
against the Honorable Charles G. Atherton, of America. In the House of
Lords, July 16th ultimo, in reply to Lord Glenelg, who claimed for the British
government the credit of abolishing slavery in the West India islands — Lord
Brougham said that “he maintained that, but for the interference of this
country by the friends of emancipation and of liberty, there would not to-day
have been received such a despatch as had arrived from the governor of Jamaica.”
“He would say, ‘Honor to those to whom honor was due.’ He would name such men
as Joseph Sturge, John Scoble, William Allen, and other noble-minded and
devoted philanthropists — and above all he would name one — one of the most
eloquent men he had ever heard either in or out of parliament — he meant the
gallant and highly-gifted George Thompson, who had not alone exerted himself in
the cause of humanity in this country, but had risked his life in America, in
the promulgation of those doctrines, which he knew to be founded in truth.”
Has our dainty-fingered little statesman ever heard of Henry
Brougham, of England — that intellectual Titan — that combination of all that
is glorious in the history of British genius and learning and eloquence and
patriotism; the pride of Westminster hall, the peerless among her peerage, the
very star of England, the man whose impress, of all others, this age and coming
ages will bear wherever the English language shall be spoken, the man whose
mental influence is felt from the palace to the hovel, from the queen to the
chimney-sweeper — has the Honorable Mr. Atherton heard of him, and does he call
“misereant” the
man who receives such eulogium from his lips, in the face of Europe? Fugitive
from justice! Is the companion of Brougham and O'Connell and Buxton and Sturge
and Scoble and Allen and Wardlaw, a “felon” and a “bankrupt in reputation” in
England — a miscreant? What say you, Messrs. Hill, Fisk, Atherton, and mob,
will you repeat your words in face of such testimonials as these?
SOURCE: Collection from the Miscellaneous Writings
of Nathaniel Peabody Rogers, Second Edition, p. 29-31 which states it was
published in the Herald of Freedom of September 29, 1838.
