Showing posts with label Isaac Hill. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Isaac Hill. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 9, 2019

Nathaniel Peabody Rogers: George Thompson, September 29, 1838

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.