The Liberator

From Howitt's Journal.

ANTI-SLAVERY LEAGUE AND TEMPERANCE SOCIETIES.

Mr. J. P. Parker, on the 19th of this month, delivered a lecture on this subject, at the Star of Temperance Hall. A Remonstrance will lie for signatures at every Temperance meeting throughout London. The address issued in announcing these lectures is so admirable, that we give it entire:

To the members of Temperance Societies in the United States of America.

Dear Friends and Fellow Workers in the cause of Temperance: We, the undersigned members of Temperance Societies in London, respectfully address you on a most important subject. We have long labored in our respective hemispheres in the promulgation of our excellent and self-denying principles. We have exerted ourselves on behalf of those who were ready to perish, and for whom no man seemed to care. We have brought liberty to the captive, and we have opened the prison doors of those who were bound. Thousands have been made to rejoice, who once were sad and sorrowing. Thousands have become respectable and respected members of society, who once were outcasts, the offscouring of all things.

We have stood forward firmly and fearlessly, in the face of difficulty and danger, boldly and zealously seeking to emancipate the White Slave—the self-made bondman. In the pursuit of our noble object, we have known no man after the flesh, but have sacrificed time, money, and even reputation, in the calm confidence of a conscience void of offence in the sight of God. We have been rewarded for all our pains and privations. Almighty God has blessed our exertions, and crowned them with abundant success; and we are at this time looking forward, with a hope that is sure and steadfast, that our principles will ultimately be universally acknowledged, and universally reduced to practice.

We were favored with the presence of a large body of American citizens, who, in your name, appeared at our World's Temperance Convention, as your delegates and representatives. We rejoiced to meet them in our father land, and we doubt not that they on their return informed you, that we received and parted from them as dear friends and brethren.

But we have been informed that a large body of Americans, who with ourselves have long practised the healthy and invigorating system of total abstinence from all intoxicating liquors, did not avail themselves of that opportunity to unite with us in presenting a great moral spectacle to the world; and we have been told that these were not represented at our Temperance Convention, because they feared lest, the color of their skin being different to ours, we should not have received them as dear brethren. We regret that such should have been the case: we should have hailed their appearance with joyful acclamation; we should have received them with fraternal affection, and have listened to their statements or suggestions with profound respect. With us there is no respect of persons, whether white, or black, or red, or yellow; all men with us are brethren, children of the same Almighty Parent, the offspring of the same common Father.

There came with one of the delegates from your highly favored land, a man who had been, as we were informed, a slave in one of your southern states—his name Frederick Douglass. He stood on our Temperance platforms at our largest places of assembly, and we rejoiced to hear him speak of what our principles had done for his colored brethren. We recognized in him a triumphant refutation of that vile calumny, which had declared the negro to be an unintellectual and inferior being.

He stood, 'a man distinguished by his talents and eloquence, among men long acknowledged by us as talented and eloquent, and from them and from us he received the respectfully and cordially offered right hand of fellowship and affection.

Our ministers, our statesmen, our men of literature and learning, our merchants and mechanics, men of every class and grade in society, came around that noble specimen of colored humanity, and with united voice declared him to be one of nature's aristocracy.

And now, dear brethren, we have a friendly controversy with you. We are told that in your land, the land of liberty, as we have often called it, there are thousands of such men held in the bonds of slavery. Men created in the image of God, but treated as the brutes that perish. Men whose birthright is freedom, but whose natural rights have been forcibly torn from them. Men who have hearts to love, but whose hearts' affections have been sported with and blighted. Men who have been taught that for them the Saviour died, and who have been placed upon the auction block with this commendation to enhance their value—that they were Christians.

Brethren, are these things true? Are men and women united together among you in the holy bands of matrimony, and then, at the caprice of their fellow-men, torn from each other, never to meet again? Are men and women to be found among you, whose backs have been torn and lacerated by the whip—whose faces have been branded by the burning iron—whose limbs have been hacked and maimed? Brethren, are these things true? Is the husband torn from the wife—the child from the parent—the suckling from the mother's breast—and sold like cattle in the public market? Dear brethren, are these things true, and have you not the power to alter this? If you have not, we feel that you have a right to our deepest sympathies; we sincerely regret your inability.

But, if you have the means, if you have the power, to crush this system of iniquity, we beg you to employ those means with all the energy and earnestness that the case demands.

As Englishmen, our boast is this:—Our fathers sanctioned slavery; our fathers trafficked in human flesh and blood; our fathers bought and sold their sable brethren; but we, thank God, are wiser than our fathers; we, thank God, have seen our duty clearly; and we rejoice to say that he who plants his foot on British ground, remains a slave no longer.

Brethren, will you not join with us in one loud cry of 'Perish Slavery—let all men be free?' Will you not unite with us to carry out that heavenly precept, 'Whatsoever ye would that men should do unto you, do ye also unto them?'

Brethren, let us hear from you that, while the drunkard or the moderate drinker may be base enough to hold his fellow man in slavery's bonds, with you the name of temperance is synonymous with freedom—freedom from strong drink—freedom from the degrading traffic in human beings, God's dear children equally with ourselves.

We are, most affectionately,

Yours in the Temperance cause,

J. P. PARKER, 4, Mercer-st., Long Acre;

A. F. PRIDGEON, 44, Gt. St. Andrew-st., [Bloomsbury;

Honorary Secretaries.