Page:Eminent English liberals in and out of Parliament.djvu/261

 Quaker, whose acquaintance he had made, eventually enabled him to turn a steady, admiring gaze on the rising sun of negro emancipation.

"Again," says Mr. Conway, "I visited the old Quaker patriarch, and told him with what delight I had found that the interior of Sandy Spring was even more attractive than its exterior. 'Now, friend, can thee account for this evident superiority of the Friends' neighborhood over the rest of this county, or of thy own State?'—'Well,' I ventured, 'doubtless you have certain habits of thrift and industry which others have not.'—'Perhaps it is so,' said the old man, gravely. After which followed a long silence, which I felt belonged to him, and was for him to break. Then he turned his eyes—at once luminous and keen—full upon me, and said, 'But there is one habit of our people to which thee will find, should thee search into it, is to be traced all the improved condition of our lands and our homes; that is, the habit of taking care that our laborers get just wages for their work. No slave has touched any sod in any field of Sandy Spring.'"

These simple words eventually converted the reluctant secretary of the Southern Rights Club into an uncompromising abolitionist. Henceforth his duty, with respect to the great social problem of his time and country, was clear to him.

The change in his religious conceptions was no less