Page:Speech of the Rev. T. Spencer, of Bath, delivered at the meeting of the Anti-Corn-Law League.pdf/13

5 things? My question is this—"Have you agreed previously with me that Free Trade is right?" If you have, manfully adhere to what you have approved, and keep to that proposition. (Cheers.) Do not be always seeking to examine the foundations. Then, with respect to this slave produce—I have been a member of the Anti- slavery Society for many years past, and I have heard them argue that free labour will beat slave labour if you will only let it be tried. Yet here are the same persons contending against the trial being permitted. Why, then, I say they have no faith in their own principles. (Cheers.) I know, that, under the old poor-law, when paupers were to be had in a parish at 5s. a week, and free labourers for 9s., the farmers have said they would rather pay 9s. for independendent [sic] labour than 5s. for pauper labour. (Hear, hear.) The fact is, that the one man works with a feeling of independence: he knows that he is working for himself; probably he works by the piece; and he knows at the same time that he can lay by for sickness or old age, and is in a better condition, and will do ten times the amount of work, that a pauper or slave will do; whilst the man who works without such a stimulus has no feeling of honourable emulation about him, and will not do so much justice to his employer. Then these persons say that slaves are stolen, and that therefore slave produce is stolen goods. I cannot quite see the inference here attempted to be drawn. It does not follow that the earth on which a man treads is. stolen earth because the man himself is stolen; and yet these persons believe it. (Hear.) Now, suppose that it were so—I am sorry to say that in that case they convict themselves of sin, and of being the greatest criminals in the country. That is not a sin in me, but it is in them. I do not hold it to be stolen produce; and, therefore, as whatever is not of faith is sin, this is of faith in me, and is no sin. If a man knows a thing to be good and does it not, he sins; if a man, believing it to be sinful to use, yet uses, slave-grown cotton, slave-grown tobacco, or slave-produced gold, copper, and silver, why, he condemns himself. (Cheers.) But then the answer is, "Two blacks cannot make one white; suppose we are condemned so far, surely we are better than you, who use slave-grown sugar, and cotton, and other things." No: I say, so far from being better, you are much worse. The scripture says, "He that offendeth in one point is guilty of all/' You allow that you offend in one point; we do not allow that we offend at all; you are therefore guilty of all. You are guilty of the slave-grown sugar which you do not touch; you are guilty of using slave-grown produce, because you wilfully use slave-grown cotton, wilfully smoke slave-grown tobacco, and wilfully take up your nose slave-grown snuff. (Great cheers.) I have seen men who have refused even slave-grown cotton, and yet I have known those very men with slave-produced gold in their pockets. (Laughter.) I have said to them, "Show me a penny or a sovereign; and they have replied, "Well but we cannot do without this—we could not live." But my answer is, "It is not necessary for you to live if you set up so high a standard. There have been martyrs at the stake who have not accepted their lives even though by signing their names to a recantation they might have saved them." Men there are, however, who have said, "It is a sin against God to touch anything in the shape of slave-grown produce," and yet they have had slave-produced gold in their pockets. (Cheers.) I am convinced that the master we serve, or the Creator who made us, never expects such slavery from us as always to be examining everything we touch. This book—this paper (referring to the prayer-book in his hand)—is made of slave-grown cotton. He never can expect from us that we should be trembling at every step, nor charge us with sinning in using slave-grown produce. I am, therefore, decidedly of opinion that Government is in error in allowing this idea to weigh with them as an argument for a moment; I am convinced that every one of them in their own minds knows better, but that they do not wish to offend the feelings of people who think otherwise. I cannot, however, but regret that there is such a feeling; it is the misfortune of this country that such a feeling exists in the minds of many good men; but whenever charity and pity occupy the mind