Page:The Natick resolution, or, resistance to slaveholders.djvu/38

36 Sir, allusion has been made to-night to the small beginnings of the great anti-slavery movement, twenty years ago, when the Liberator was launched upon the tide. These years have been years of devotion and of struggles unsurpassed in any age or in any cause. But, notwithstanding the treachery of public men, notwithstanding the apostacy for which the year 1850 was distinguished, I venture to say, that the cause of liberty is spreading throughout the whole land, and that the day is not far distant when brilliant victories for freedom will be won. We shall arrest the extension of slavery, and rescue the Government from the grasp of the Slave Power. We shall blot out slavery in the National Capital. We shall surround the slave States with a cordon of free States. We shall then appeal to the hearts and consciences of men, and in a few years, notwithstanding the immense interests combined in the cause of oppression, we shall give liberty to the millions in bondage. [Hear! hear!] I trust that many of us will live to see the chain stricken from the limbs of the last bondman in the republic! But, sir, whenever that day shall come, living or dead, no name connected with the anti-slavery movement will be dearer to the enfranchised millions than the name of your guest—William Lloyd Garrison. [Prolonged applause.]

Such were the sentiments of Henry Wilson in 1851. Are they not his sentiments to-day?