Page:The World's Famous Orations Volume 6.djvu/122

THE WORLD'S FAMOUS ORATIONS it wise or humane at this moment to insult them by sticking up in a pillory the man who dared to stand forth their advocate?

I put it to your oaths, do you think that a blessing of that kind, that a victory obtained by justice over bigotry and oppression, should have a stigma cast upon it by an ignominious sentence upon men bold and honest enough to propose that measure; to propose the redeeming of religion from the abuses of the Church, the reclaiming of three millions of men from bondage, and giving liberty to all who had a right to demand it—giving, I say, in the so-much-censured words of this paper, "Universal Emancipation?"

I speak in the spirit of the British law, which makes liberty commensurate with and inseparable from the British soil; which proclaims, even to the stranger and the sojourner, the moment he sets his foot upon British earth, that the ground on which he treads is holy and consecrated by the genius of universal emancipation.

No matter in what language his doom may have been pronounced; no matter what complexion incompatible with freedom an Indian or an African sun may have burned upon him; no matter in what disastrous battle his liberty may have been cloven down; no matter with what solemnities he may have been devoted upon the altar of slavery; the first moment he touches the sacred soil of Britain the altar and the god sink together in the dust; his soul walks abroad in her 112