Life and Times, Second Part

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now Right Honorable John Bright, and occupies a high place in the British Cabinet, was friendly to the loyal and progressive spirit which abolished our slavery and saved our country from dismemberment. I have seen and heard both of these great men, and, if I may be allowed so much egotism, I may say I was acquainted with both of them. I was, besides, a welcome guest at the house of Mr. Bright, in Rochdale, and treated as a friend and brother among his brothers and sisters. Messrs. Cobden and Bright were well-matched leaders. One was in large measure the complement of the other. They were spoken of usually as Cobden and Bright, but there was no reason, except that Cobden was the elder of the two, why their names might not have been reversed.

They were about equally fitted for their respective parts in the great movement of which they were the distinguished leaders, and neither was likely to encroach upon the work of the other. The contrast was quite marked in their persons as well as in their oratory. The powerful speeches of the one, as they traveled together over the country, heightened the effect of the speeches of the other, so that their difference was about as effective for good as was their agreement. Mr. Cobden—for an Englishman—was lean, tall, and slightly sallow, and might have been taken for an American or Frenchman. Mr. Bright was, in the broadest sense, an Englishman, abounding in all the physical perfections peculiar to his countrymen—full, round, and ruddy. Cobden had dark eyes and hair, a well-formed head, high above his shoulders, and, when sitting quiet, had a look of sadness and fatigue. In the House of Commons, he often sat with one hand supporting his head. Bright appeared the very opposite in this and other respects. His eyes were blue, his hair light, his head massive, and firmly set upon his shoulders, suggesting immense energy and determination. In his oratory Mr. Cobden was cool, candid, deliberate, straight-forward, yet at times slightly hesitating. Bright, on the other hand, was fervid, fluent, rapid; always ready in thought or word. Mr. Cobden was full of facts and figures, dealing in statistics by the hour. Mr. Bright was full of wit, knowledge, and pathos, and possessed amazing power of expression. One spoke to the cold, calculating side of the British nation, which asks "if the new idea will pay." The other spoke to the infinite side of human nature—the side which asks, first of all, "IsEditorial Emendation: Second American Edition. First Printing Hartford, Conn.: Park Publishing Co., et al., 1882: "is. it right'? is it just? is it humane?" Wherever these two great men appeared, the people assembled in thousands. They could, at an hour's notice, pack the town hall of Birmingham, which would hold seven thousand persons, or the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, and Covent Garden theater, London, each of which was capable of holding eight thousand.

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One of the first attentions shown me by these gentlemen was to make me welcome at the Free Trade club in London.

I was not long in England before a crisis was reached in the anti-corn law movement. The announcement that Sir Robert Peel, then prime minister of England, had become a convert to the views of Messrs. Cobden and Bright, came upon the country with startling effect, and formed the turning-point in the anti-corn law question. Sir Robert had been the strong defense of the landed aristocracy of England, and his defection left them without a competent leader, and just here came the opportunity for Mr. Benjamin Disraeli, the Hebrew—since Lord Beaconsfield. To him it was in public affairs, the "tide which led on to fortune."Paraphrases Brutus in Julius Caesar, sc. 12, lines 2009-10: "There is a tide in the affaires of men, / Which taken at the flood, leads on to fortune." With a bitterness unsurpassed, he had been denounced by reason of his being a Jew, as a lineal descendant of the thief on the cross.Douglass alludes to the execution of Jesus and the two thieves at Calvary. During the crucifixion, two malefactors were placed on either side of Jesus. One mocked Jesus, while the second reproached the first. Jesus told the second malefactor that they would meet in paradise, while the first received no good news. Douglass may not have been aware that Daniel O'Connell was the source of this insult to Disraeli, who had in 1832 secured from "the Liberator" a letter of recommendation to the electors of Wycombe as a Radical candidate. Three years later, Disraeli stood as Tory candidate for Taunton, attacking his former supporter as an "incendiary traitor." Angered by this betrayal, O'Connell retaliated publicly, denouncing Disraeli as a "liar in action and words"--an anti-Semitic attack that was ironic given that O'Connell strongly supported Jewish emancipation. Benjamin Disraeli's Jewish ancestry was well known, but his family removed him from the boarding school at which he had received lessons in Hebrew, baptized him, and transferred him to a new school. Having been baptized, Disraeli was able to be elected to Parliament in 1837, rather than having to wait until after the emancipation in 1858, allowing him to begin his political ascent two decades earlier. Despite frequent personal attacks leveled against his ethnic background, Disraeli persisted in his political career. He did not hide his Jewish background; rather, he proudly proclaimed it; but by taking an evangelical stance toward Judaism, he focused on Jewish conversion and the inclusion of Jews in politics on the basis of their historical commonalities with Protestants. Luke 23:32-43; London Examiner, 3 May 1835; Wales) North Wales Chronicle, 12 May 1835; Moses Coit Tyler, Glimpses of England: Social, Political, Literary (New York, 1898), 130-31; Denis Gwynn, Daniel O`Connell, rev. ed. (Oxford, Eng., 1947), 209-11; David S. Katz, The Jews in the History of England, 1485-1850 (New York, 1994), 330-34, 387-88; Abraham Gilam, "Anglo-Jewish Attitudes toward Benjamin Disraeli during the Era of Emancipation," Jewish Social Studies, 42:313-22 (Summer-Fall 1980). But now his time had come, and he was not the man to permit it to pass unimproved. For the first time, it seems, he conceived the idea of placing himself at the head of a great party, and thus become the chief defender of the landed aristocracy. The way was plain. He was to transcend all others in effective denunciation of Sir Robert Peel, and surpass all others in zeal. His ability was equal to the situation, and the world knows the result of his ambition. I watched him narrowly when I saw him in the House of Commons, but I saw and heard nothing there that foreshadowed the immense space he at last came to fill in the mind of his country and the world. He had nothing of the grace and warmth of Peel in debate, and his speeches were better in print than when listened to,—yet when he spoke, all eyes were fixed, and all ears attent. Despite all his ability and power, however, as the defender of the landed interests of England, his cause was already lost. The increasing power of the anti-corn law league—the burden of the tax upon bread, the cry of distress coming from famine-stricken Ireland, and the adhesion of Peel to the views of Cobden and Bright made the repeal of the corn laws speedy and certain.

The repeal of the union between England and Ireland was not so fortunate. It is still, under one name or another, the cherished hope and inspiration of her sons. It stands little better or stronger than it did six and thirty years ago, when its greatest advocate, Daniel O'Connell, welcomed me to Ireland, and to "Conciliation Hall,"Douglass addressed a meeting of the Loyal National Repeal Association in Dublin's Conciliation Hall on 29 September 1845, Lib., 24, 31 October 1845. and where I first had a specimen of his truly wondrous eloquence. Until I heard this man, I had thought that the story of his oratory and power wasEditorial Emendation: were. greatly exaggerated. I did not see how a man could speak to twenty or thirty thousand people at one time, and be heard by any considerable number of them; but the mystery was solved when I saw his ampleEditorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: vast. person, and heard his musical voice. His eloquence came down

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upon the vast assembly like a summer thunder-shower upon a dusty road. He could stir the multitude at will, to a tempest of wrath, or reduce it to the silence with which a mother leaves the cradle-side of her sleeping babe. Such tenderness—such pathos—such world-embracing love! and, on the other hand, such indignation—such fiery and thunderous denunciation, and such wit and humor, I never heard surpassed, if equaled, at home or abroad. He held Ireland within the grasp of his strong hand, and could lead it whithersoeverEditorial Emendation: Second American Edition. First Printing Hartford, Conn.: Park Publishing Co., et al., 1882: withersoever. he would, for Ireland believed in him and loved him, as she has loved and believed in no leader since. In Dublin, when he had been absent from that city a few weeks, I saw him followed through SackvilleEditorial Emendation: Second American Edition. First Printing Hartford, Conn.: Park Publishing Co., et al., 1882: Sackwell. streetThe main street of Dublin, later renamed O'Connell Street. by a multitude of little boys and girls. shouting in loving accents: "There goes Dan! there goes Dan!" while he looked at the ragged and shoeless crowd with the kindly air of a loving parent returning to his gleeful children. He was called "The Liberator." and not without cause; for, though he failed to effect the repeal of the union between England and Ireland. he fought out the battle of Catholic emancipation. and was clearly the friend of liberty the world over. In introducing me to an immense audience in Conciliation Hall, he playfully called me the "Black O'Connell of the United States;"Douglass heard Daniel O'Connell speak at a meeting of the Loyal National Repeal Association at Conciliation Hall, Dublin, on 29 September 1845. Near the conclusion of the rally, O'Connell introduced Douglass to the audience and asked him to say a few words. Long an abolitionist, O'Connell had in 1835 expressed the need for a "Black O'Connell" to inspire African American slaves to protest for their freedom. While some scholars refer to Douglass's autobiographical writings as evidence of this introduction, contemporary newspapers covering the event do not confirm that O'Connell introduced Douglass as the ''Black O'Connell" on this particular occasion. Dublin Freeman`s Journal and Daily Commercial Advertiser, 30 September 1845; Lib., 24, 31 October 1845; Fionnghuala Sweeney, Frederick Douglass and the Atlantic World (Liverpool, Eng., 2007), 29n; Lee Jenkins, " 'The Black O'Connell': Frederick Douglass and Ireland," Nineteenth Century Studies (1999), 13:24-26. nor did he let the occasion pass without his usual word of denunciation of our slave system. O. A. Brownson had then recently become a Catholic, and taking advantage of his new Catholic audience, in Brownson`s Quarterly Review,Editorial Emendation: "Brownson's Review." had charged O'Connell with attacking American institutions. In reply, Mr. O'Connell said: "I am charged with attacking American institutions, as slavery is called; I am not ashamed of this attack. My sympathy is not confined to the narrow limits of my own green Ireland; my spirit walks abroad upon sea and land, and wherever there is oppression. I hate the oppressor, and wherever the tyrant rears his head, I will deal my bolts upon it; and wherever there is sorrow and suffering, there is my spirit to succor and relieve."In the summer of 1845 Orestes Brownson published an article critical of Daniel O' Connell in his Quarterly Review. Douglass paraphrases O'Connell 's reply, which was made at a meeting of the Loyal National Repeal Association in Conciliation Hall, Dublin, on 29 September 1845. Daniel O'Connell, Upon American Slavery With Other Irish Testimonies (New York, 1860), 31; Wendell Phillips, Daniel O`Connell: The Irish Patriot (Boston, 1884), 28; "Ireland, O'Connell, &c.," Brownson`s Quarterly Review, 2:398-408 (July 1845). No trans-atlantic statesman bore a testimony more marked and telling against the crime and curse of slavery than did Daniel O'Connell. He would shake the hand of no slaveholder, nor allow himself to be introduced to one, if he knew him to be such. When the friends of repeal in the Southern States sent him money with which to carry on his work, he, with ineffable scorn, refused the bribe, and sent back what he considered the blood-stained offering, saying he would "never purchase the freedom of Ireland with the price of slaves."Daniel O 'Connell voiced such sentiments in a speech given at the Loyal National Repeal Association held in the Great Room of the Corn Exchange in Dublin, Ireland, 9 May 1843. The Irish who immigrated to the United States retained a deep interest in Ireland's political woes and directed their hostility toward the British and Anglo-Irish who exercised control over Ireland. Newspapers in the southern states provided extensive coverage of Irish politics, and southern Hibernian associations hailed Daniel O'Connell as a hero. When O'Connell's Loyal National Repeal Association in Dublin raised funds to pursue the repeal of union hetween Great Britain and Ireland, Irish immigrants in the United States formed local Irish repeal associations, which sent money to the parent organization in Ireland. O'Connell, who supported the antislavery cause, pressured Irish American repeal organizations to do the same; however, his antislavery rhetoric alienated many Irish Americans. All Irish repeal associations in the United States had dissolved by the mid-1840s. O'Connell, Upon American Slavery, 27-30; David T. Gleeson, The Irish in the South, 1815-1877 (Chapel Hill, N.C., 2001), 67-71, 213n; Maurice R. O'Connell, "O'Connell, Young Ireland, and Negro Slavery: An Exercise in Romantic Nationalism," Thought, 64:130-36 (June 1989); Osofsky, "Abolitionists, Irish Immigrants," 901-06; Riach, " Daniel O'Connell,'' 20-25; Connolly, Oxford Companion to Irish History, 507.

It was not long after my seeing Mr. O'Connell that his health broke down, and his career ended in death. I felt that a great champion of freedom had fallen, and that the cause of the American slave, not less than the cause

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of his country, had met with a great loss. All the more was this felt when I saw the kind of men who came to the front when the voice of O'Connell was no longer heard in Ireland. He was succeeded by the Duffys, Mitchels,ƒEditorial Emendation: Mitchells. Meaghers,Editorial Emendation: Expanded Second American Edition, First Printing Boston: De Wolfe, Fiske & Co., 1893: Meagher. and others,—men who loved liberty for themselves and their country, but were utterly destitute of sympathy with the cause of liberty in countries other than their own. One of the first utterances of John MitchelEditorial Emendation: Mitchell. on reaching this country, from his exile and bondage, was a wish for a "slave plantation, well stocked with slaves."After his escape from the British penal colony in Van Diemen's Land, Mitchel came to New York City in January 1854 and began publishing the Citizen, a weekly proslavery newspaper. In the second issue he published a response to a letter from James Haugthton, the Irish antislavery leader, who encouraged Young lrelanders exiled in America to espouse the abolitionists' cause. In reply to Haughton's warning that silence would make each man a "participator" in the "wrongs" of slaveholding, Mitchel defiantly declared that "we will not be silent when occasion calls for speech; and as for being a participator in the wrongs, we, for our part, wish we had a good plantation, well stocked with healthy negroes, in Alabama." FDP, 20, 27 January, 2, 10 February, 31 March, 7 April 1854; New York Daily Tribune, 14 January 1854; Dillon, Life of John Mitchel, 2:44-55; British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Reporter, new ser., 2:82-83 (1 April 1854 ); Crone, Dictionary of Irish Biography, 246, 340-42.

Besides hearing Cobden, Bright, Peel, Disraeli, O'Connell, Lord John Russell, and other Parliamentary debaters, it was my good fortune to hear Lord Brougham when nearly at his best. He was then a little over sixty, and that for a British statesman is not considered old; and in his case there were thirty years of life still before him. He struck me as the most wonderful speaker of them all. How he was ever reported I cannot imagine. Listening to him was like standing near the track of a railway train, drawn by a locomotive at the rate of forty miles an hour. You are riveted to the spot, charmed with the sublime spectacle of speed and power, but could give no description of the carriages, nor of the passengers at the windows. There was so much to see and hear, and so little time left the beholder and hearer to note particulars, that when this strange man sat down you felt like one who had hastily passed through the wildering wonders of a world's exhibition. On the occasion of my listening to him, his speech was on the postal relations of England with the outside world,Douglass most likely visited Parliament for the first time during one of his two visits to London in either May or August 1846. Extant parliamentary records of that time provide no indication of a speech by Lord Brougham on the topic of postal relations in England or elsewhere. Other speeches, however, reveal Brougham's wide grasp of international affairs. Hansard`s Parliamentary Debates (online). and he seemed to have a perfect knowledge of the postal arrangements of every nation in Europe, and, indeed, in the whole universe. He possessed the great advantage so valuable to a Parliamentary debater, of being able to make all interruptions serve the purposes of his thought and speech, and carry on a dialogue with several persons without interrupting the rapid current of his reasoning. I had more curiosity to see and hear this man than any other in England, and he more than fulfilled my expectations.

While in England, I saw few literary celebrities, except William and Mary Howitt, and Sir John Bowring.Editorial Emendation: Bowering. I was invited to breakfast by the latter in company with Wm. Lloyd Garrison, and spent a delightful morning with him, chiefly as a listener to their conversation. Sir John was a poet, a statesman, and a diplomat, and had represented England as minister to China. He was full of interesting information, and had a charming way of imparting his knowledge. The conversation was about slavery, and about China, and as my knowledge was very slender about the "Flowery Kingdom,"The Chinese people do not refer to their country as China or to themselves as Chinese. However, several names exist that its people use in writing and speech. Among others, the land is called both Chung Kwoh, the "Middle Kingdom," and Chung Hwa Kwoh, the "Middle Flowery Kingdom." The term Hwa carries the sense that its people are civilized and refined. G. W. Peck, "China," American Review: A Whig Journal of Politics, Literature, Art, and Science, 1:231-39 (March 1848).and its people, I was greatly interested in Sir John's description of the ideas and manners prevailing

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among them. According to him, the doctrine of substitutionIn nineteenth-century China, as in Europe, the foundational Christian doctrine of substitution had its secular equivalent in the person of the "whipping boy" (hahachutez), usually an individual of noble birth who was educated with and served as a companion to the prince. The whipping boy suffered corporal punishment for the prince's transgressions in the latter's place. T. F. Thiselton-Dyer, Royalty in All Ages: The Amusements, Eccentricities, Superstitions, and Frolics of the Kings and Queens of Europe (London, 1903), 310; Brewer, Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 1481. was carried so far in that country that men sometimes procured others to suffer even the penalty of death in their stead. Justice seemed not intent upon the punishment of the actual criminal, if only somebody was punished when the law was violated.

William and Mary Howitt were among the kindliest people I ever met. Their interest in America, and their well-known testimonies against slavery, made me feel much at home with them at their house in that part of London known as Clapton.When the Howitts returned to England from Germany in 1843, they resided at "The Elms," Clapton, London, until 1848. Located in the northeastern quadrant of the borough of Hackney, the area was first recorded by name in 1339 as "Clopton," meaning "farmstead on a hill." Clapton was a rural district until the latter half of the nineteenth century, but the introduction of railway and tram service in the 1870s transformed the neighborhood into a bustling commuter suburb by the century's end. Margaret Howitt, ed., Mary Howitt: An Autobiography, 2 vols. (London, 1899), 2:11-44; Russ Willey, London Gazetteer (Edinburgh, Scot., 2007), 105; DNB, 10:124. Editorial Emendation: Clapham. Whilst stopping here, I met the Swedish poet and author—Hans Christian Andersen.Editorial Emendation: Second American Edition. First Printing Hartford, Conn.: Park Publishing Co., et al., 1882: Anderson. He, like myself, was a guest, spending a few days. I saw but little of him, though under the same roof. He was singular in his appearance, and equally singular in his silence. His mind seemed to me all the while turned inwardly. He walked about the beautiful garden as one might in a dream. The Howitts had translated his works into English, and could of course address him in his own language. Possibly his bad English and my destitution of Swedish, may account for the fact of our mutual silence, and yet I observed he was much the same towards every one. Mr. and Mrs. Howitt were indefatigable writers. Two more industrious and kind-hearted people did not breathe. With all their literary work, they always had time to devote to strangers, and to all benevolent efforts, to ameliorate the condition of the poor and needy. Quakers though they were, they took deep interest in the Hutchinsons—Judson, John, Asa, and Abby, who were much at their house during my stay there. Mrs. Howitt not inaptly styled them a "Band of young apostles." They sang for the oppressed and the poor—for liberty and humanity.

Whilst in Edinburgh, so famous for its beauty, its educational institutions, its literary men, and its history, I had a very intense desire gratified—and that was to see and converse with George Combe, the eminent mental philosopher, and author of "The Constitution of Man,"Editorial Emendation: "Combe's Constitution. a book which had been placed in my hands a few years before, by Doctor Peleg Clarke of Rhode Island,Editorial Emendation: Clark. the reading of which had relieved my path of many shadows. In company with George Thompson, James N. Buffum, and William L. Garrison, I had the honor to be invited by Mr. Combe to breakfast, and the occasion was one of the most delightful I met in dear old Scotland. Of course in the presence of such men, my part was a very subordinate one. I was a listener. Mr. Combe did the most of the talking, and did it so well that nobody felt like interposing a word, except so far as to draw him on. He discussed the corn laws, and the proposal to reduce the hours of labor. He looked at all political and social questions through his peculiar mental science. His manner was remarkably quiet, and he spoke as not expecting

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