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Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1, a non-fiction book by Harriet Beecher Stowe |
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Address Of The Students Of Glasgow University--April 25 |
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_ This address is particularly gratifying on account of its recognition of the use of intoxicating drinks as an evil analogous to slaveholding, and to be eradicated by similar means. The two reforms are in all respects similar movements, to be promoted in the same manner and with the same spirit. MRS. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE. MADAM: The Committee of the Glasgow University Abstainers' Society, representing nearly one hundred students, embrace the opportunity which you have so kindly afforded them, of expressing their high esteem for you, and their appreciation of your noble efforts in behalf of the oppressed. They cordially join in the welcome with which you have been so justly received on these shores, and earnestly hope and pray that your visit may be beneficial to your own health, and tend greatly to the furtherance of Christian philanthropy. The committee have had their previous convictions confirmed, and their hearts deeply affected, by your vivid and faithful delineations of slavery; and they desire to join with thousands on both sides of the Atlantic, who offer fervent thanksgiving to God for having endowed you with those rare gifts, which have qualified you for producing the noblest testimony against slavery, next to the Bible, which the world has ever received. While giving all the praise to God, from whom cometh every good and perfect gift, they may be excused for mentioning three characteristics of your writings regarding slavery, which awakened their admiration--a sensibility befitting the anguish of suffering millions; the graphic power which presents to view the complex and hideous system, stripped of all its deceitful disguises; and the moral courage that was required to encounter the monster, and drag it forth to the gaze and the execration of mankind. The committee feel humbled in being called to confess and deplore, as existing among ourselves, another species of slavery, not less ruinous in its tendency, and not less criminal in the sight of God--we mean the slavery by strong drink. We feel too much ashamed of the sad preeminence which these nations have acquired in regard to this vice to take any offence at the reproaches cast upon us from across the Atlantic. Such smiting shall not break our head. We are anxious to profit by it. Yet when it is used as an argument to justify slavery, or to silence our respectful but earnest remonstrances, we take exception to the parallelism on which these arguments are made to rest. We do not justify our slavery. We do not try to defend it from the Scriptures. We do not make laws to uphold it. The unhappy victims of our slavery have all forged and riveted their own fetters. We implore them to forbear; but, alas! in many cases without success. We invite them to be free, and offer our best assistance to undo their bonds. When a fugitive slave knocks at our door, escaping from a cruel master, we try to accost him in the spirit or in the words of a well-known philanthropist, "Come in, brother, and get warm, and get thy breakfast." And when distinguished American philanthropists, who have done so much to undo the heavy burdens in their own land, come over to assist us, we hail their advent with rejoicing, and welcome them as benefactors. We are well aware that a corresponding feeling would be manifested in the United States by a portion, doubtless a large portion, of the population; but certainly not by those who justify or palliate their own oppression by a reference to our lamentable intemperance. We rejoice, madam, to know that as abstainers we can claim an important place, pot only in your sympathies, but in your literary labors. We offer our hearty thanks for the valuable contributions you have already furnished in that momentous cause, and for the efforts of that distinguished family with which you are connected. We bear our testimony to the mighty impulse imparted to the public mind by the extensive circulation of those memorable sermons which your honored father gave to Europe, as well as to America, more than twenty-five years ago. It will be pleasing to him to know that the force of his arguments is felt in British universities to the present time, and that not only students in augmenting numbers, but learned professors, acknowledge their cogency and yield to their power. Permit us to add that a movement has already begun, in an influential quarter in England, for the avowed purpose of combining the patriotism and Christianity of these nations in a strenuous agitation for the suppression, by the legislature, of the traffic in alcoholic drinks. In conclusion, the committee have only further to express their cordial thanks for your kindness in receiving their address, and their desire and prayer that you may be long spared to glorify God, by promoting the highest interests of man; that if it so please him, you may live to see the glorious fruit of your labors here cm earth, and that hereafter you may meet the blessed salutation, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." NORMAN S. KERR, _Secretary_. STEWART BATES, _President_. GLASGOW, 25th April, 1853. _ |
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