England and America

Excerpt from England and America: A Discourse Delivered by W. H. Furness, Minister of the First Congregational Unitarian Church, Sunday December 22 1861The men who brought it hither were driven by persecution from her shores. And that they were enabled to preserve the sacred gift amidst the horrors of the wilderness was owing to no fostering help of hers. She cared not if they perished. Not until they began to grow in numbers and in strength did she take any notice of them, and then she extended her arm to them only to make them feel its oppressive weight, and to crush the liberty which her outcast children had brought to these shores.But that other and fatal gift of African bondage she fastened on this Northern continent with a willing hand, in opposition to the wishes, the conscience, and the humanity of these then infant colonies. In the original draft of the Declaration of our National Independence, it was formally stated, as you know, as one of the causes justifying that Declaration, that the British King had insisted upon establishing this accursed interest on this soil; accursed indeed, because, while it brought material wealth, its inevitable effect was from the very first to corrupt the hearts of the people by so inflaming the lust of gain and of power as to deprave their natural sense of justice and humanity.Such is briefly the record of the past in regard to the relation to this country of British power acting through its civil organization. And now, after two centuries and a half, England is again, to all appearances, preparing to assume the position of protecting the bondage of the African in this land. Flinging behind her the great pledges she gave of her obligations to the Cause of Human Freedom by the Abolition of the Slave trade more than fifty years ago, and by the Emancipation of her West Indian colonies thirty years ago, she is committing herself to an alliance with the flagrant rebellion against God and man, which threatens, not only the existence of this nation, but Human Rights everywhere. Already her influence has wrought to infuse into this atrocious treason against mankind the strength which alone has enabled it to live to this hour.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.