to their trust; and to state that it has never been my privilege to be united to any body more desirous of keeping simply to the one great object of their association—­the total and immediate abolition of slavery and the slave-trade.  I am persuaded that all candid minds, making due allowance for the imperfection pertaining to human associations, will feel their confidence in the future integrity of that committee increased in proportion as they closely investigate their past acts; and that, even when the wisdom of their course may have been questioned, they will accord to them a scrupulous honesty of purpose.

“The first public suggestion of a General Anti-Slavery Convention, like the one held last year in London, originated, I believe, on this side of the Atlantic, although the Committee of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society took upon themselves the heavy responsibility of convening it.  At its close, they invited an expression of the opinion of the delegates, as to the desirableness of again summoning such an assembly.  The expression was generally in the affirmative; and, after discussion, a resolution was passed, leaving it to the Committee of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, after consulting with the friends of the cause in other parts of the world, to decide this important question, as well as the time and place of its meeting, should another Convention be resolved upon.

“Since I have been in the United States, I have found those abolitionists who approved the principles and proceedings of the late Convention so generally in favor of another, and of London as its place of meeting, that the only question seemed to be whether it should be held in 1842 or 1843.  This expression of opinion is, I know, so generally in accordance with the views of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Committee, and of many other prominent abolitionists in Europe, that I have little doubt they will feel encouraged to act upon it, probably at the latter period.  There is abundant and increasing evidence of the powerfully beneficial influence of the late Convention upon almost every part of the world where slavery is still tolerated; and we are encouraged to hope that the one in anticipation will be still more efficient for the promotion of universal liberty.

“Painful as has been to me the spectacle of many of the leading influences of the ecclesiastical bodies in this country, either placed in direct hostility to, or acting as a drag upon, the wheel of the anti-slavery enterprise—­and of the manifest preponderance of a slave-holding influence in the councils of the State—­I am not one of those who despair of a healthful renovation of public sentiment which shall purify Church as well as State from this abomination.  There are decided indications that all efforts of councils and synods to unite ’pure religion and undefiled,’ with a slave-trading and slave-holding counterfeit