“I will refer the House to the sentiments of Mr. Jefferson, the President of the United States.  Mr. Jefferson was himself a slave-owner, and full of the prejudices of slave-owners; yet he left this memorable memorial to his country:  ’I do, indeed, tremble for my country when I remember that God is just, and that His justice may not sleep forever.  A revolution is among possible events; the Almighty has no attribute which would side with us in such a struggle.’

“This is the point which weighs most heavily with me.  The Almighty has no attribute that will side with us in such a struggle.  A war with an overwhelming physical force, a war with a climate fatal to the European constitution, a war in which the heart of the people of England would lean toward the enemy:  it is hazarding all these terrible evils; but all are light and trivial, compared with the conviction I feel that in such a warfare it is not possible to ask nor can we expect the countenance of Heaven.”

While events tended to bring the whole system of Slavery into odium, the leaders of the Abolition party were themselves changing their ground.  They had begun with the hope of mitigating the hardships of the slave’s lot,—­to place him upon the line of progression, and so ultimately to fit him for freedom.  But they had found themselves occupying a false position.  Slowly they came to the conclusion that for the slave little could be accomplished in the way of improvement, so long as he remained a slave.  The complete extinction of the system was now the object aimed at.  At a crowded Anti-Slavery meeting held in May, 1830, Mr. Wilberforce presided.  The first resolution, moved by Mr. Buxton, was this,—­“That no proper or practicable means be left unattempted for effecting, at the earliest period, the entire abolition of Slavery throughout the British dominions.”  At a meeting held in Edinburgh similar language was used by Lord Jeffrey.  Said Dr. Andrew Thomson, one of the most influential of the Scottish clergy,—­“We ought to tell the legislature, plainly and strongly, that no man has a right to property in man,—­that there are eight hundred thousand individuals sighing in bondage, under the intolerable evils of West Indian Slavery, who have as good a right to be free as we ourselves have,—­that they ought to be free, and that they must be made free!”

Another element at this time wrought in favor of the Abolitionists.  Of the missionaries who had suffered persecution in the Colonies, numbers had returned to England.  These religious teachers, while plying their vocation in the West Indies, had acted in obedience to the instructions received from the societies which employed them.  Necessarily, while in a slave country, they had been silent upon the subject of Slavery.  But in truth they liked the institution as little as Mr. Buxton himself.  Once in England, the seal of silence melted from their lips.  Everywhere in public and in private they made known the evils and cruelties of Slavery.  Some of these persons had been examined by Parliamentary committees, and being acquitted of every suspicion of mis-statement, their testimony received this additional sanction.  The tale of wrong which they revealed was not told in vain.  Each returned missionary exerted an influence upon the religious body which he represented.  The aggregate of this influence was great.