“Madam, in answering this solemn appeal, we do not desire to detail the causes which may, in a measure, explain or palliate this failure in our national sympathy, whose existence (in so far as it is true) we profoundly deplore.  Enough, and more than enough, debate has been already held on the complicated motives which have blended in your war, as in all other human concerns, and on the occasional acts of questionable spirit which must inevitably attend the public policy and sentiments of a nation engaged in deadliest conflict and bleeding at every pore.  Somewhat you may perhaps forgive to those who have withheld their full sympathies, jealous that a most righteous cause should be maintained with any save the most untainted motives and the most unbending rectitude, and who have failed even yet to read in your policy the full desire to accomplish that end of universal emancipation whereto Providence is visibly directing the course of events.  Somewhat, also, may be forgiven to those who have been misled by the misrepresentations of a portion of our press, and offended by the inimical spirit of your own.  But, Madam, although many lips have been closed which ought to have spoken to you words of blessing, though the voice of England which has reached you has lacked that full tone of heartfelt sympathy you had justly anticipated, yet believe not that our nation is truly alienated from yours, or apostate to the great principles of freedom which were once our glory.  The heart of England is sound at the core:  Slavery is now and ever an abomination in our eyes; nor has the dastard proposition to recognize the Confederate States failed to call forth indignant rejection, and that even with peculiar earnestness from those suffering operatives whose relief such a measure might have secured.  It is to assure you of this, to vindicate ourselves from the shame of turning back in the hour of trial,—­most foreign to our common Saxon race,—­that we, the Women of England, offer you this response.

“We do not less abhor Slavery now than when your eloquent words called out an echo of feeling throughout Europe, such as no other appeal for the wronged or the miserable ever produced.  We abhor Slavery, judging it simply as human beings, and because of all the agonies and tortures it has occasioned.  We abhor it, judging it especially as women, because of all the unspeakable wrongs, the hideous degradation, it has inflicted on our sex.  But we abhor it not only because of these its results, nor with a hatred which would be withdrawn, were they disputable now or remediable hereafter.  We abhor Slavery for itself, and for its own enormous iniquity,—­even the robbing from a human being of that freedom which it was the supreme gift of Omnipotence to bestow.  We hold, that, were it in the power of the slaveholder to make his slaves absolutely happy, Slavery would not less be an injustice and a crime.  Happiness is not to be measured against freedom, else would