ADDRESS OF THE STUDENTS OF GLASGOW UNIVERSITY—­APRIL 25.

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