Professor Stowe then rose, and said, “If we are silent, it is not because we do not feel, but because we feel more than we can express.  When that book was written, we had no hope except in God.  We had no expectation of reward save in the prayers of the poor.  The surprising enthusiasm which has been excited by the book all over Christendom is an indication that God has a work to be done in the cause of emancipation.  The present aspect of things in the United States is discouraging.  Every change in society, every financial revolution, every political and ecclesiastical movement, seems to pass and leave the African race without help.  Our only resource is prayer.  God surely cannot will that the unhappy condition of this portion of his children should continue forever.  There are some indications of a movement in the southern mind.  A leading southern paper lately declared editorially that slavery is either right or wrong:  if it is wrong, it is to be abandoned:  if it is right, it must be defended.  The Southern Press, a paper established to defend the slavery interest at the seat of government, has proposed that the worst features of the system, such as the separation of families, should be abandoned.  But it is evident that with that restriction the system could not exist.  For instance, a man wants to buy a cook; but she has a husband and seven children.  Now, is he to buy a man and seven children, for whom he has no use, for the sake of having a cook?  Nothing on the present occasion has been so grateful to our feelings as the reference made by Dr. M’Neile to the Christian character of the book.  Incredible as it may seem to those who are without prejudice, it is nevertheless a fact that this book was condemned by some religious newspapers in the United States as anti-Christian, and its author associated with infidels and disorganizers; and had not it been for the decided expression of the mind of English Christians, and of Christendom itself, on this point, there is reason to fear that the proslavery power of the United States would have succeeded in putting the book under foot.  Therefore it is peculiarly gratifying that so full an indorsement has been given the work, in this respect, by eminent Christians of the highest character in Europe; for, however some in the United States may affect to despise what is said by the wise and good of this kingdom and the Christian world, they do feel it, and feel it intensely.”  In answer to an inquiry by Dr. M’Neile as to the mode in which southern Christians defended the institution, Dr. Stowe remarked that “a great change had taken place in that respect during the last thirty years.  Formerly all Christians united in condemning the system; but of late some have begun to defend it on scriptural grounds.  The Rev. Mr. Smylie, of Mississippi, wrote a pamphlet in the defensive; and Professor Thornwell, of South Carolina, has published the most candid and able statement of that argument