In this situation, men not only shrink from the frowns of a stern magistrate, but they are obliged to fly from their very species.  The seeds of destruction are sown in civil intercourse, in social habitudes.  The blood of wholesome kindred is infected.  Their tables and beds are surrounded with snares.  All the means given by Providence to make life safe and comfortable are perverted into instruments of terror and torment.  This species of universal subserviency, that makes the very servant who waits behind your chair the arbiter of your life and fortune, has such a tendency to degrade and abase mankind, and to deprive them of that assured and liberal state of mind which alone can make us what we ought to be, that I vow to God I would sooner bring myself to put a man to immediate death for opinions I disliked, and so to get rid of the man and his opinions at once, than to fret him with a feverish being, tainted with the jail-distemper of a contagious servitude, to keep him above ground an animated mass of putrefaction, corrupted himself, and corrupting all about him.

The act repealed was of this direct tendency; and it was made in the manner which I have related to you.  I will now tell you by whom the bill of repeal was brought into Parliament.  I find it has been industriously given out in this city (from kindness to me, unquestionably) that I was the mover or the seconder.  The fact is, I did not once open my lips on the subject during the whole progress of the bill.  I do not say this as disclaiming my share in that measure.  Very far from it.  I inform you of this fact, lest I should seem to arrogate to myself the merits which belong to others.  To have been the man chosen out to redeem our fellow-citizens from slavery, to purify our laws from absurdity and injustice, and to cleanse our religion from the blot and stain of persecution, would be an honor and happiness to which my wishes would undoubtedly aspire, but to which nothing but my wishes could possibly have entitled me.  That great work was in hands in every respect far better qualified than mine.  The mover of the bill was Sir George Savile.

When an act of great and signal humanity was to be done, and done with all the weight and authority that belonged to it, the world could cast its eyes upon none but him.  I hope that few things which have a tendency to bless or to adorn life have wholly escaped my observation in my passage through it.  I have sought the acquaintance of that gentleman, and have seen him in all situations.  He is a true genius; with an understanding vigorous, and acute, and refined, and distinguishing even to excess; and illuminated with a most unbounded, peculiar, and original cast of imagination.  With these he possesses many external and instrumental advantages; and he makes use of them all.  His fortune is among the largest,—­a fortune which, wholly unincumbered as it is with one single charge from luxury, vanity, or excess, sinks under the benevolence of its dispenser.  This