"My friends, I beg that there may be no more disposition to turn any one out, for, if I can be heard a few moments, I will save all further trouble, and, I venture to say, make those two gentlemen as good friends to the Indians, and to myself, as any in the room. The questions which they have naturally put are perfectly fair questions, and such as I am anxious everywhere to answer to. The position in which I stand at present is not, I grant, ostensibly, the one in which my former professions would place me. I have been several years known to the British public, from my labours and my professions, as an advocate for the character and the rights of American Indians. This position I have taken, and still claim, from a residence of eight years amongst the various tribes where I have travelled, at great expense, and hazard to my life, acquainting myself with their true native dispositions, whilst I was collecting the memorials of these abused and dying people, which you see at this time hanging around us. In the eight years of my life which I have devoted to this subject, I have preserved more historical evidences of these people, and done more justice to their character, than any man living; and on these grounds I demand at least the presumption that I am acting a friendly part towards them, who have in their own country treated me with genuine hospitality. (Hear, hear! and immense applause.) "My friends, we come now to the facts, which it is my duty to mention, and which I presume those two gentlemen are not acquainted with. In the first place, I did not bring these people to this country, but have always been opposed to such parties going to a foreign country for such an object.[9] These Indians are men, with reasoning faculties and shrewdness like to our own, and they have deliberately entered into a written agreement with the person who has the charge of them, and who is now in the room, to come to this country, stimulated by the ambition of seeing Her Majesty the Queen, whose lawful subjects they are, and make, if possible, by their humble and honest exertions, a little money to carry home to their children. (Immense applause.) "These people are the avowed friends of the English in their own country, and several of them are here to show the frightful wounds they received in fighting Her Majesty's battles in the war of 1812. (Applause, and Hear!)