About the same time the Glasgow Emancipation Society was formed or re-organised, on the doctrine of immediate emancipation so splendidly announced by a secession minister of Edinburgh. The secretaries of this association were John Murray the surveyor, and William Smead, of the Gallowgate, grocer; the last a Friend. These two were the head and front, the thinking and the locomotive power of this well-known association which did notable fight, if not the principal labour, in effecting emancipation in the British West Indies, and in assaulting American slavery. And, twenty odd years ago, it was no trifling matter to do anti-slavery work in Glasgow, the very names of whose stateliest streets proclaimed that they were built by money wrung out of the blood and sweat of the negroes of Jamaica, St. Vincent, &c. The whole of the retired wealth, nearly all the active business influence, the weight of the Established Church, the rank and fashion of Glasgow, and though last not least, the keen wit of the poet Motherwell,[14] and the great statistical learning and industry of M‘Queen were arrayed on the side of the slave-holder. Sugar and cotton and rum were lords of the ascendant! Yet the poor surveyor and the humble grocer fought on; nor did they fight alone; the silvery voice and keen acumen of Ralph Wardlow, the earnest and powerful Hugh Heugh, the inexorable logic and burning sarcasm of swarthy Wully Anderson, and the princely munificence of James Johnston, combined to awaken the people to the enormity of slavery. And the Voluntary Church movement, and the fight for the Reform Bill aroused a varied eloquence in the orators who pleaded for, and a kindling enthusiasm in the people who were struggling on the liberal side of all these questions; for the people, battling for their own rights, had heart room to hear the prayer for the rights of others more deeply oppressed. Thus ever will liberty be expansive and expanding in the direction of human brotherhood. Then KNIBB came along with his fiery eloquence, which swept over and warmed the hearts of the people with indignation at the dishonour done religion in the martyrdom of the missionary Smith; and then the grand scene in the British emancipation drama, the overthrow of Bothwick by George Thompson, and the monster petitions and the reluctant assent of the ministry and the passage of the bill.