It was in every respect a most remarkable meeting. The great Hall was densely crowded from end to end. On the platform were assembled large numbers of distinguished persons, of different creeds, and opposite political parties, but all united in the cause which had brought them together that day. The names of a few of those present will show how various were the classes thus represented. The Lord Mayor (Alderman Fowler, M.P.), and the Chief Magistrates of London, the Archbishop of Canterbury and Cardinal Manning, Earl Granville and the Earl of Derby, Sir Stafford Northcote and Mr. W. E. Forster, Mr. Sergeant Simon. Sir Wilfrid Lawson, Mr. T. R. Potter, Mr. Henry Richard, and many other leading members of Parliament, sat together on the same platform. There were present a few of the veterans who had taken part in the anti-slavery struggles fifty years before, such as Joseph Sturge and Sir Harry Verney, M.P. Descendants of the early champions of the cause, bearing the honoured names of Wilberforce, Lushington, Buxton, Pease, Forster, showed that the spirit of their fathers was maintained in a new generation. Among the ladies on the platform were the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, Miss Gordon, the sister of General Gordon, of Khartoum, and some members of the Society of Friends, always abounding in good works. The Secretary of the Society read a list of names of those unable to be present, but expressing warm sympathy with the purpose of the meeting. There were letters from the Chief Rabbi, from Lord Salisbury, the Duke of Norfolk, the Duke of Sutherland, the Duke of Argyll, Lord Carnarvon, and other men of distinction. The most touching communication was from the venerated Earl of Shaftesbury, who had promised to attend, but was obliged to dictate a letter from a sick-bed, in which he expressed the satisfaction he felt in having lived to see such changes in regard to slavery during the past fifty years. On the daïs behind the platform were busts of Granville Sharp, and of Clarkson, decorated with flowers, and in front were exhibited massive wooden yokes and iron chains, such as are used for the gangs of slaves in the journey to the coast of Africa.