Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1Stowe, Harriet Beecher
History
Sunny Memories Of Foreign Lands, Volume 1
Stowe, Harriet Beecher
Europe -- Description and travel
Concerning that letter I have one or two things to say. Nothing can be
more false than the insinuation that has been thrown out in some
American papers, that it was a political movement. It had its first
origin in the deep religious feelings of the man whose whole life has
been devoted to the abolition of the white-labor slavery of Great
Britain; the man whose eye explored the darkness of the collieries, and
counted the weary steps of the cotton spinners--who penetrated the dens
where the insane were tortured with darkness, and cold, and stripes; and
threaded the loathsome alleys of London, haunts of fever and cholera:
this man it was, whose heart was overwhelmed by the tale of American
slavery, and who could find no relief from, this distress except in
raising some voice to the ear of Christianity. Fearful of the jealousy
of political interference, Lord Shaftesbury published an address to the
ladies of England, in which he told them that he felt himself moved by
an irresistible impulse to entreat them to raise their voice, in the
name of a common Christianity and womanhood, to their American sisters.
The abuse which has fallen upon him for this most Christian proceeding
does not in the least surprise him, because it is of the kind that has
always met him in every benevolent movement. When in the Parliament of
England he was pleading for women in the collieries who were harnessed
like beasts of burden, and made to draw heavy loads through miry and
dark passages, and for children who were taken at three years old to
labor where the sun never shines, he was met with determined and furious
opposition and obloquy--accused of being a disorganizer, and of wishing
to restore the dark ages. Very similar accusations have attended all his
efforts for the laboring classes during the long course of seventeen
years, which resulted at last in the triumphant passage of the factory
bill.
We in America ought to remember that the gentle remonstrance of the
letter of the ladies of England contains, in the mildest form, the
sentiments of universal Christendom. Rebukes much more pointed are
coming back to us even from, our own missionaries. A day is coming when,
past all the temporary currents of worldly excitement, we shall, each of
us, stand alone face to face with the perfect purity of our Redeemer.
The thought of such a final interview ought certainly to modify all our
judgments now, that we may strive to approve only what we shall then
approve.
LETTER XVII.
MY DEAR C.:--
As to those ridiculous stories about the Duchess of Sutherland, which
have found their way into many of the prints in America, one has only to
be here, moving in society, to see how excessively absurd they are.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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