Few persons have any idea as to the connection between the abolition of slavery in the United States and the struggle of the Irish for freedom. According to _The Standard Union_, when in the decade 1830 Negro slavery existed in the British West Indies, a little party of liberal men in the British Parliament began to agitate in season and out of season for emancipation, Daniel O'Connell, with a few Irish members who supported him, threw his strength to this little party on every division. There was a West Indian interest pledged to maintain Negro slavery, and this interest counted twenty-seven votes in Parliament. They came to O'Connell and offered their twenty-seven votes to him on every Irish question if he would oppose Negro emancipation. "It was," said Wendell Phillips, "a terrible temptation. How many a so-called statesman would have yielded!" O'Connell said: "Gentlemen, God knows I speak for the saddest nation the sun ever sees, but may my right hand forget its cunning and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if to serve Ireland, even Ireland, I forget the Negro one single hour." The following account taken from _The Liberator_, including a letter from Frederick Douglass, shows the genuineness of this Irish friendship for the Negro in the United States: A letter of extraordinary interest at this time from Mr. Frederick Douglass to Mr. William Lloyd Garrison has just come to light in the columns of _The True American_, a little anti-slavery paper published in Cortland Village, N. Y., in 1846. The letter, written with the eloquence and depth of feeling which characterized all Mr. Douglass's utterances on the subject of slavery and the abuse of the Negro in this country. The letter, which _The True American_ copied from _The Boston Liberator_, Mr. Garrison's Paper, is introduced by the following editorial comment from _The Albany Journal_ under date of February 11, 1846. "It is scarcely necessary to direct attention to the letter of Frederick Douglass which we copy from _The Boston Liberator_. It will be read with equal pleasure and amazement by those who remember that eight years ago he was a slave, and that he literally stole the elements of an education which now gives him rank among the most gifted and eloquent men of the age. "We shall not blame those who refuse to believe that Frederick wrote this letter. Without the personal knowledge we possess of his extraordinary attainments, we too should doubt whether a fugitive slave, who, as but yesterday, escaped from a bondage that doomed him to ignorance and degradation, now stands up and rebukes oppression with a dignity and force scarcely less glowing than that which Paul addressed to Agrippa." The letter is as follows: