Then followed similar meetings at Manchester, Sheffield, Bristol, Leeds, in all the great centres of population, with precisely the same result. I don’t remember that the enemy ever even attempted to divide a meeting. The country was carried by acclamation. Our friends in Liverpool wrote with some anxiety as to the state of feeling there, and asked me to go down and deliver an address. I went, and the meeting carried the same resolutions by a very large majority; and those who, it was supposed, came to disturb the proceedings, thought better of it when they saw the temper of the audience, and were quiet. Without troubling you with any further details of our work, I may just add, as a proof of how those who profess to be the most astute worshippers of public opinion changed their minds in consequence of the answer of the country to our appeals, that in August 1863 the _Times_ supported our demand on the Government for the stoppage of the steam-rams. In addition to this political movement, we instituted also a number of freedmen’s aid associations, in order that those abolitionists in England who were still unable to put faith in your Government might have an opportunity of helping in their own way. These associations entered into correspondence with those on your side, and sent over a good many thousand pounds’ worth of clothing and other supplies, besides money. I forget the exact amount. It was a mere drop in the ocean of your magnificent war charities, but it came from thousands who had little enough to spare in those hard times, and I trust has had the effect of a peace-offering with those of your people who are conversant with the facts, and are ready to judge by their actual doings even those against whom they think they have fair cause of complaint. So much for what I may call the unofficial, or extraparliamentary, struggle in England during your war. And now let me turn to the action of our Government and of Parliament. I might fairly have rested my case entirely upon this ground. In the case of nations blessed as America and England are with perfect freedom of speech and action within the limits of law--where men may say the thing they will freely, and without any check but the civil courts--no one in my judgment has a right to make the nation responsible for anything except what its Government says and does. But I know how deeply the conduct and speech of English society has outraged your people, and still rankles in their minds, and I wished by some rough analysis, and by the statement of facts within my own knowledge, and of doings in which I personally took an active part, to show you that you have done us very scant justice. The dress suit, and the stomach and digestive apparatus, of England were hostile to you, and you have taken them for the nation: the brain and heart and muscle of England were on your side, and these you have ignored and forgotten.