Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; the story of his life told by his children: volume 3

[249] earnest invitation to be present, and to participate in the proceedings of the meeting in such manner as maybe most agreeable to your feelings. This they gladly now do; and, having no doubt of your heart-felt interest in this great event, and of your desire to see slavery everywhere abolished, on American as well as on British soil, they trust that you will be able so to make your arrangements as vastly to enhance the pleasure of the occasion, by your quickening presence. The celebration is one in which all the friends of freedom may joyfully unite, without distinction of sect, party, or country. A grand mass meeting of the people is confidently anticipated at Worcester, and able and distinguished advocates of liberty have pledged themselves to be present.

In the year 1842, an ‘Address from the people of Ireland to their¹ countrymen and countrywomen in America,’ signed by Ireland's lamented champion, Daniel O'Connell, Yourself, and seventy thousand other inhabitants of Ireland, was sent to this country, in which it was truly declared that ‘Slavery is a sin against God and man—all who are not for it must be against it —none can be neutral’; and that ‘it is in vain that American citizens attempt to conceal their own and their country's degradation under this withering curse.’ Its final appeal was in the following emphatic language: ‘Irishmen and Irishwomen! treat the colored people as your equals, as brethren. By all your memories of Ireland, continue to love liberty—hate slavery— cling by the abolitionists—and in America you will do honor to the name of Ireland.’

We deeply regret that truth compels us to state, that the Address fell powerless on the ear and heart of the Irish population in this country; and while it urged them to exercise their moral and political power for the extermination of slavery, that power has been, and still is, wielded on the side of the oppressor and against the oppressed. Religiously and politically, like the American people generally, they are in such relations to those who ‘trade in slaves and the souls of men’ as to sanction that horrible traffic, and to prolong the unmitigated servitude of three millions of the native-born inhabitants of the American Union. This melancholy and undeniable fact will cause you much grief; and, we doubt not, it will be a powerful incentive to you to improve every suitable opportunity, while you remain in this country, to bear a clear and unequivocal testimony, both in public and in private, against the enslavement of any portion of the human family; and to tell your countrymen here again,