with such boldness and such fulness—­a nation which has so boldly and perfectly realized its idea of freedom in every other respect—­should in this only instance have sunk so completely below its own idea, and forgetting the rights of one class of their fellow-creatures, should have deprived them of freedom altogether.  I say that our grief and our disapprobation of this in the case of our brethren in America arises very much from this, that in other respects we admire them so much, we are sorry that so noble a nation should allow a blot like this to remain upon its escutcheon.  I am not ignorant—­nobody can be ignorant—­of the great difficulties which encompass the solution of this question in America.  It is vain for us to shut our eyes to it.  There can be no doubt whatever that great sacrifices will require to be made in order to get rid of this great evil.  But the Americans are a most ingenious people; they are full of inventions of all sorts, from the invention of a machine for protecting our feet from the water, to a machine for making ships go by means of heated air; from the one to the other the whole field of discovery is occupied by their inventive genius.  There is not an article in common use among us but bears some stamp of America.  We rise in the morning, and before we are dressed we have had half a dozen American articles in our hands.  And during the day, as we pass through the streets, articles of American invention meet us every where.  In short, the ingenuity of the people is proclaimed all over the world.  And there can be no doubt that the moment this great, this ingenious people finds that slavery is both an evil and a sin, their ingenuity will be successfully exerted in discovering some invention for preventing its abolition from ruining them altogether. [Cheers.] No doubt their ingenuity will be equal to the occasion; and I may take the liberty of adding, that their ingenuity in that case will find even a richer reward than it has done in those other inventions which have done them so much honor, and been productive of so much profit.  I say, that sacrifices must be made; there can be no doubt about that; but I would also observe, that the longer the evil is permitted to continue, the greater and more tremendous will become the sacrifice which will be needed to put an end to it; for all history proves that a nation encumbered, with slavery is surrounded with danger. [Applause.] Has the history of antiquity been written in vain?  Does it not teach us that not only domestic and social pollutions are the inevitable results, but does it not teach us also that political insecurity and political revolutions as certainly slumber beneath the institution of slavery as fireworks at the basis of Mount AEtna? [Cheers.] It cannot but be so.  Men no more than steam can be compressed without a tremendous revulsion; and let our brethren in America be sure of this, that the longer the day of reckoning is put off by them, the more tremendous at last that reckoning will Be.” [Loud, applause.]