I claim, before you who know the true state of the case, I claim for the antislavery movement with which this society is identified, that, looking back over its whole course, and considering the men connected with it in the mass, it has been marked by sound judgment, unerring foresight, the most sagacious adaptation of means to ends, the strictest self-discipline, the most thorough research, and an amount of patient and manly argument addressed to the conscience and intellect of the nation, such as no other cause of the kind, in England or this country, has ever offered.  I claim, also, that its course has been marked by a cheerful surrender of all individual claims to merit or leadership,—­the most cordial welcoming of the slightest effort, of every honest attempt, to lighten or to break the chain of the slave.  I need not waste time by repeating the superfluous confession that we are men, and therefore do not claim to be perfect.  Neither would I be understood as denying that we use denunciation, and ridicule, and every other weapon that the human mind knows.  We must plead guilty, if there be guilt in not knowing how to separate the sin from the sinner.  With all the fondness for abstractions attributed to us, we are not yet capable of that.  We are fighting a momentous battle at desperate odds,—­one against a thousand.  Every weapon that ability or ignorance, wit, wealth, prejudice, or fashion can command, is pointed against us.  The guns are shotted to their lips.  The arrows are poisoned.  Fighting against such an array, we cannot afford to confine ourselves to any one weapon.  The cause is not ours, so that we might, rightfully, postpone or put in peril the victory by moderating our demands, stifling our convictions, or filing down our rebukes, to gratify any sickly taste of our own, or to spare the delicate nerves of our neighbor.  Our clients are three millions of Christian slaves, standing dumb suppliants at the threshold of the Christian world.  They have no voice but ours to utter their complaints, or to demand justice.  The press, the pulpit, the wealth, the literature, the prejudices, the political arrangements, the present self-interest of the country, are all against us.  God has given us no weapon but the truth, faithfully uttered, and addressed, with the old prophets’ directness, to the conscience of the individual sinner.  The elements which control public opinion and mould the masses are against us.  We can but pick off here and there a man from the triumphant majority.  We have facts for those who think, arguments for those who reason; but he who cannot be reasoned out of his prejudices must be laughed out of them; he who cannot be argued out of his selfishness must be shamed out of it by the mirror of his hateful self held up relentlessly before his eyes.  We live in a land where every man makes broad his phylactery, inscribing thereon, “All men are created equal,”—­“God hath made of one blood all nations of men.”  It seems to us that in such a land there must be, on this question of slavery, sluggards to be awakened, as well as doubters to be convinced.  Many more, we verily believe, of the first than of the last.  There are far more dead hearts to be quickened, than confused intellects to be cleared up,—­more dumb dogs to be made to speak, than doubting consciences to be enlightened.  We have use, then, sometimes, for something beside argument.