country was (to say the least) a great misfortune to one-sixth of the population of that land.  England had set a noble example to America, and he would to heaven his countrymen would follow the example.  The Americans boasted of their superior knowledge, but they needed not to boast of their superior guilt, for that was set upon a hill top, and that too, so high, that it required not the lantern of Diogenes to find it out.  Every breeze from the western world brought upon its wings the groans and cries of the victims of this guilt.  Nearly all countries had fixed the seal of disapprobation on slavery, and when, at some future age, this stain on the page of history shall be pointed at, posterity will blush at the discrepancy between American profession and American practice.  What was to be thought of a people boasting of their liberty, their humanity, their Christianity, their love of justice, and at the same time keeping in slavery nearly four millions of God’s children, and shutting out from them the light of the Gospel, by denying the Bible to the slave! (Hear, hear.) No education, no marriage, everything done to keep the mind of the slave in darkness.  There was a wish on the part of the people of the northern States to shield themselves from the charge of slave-holding, but as they shared in the guilt, he was not satisfied with letting them off without their share in the odium.  And now a word about the Fugitive Slave Bill.  That measure was in every respect an unconstitutional measure.  It set aside the right formerly enjoyed by the fugitive of trial by jury—­it afforded to him no protection, no opportunity of proving his right to be free, and it placed every free coloured person at the mercy of any unprincipled individual who might wish to lay claim to him. (Hear.) That law is opposed to the principles of Christianity—­foreign alike to the laws of God and man, it had converted the whole population of the free States into a band of slave-catchers, and every rood of territory is but so much hunting ground, over which they might chase the fugitive.  But while they were speaking of slavery in the United States, they must not omit to mention that there was a strong feeling in that land, not only against the Fugitive Slave Law, but also against the existence of slavery in any form.  There was a band of fearless men and women in the city of Boston, whose labours for the slave had resulted in good beyond calculation.  This noble and heroic class had created an agitation in the whole country, until their principles have taken root in almost every association in the land, and which, with God’s blessing, will, in due time, cause the Americans to put into practice what they have so long professed. (Hear, hear.) He wished it to be continually held up before the country, that the northern States are as deeply implicated in the guilt of slavery as the South.  The north had a population of 13,553,328 freemen; the south had a population of only 6,393,756 freemen; the north has 152 representatives in the house, the south only 81; and it would be seen by this, that the balance of power was with the free States.  Looking, therefore, at the question in all its aspects, he was sure that there was no one in this country but who would find out, that the slavery of the United States of America was a system the most abandoned and the most tyrannical. (Hear, hear.)”