"I should jump at the chance!" was the reply. Not long after the gentleman was sent for to visit one of those obscure and ruinous courts of the great metropolis where crime and poverty lie down together,-- localities which Dickens has pictured with such painful distinctness.
Here, to his surprise, he met a number of thieves and outlaws, who declared themselves extremely anxious to know whether any hope could be held out to them of obtaining an honest living, however humble, in the colonies, as their only reason for continuing in their criminal course was the impossibility of extricating themselves. He gave them such advice and encouragement as he was able, and invited them to assemble again, with such of their companions as they could persuade to do so, at the room of the Irish Free School, for the purpose of meeting Lord Ashley. On the 27th of the seventh month last the meeting took place.
At the hour appointed, Lord Ashley and five or six other benevolent gentlemen, interested in emigration as a means of relief and reformation to the criminal poor, entered the room, which was already well-nigh filled. Two hundred and seven professed thieves were present. "Several of the most experienced thieves were stationed at the door to prevent the admission of any but thieves. Some four or five individuals, who were not at first known, were subjected to examination, and only allowed to remain on stating that they were, and being recognized as, members of the dishonest fraternity; and before the proceedings of the evening commenced the question was very carefully put, and repeated several times, whether any one was in the room of whom others entertained doubts as to who he was. The object of this care was, as so many of them were in danger of 'getting into trouble,' or, in other words, of being taken up for their crimes, to ascertain if any who might betray them were present; and another intention of this scrutiny was, to give those assembled, who naturally would feel considerable fear, a fuller confidence in opening their minds."
What a novel conference between the extremes of modern society! All that is beautiful in refinement and education, moral symmetry and Christian grace, contrasting with the squalor, the ignorance, the lifelong depravity of men living "without God in the world,"--the pariahs of civilization,--the moral lepers, at the sight of whom decency covers its face, and cries out, "Unclean!" After a prayer had been offered, Lord Ashley spoke at considerable length, making a profound impression on his strange auditory as they listened to his plans of emigration, which offered them an opportunity to escape from their miserable condition and enter upon a respectable course of life. The hard heart melted and the cold and cruel eye moistened. With one accord the wretched felons responded to the language of Christian love and good-will, and declared their readiness to follow the advice of their true friend. They looked up to him as to an angel of mercy, and felt the malignant spirits which had so long tormented them disarmed of all power of evil in the presence of simple goodness. He stood in that felon audience like Spenser's Una amidst the satyrs; unassailable and secure in the "unresistible might of meekness," and panoplied in that "noble grace which dashed brute violence with sudden adoration and mute awe."
Twenty years ago, when Elizabeth Fry ventured to visit those "spirits in prison,"--the female tenants of Newgate,--her temerity was regarded with astonishment, and her hope of effecting a reformation in the miserable objects of her sympathy was held to be wholly visionary. Her personal safety and the blessed fruits of her labors, nevertheless, confirmed the language of her Divine Master to His disciples when He sent them forth as lambs among wolves: "Behold, I give unto you power over all the power of the enemy." The still more unpromising experiment of Lord Ashley, thus far, has been equally successful; and we hail it as the introduction of a new and more humane method of dealing with the victims of sin and ignorance, and the temptations growing out of the inequalities and vices of civilization.
WOMAN SUFFRAGE.
Letter to the Newport Convention.
AMESBURY, MASS., 12th, 8th Month, 1869.
I HAVE received thy letter inviting me to attend the Convention in behalf of Woman's Suffrage, at Newport, R. I., on the 25th inst. I do not see how it is possible for me to accept the invitation; and, were I to do so, the state of my health would prevent me from taking such a part in the meeting as would relieve me from the responsibility of seeming to sanction anything in its action which might conflict with my own views of duty or policy. Yet I should do myself great injustice if I did not embrace this occasion to express my general sympathy with the movement.
I have seen no good reason why mothers, wives, and daughters should not have the same right of person, property, and citizenship which fathers, husbands, and brothers have.
The sacred memory of mother and sister; the wisdom and dignity of women of my own religious communion who have been accustomed to something like equality in rights as well as duties; my experience as a co-worker with noble and self-sacrificing women, as graceful and helpful in their household duties as firm and courageous in their public advocacy of unpopular truth; the steady friendships which have inspired and strengthened me, and the reverence and respect which I feel for human nature, irrespective of sex, compel me to look with something more than acquiescence on the efforts you are making. I frankly confess that I am not able to forsee all the consequences of the great social and political change proposed, but of this I am, at least, sure, it is always safe to do right, and the truest expediency is simple justice. I can understand, without sharing, the misgivings of those who fear that, when the vote drops from woman's hand into the ballot-box, the beauty and sentiment, the bloom and sweetness, of womankind will go with it. But in this matter it seems to me that we can trust Nature. Stronger than statutes or conventions, she will be conservative of all that the true man loves and honors in woman. Here and there may be found an equivocal, unsexed Chevalier D'Eon, but the eternal order and fitness of things will remain.
I have no fear that man will be less manly or woman less womanly when they meet on terms of equality before the law.
On the other hand, I do not see that the exercise of the ballot by woman will prove a remedy for all the evils of which she justly complains. It is her right as truly as mine, and when she asks for it, it is something less than manhood to withhold it. But, unsupported by a more practical education, higher aims, and a deeper sense of the responsibilities of life and duty, it is not likely to prove a blessing in her hands any more than in man's.
With great respect and hearty sympathy, I am very truly thy friend.
ITALIAN UNITY
AMESBURY, MASS., 1st Mo., 4th, 1871.
Read at the great meeting in New York, January, 1871, in celebration of the freedom of Rome and complete unity of Italy.
IT would give me more than ordinary satisfaction to attend the meeting on the 12th instant for the celebration of Italian Unity, the emancipation of Rome, and its occupation as the permanent capital of the nation.
For many years I have watched with deep interest and sympathy the popular movement on the Italian peninsula, and especially every effort for the deliverance of Rome from a despotism counting its age by centuries. I looked at these struggles of the people with little reference to their ecclesiastical or sectarian bearings. Had I been a Catholic instead of a Protestant, I should have hailed every symptom of Roman deliverance from Papal rule, occupying, as I have, the standpoint of a republican radical, desirous that all men, of all creeds, should enjoy the civil liberty which I prized so highly for myself.
I lost all confidence in the French republic of 1849, when it forfeited its own right to exist by crushing out the newly formed Roman republic under Mazzini and Garibaldi. From that hour it was doomed, and the expiation of its monstrous crime is still going on. My sympathies are with Jules Favre and Leon Gambetta in their efforts to establish and sustain a republic in France, but I confess that the investment of Paris by King William seems to me the logical sequence of the bombardment of Rome by Oudinot. And is it not a significant fact that the terrible chassepot, which made its first bloody experiment upon the halfarmed Italian patriots without the walls of Rome, has failed in the hands of French republicans against the inferior needle-gun of Prussia? It was said of a fierce actor in the old French Revolution that he demoralized the guillotine. The massacre at Mentana demoralized the chassepot.
It is a matter of congratulation that the redemption of Rome has been effected so easily and bloodlessly. The despotism of a thousand years fell at a touch in noiseless rottenness. The people of Rome, fifty to one, cast their ballots of condemnation like so many shovelfuls of earth upon its grave. Outside of Rome there seems to be a very general acquiescence in its downfall. No Peter the Hermit preaches a crusade in its behalf. No one of the great Catholic powers of Europe lifts a finger for it. Whatever may be the feelings of Isabella of Spain and the fugitive son of King Bomba, they are in no condition to come to its rescue. It is reserved for American ecclesiastics, loud-mouthed in professions of democracy, to make solemn protest against what they call an "outrage," which gives the people of Rome the right of choosing their own government, and denies the divine right of kings in the person of Pio Nono.
The withdrawal of the temporal power of the Pope will prove a blessing to the Catholic Church, as well as to the world. Many of its most learned and devout priests and laymen have long seen the necessity of such a change, which takes from it a reproach and scandal that could no longer be excused or tolerated. A century hence it will have as few apologists as the Inquisition or the massacre of St. Bartholomew.
In this hour of congratulation let us not forget those whose suffering and self-sacrifice, in the inscrutable wisdom of Providence, prepared the way for the triumph which we celebrate. As we call the long, illustrious roll of Italian patriotism--the young, the brave, and beautiful; the gray-haired, saintly confessors; the scholars, poets, artists, who, shut out from human sympathy, gave their lives for God and country in the slow, dumb agony of prison martyrdom--let us hope that they also rejoice with us, and, inaudible to earthly ears, unite in our thanksgiving: "Alleluia! for the Lord God omnipotent reigneth! He hath avenged the blood of his servants!"
In the belief that the unity of Italy and the overthrow of Papal rule will strengthen the cause of liberty throughout the civilized' world, I am very truly thy friend.
INDIAN CIVILIZATION.
THE present condition and future prospects of the remnants of the aboriginal inhabitants of this continent can scarcely be a matter of indifference to any class of the people of the United States. Apart from all considerations of justice and duty, a purely selfish regard to our own well-being would compel attention to the subject. The irreversible laws of God's moral government, and the well-attested maxims of political and social economy, leave us in no doubt that the suffering, neglect, and wrong of one part of the community must affect all others. A common responsibility rests upon each and all to relieve suffering, enlighten ignorance, and redress wrong, and the penalty of neglect in this respect no nation has ever escaped.
It is only within a comparatively recent period that the term Indian Civilization could be appropriately used in this country. Very little real progress bad been made in this direction, up to the time when Commissioner Lang in 1844 visited the tribes now most advanced. So little had been done, that public opinion had acquiesced in the assumption that the Indians were not susceptible of civilization and progress. The few experiments had not been calculated to assure a superficial observer.
The unsupported efforts of Elliot in New England were counteracted by the imprisonment, and in some instances the massacre of his "praying Indians," by white men under the exasperation of war with hostile tribes.
The salutary influence of the Moravians and Friends in Pennsylvania was greatly weakened by the dreadful massacre of the unarmed and blameless converts of Gnadenhutten. But since the first visit of Commissioner Lang, thirty-three years ago, the progress of education, civilization, and conversion to Christianity, has been of a most encouraging nature, and if Indian civilization was ever a doubtful problem, it has been practically solved.
The nomadic habits and warlike propensities of the native tribes are indeed formidable but not insuperable difficulties in the way of their elevation. The wildest of them may compare not unfavorably with those Northern barbarian hordes that swooped down upon Christian Europe, and who were so soon the docile pupils and proselytes of the peoples they had conquered. The Arapahoes and Camanches of our day are no further removed from the sweetness and light of Christian culture than were the Scandinavian Sea Kings of the middle centuries, whose gods were patrons of rapine and cruelty, their heaven a vast, cloud-built ale-house, where ghostly warriors drank from the skulls of their victims, and whose hell was a frozen horror of desolation and darkness, to be avoided only by diligence in robbery and courage in murder. The descendants of these human butchers are now among the best exponents of the humanizing influence of the gospel of Christ. The report of the Superintendent of the remnants of the once fierce and warlike Six Nations, now peaceable and prosperous in Canada, shows that the Indian is not inferior to the Norse ancestors of the Danes and Norwegians of our day in capability of improvement.
It is scarcely necessary to say, what is universally conceded, that the wars waged by the Indians against the whites have, in nearly every instance, been provoked by violations of solemn treaties and systematic disregard of their rights of person, property, and life. The letter of Bishop Whipple, of Minnesota, to the New York Tribune of second month, 1877, calls attention to the emphatic language of Generals Sherman, Harney, Terry, and Augur, written after a full and searching investigation of the subject: "That the Indian goes to war is not astonishing: he is often compelled to do so: wrongs are borne by him in silence, which never fail to drive civilized men to deeds of violence.
The best possible way to avoid war is to do no injustice."
It is not difficult to understand the feelings of the unfortunate pioneer settlers on the extreme borders of civilization, upon whom the blind vengeance of the wronged and hunted Indians falls oftener than upon the real wrong-doers. They point to terrible and revolting cruelties as proof that nothing short of the absolute extermination of the race can prevent their repetition. But a moment's consideration compels us to admit that atrocious cruelty is not peculiar to the red man. "All wars are cruel," said General Sherman, and for eighteen centuries Christendom has been a great battle-field. What Indian raid has been more dreadful than the sack of Magdeburg, the massacre of Glencoe, the nameless atrocities of the Duke of Alva in the Netherlands, the murders of St.
Bartholomew's day, the unspeakable agonies of the South of France under the demoniac rule of revolution! All history, black with crime and red with blood, is but an awful commentary upon "man's inhumanity to man,"
and it teaches us that there is nothing exceptional in the Indian's ferocity and vindictiveness, and that the alleged reasons for his extermination would, at one time or another, have applied with equal force to the whole family of man.
A late lecture of my friend, Stanley Pumphrey, comprises more of valuable information and pertinent suggestions on the Indian question than I have found in any equal space; and I am glad of the opportunity to add to it my hearty endorsement, and to express the conviction that its general circulation could not fail to awaken a deeper and more kindly interest in the condition of the red man, and greatly aid in leading the public mind to a fuller appreciation of the responsibility which rests upon us as a people to rectify, as far as possible, past abuses, and in our future relations to the native owners of the soil to "deal justly and love mercy."
READING FOR THE BLIND. (1880.)
To Mary C. Moore, teacher in the Perkins Asylum.
DEAR FRIEND,--It gives me great pleasure to know that the pupils in thy class at the Institution for the Blind have the opportunity afforded them to read through the sense of touch some of my writings, and thus hold what I hope will prove a pleasant communion with me. Very glad I shall be if the pen-pictures of nature, and homely country firesides, which I have tried to make, are understood and appreciated by those who cannot discern them by natural vision. I shall count it a great privilege to see for them, or rather to let them see through my eyes. It is the mind after all that really sees, shapes, and colors all things. What visions of beauty and sublimity passed before the inward and spiritual sight of blind Milton and Beethoven!
I have an esteemed friend, Morrison Hendy, of Kentucky, who is deaf and blind; yet under these circumstances he has cultivated his mind to a high degree, and has written poems of great beauty, and vivid descriptions of scenes which have been witnessed only by the "light within."
I thank thee for thy letter, and beg of thee to assure the students that I am deeply interested in their welfare and progress, and that my prayer is that their inward and spiritual eyes may become so clear that they can well dispense with the outward and material ones.
THE INDIAN QUESTION.
Read at the meeting in Boston, May, 1883, for the consideration of the condition of the Indians in the United States.
AMESBURY, 4th mo., 1883.
I REGRET that I cannot be present at the meeting called in reference to the pressing question of the day, the present condition and future prospects of the Indian race in the United States. The old policy, however well intended, of the government is no longer available. The westward setting tide of immigration is everywhere sweeping over the lines of the reservations. There would seem to be no power in the government to prevent the practical abrogation of its solemn treaties and the crowding out of the Indians from their guaranteed hunting grounds.
Outbreaks of Indian ferocity and revenge, incited by wrong and robbery on the part of the whites, will increasingly be made the pretext of indiscriminate massacres. The entire question will soon resolve itself into the single alternative of education and civilization or extermination.
The school experiments at Hampton, Carlisle, and Forest Grove in Oregon have proved, if such proof were ever needed, that the roving Indian can be enlightened and civilized, taught to work and take interest and delight in the product of his industry, and settle down on his farm or in his workshop, as an American citizen, protected by and subject to the laws of the republic. What is needed is that not only these schools should be more liberally supported, but that new ones should be opened without delay. The matter does not admit of procrastination. The work of education and civilization must be done. The money needed must be contributed with no sparing hand. The laudable example set by the Friends and the American Missionary Association should be followed by other sects and philanthropic societies. Christianity, patriotism, and enlightened self interest have a common stake in the matter. Great and difficult as the work may be the country is strong enough, rich enough, wise enough, and, I believe, humane and Christian enough to do it.