" * * *
"Ion's" charges are the old ones, that we Abolitionists are hurting our
own cause; that, instead of waiting for the community to come up to our
views, and endeavoring to remove prejudice and enlighten ignorance by
patient explanation and fair argument, we fall at once, like children,
to abusing every thing and everybody; that we imagine zeal will supply
the place of common sense; that we have never shown any sagacity
in adapting our means to our ends; have never studied the national
character, or attempted to make use of the materials which lay all about
us to influence public opinion, but by blind, childish, obstinate fury
and indiscriminate denunciation, have become "honestly impotent, and
conscientious hinderances."
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.
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