A paramount duty must not be betrayed by a kiss.

There can be no peace founded on injustice; and any recognition is injustice which will cry aloud, resounding through the earth.

You may seem to have peace, but it will be only smothered war, sure to break forth in war more direful than before.

There is nothing in practice, nothing in comity, nothing in peace, which is not against any such shameful acknowledgment.

No new quickening of Slavery in its active and aggressive barbarism!

Slavery, through the new power, will take its place in the Parliament of mankind, with the immunities of an independent nation, ready always to uphold and advance itself, and organized as an unrelenting Propaganda of the new faith.

When Dante, in the vindictive judgment hurled against his own Florence, called it bordello, he did not use a term too strong for the mighty house of ill-fame which the Christian powers are now asked for the first time to license.

But, though only a recent wrong, and pleading no prescription, the illimitable audacity of its nature can hesitate at nothing; nor is there anything offensive or detestable it will not absorb into itself.

Or, worse still, it will be the soulless monster of Frankenstein, the wretched creation of human science without God,--endowed with life and nothing else, forever raging madly, the scandal to humanity, powerful only for evil, whose…

If you live with the lame, says the ancient proverb, you will learn to limp; if you keep in the kitchen, you will smell of smoke; if you touch pitch, you will be defiled.

But what limp so mean as that of this pretended power? what smoke so foul as its breath? what pitch so defiling as its touch?

It is an Oriental saying, that a cistern of rosewater will become impure, if a dog be dropped into it; but an ocean of rosewater with Rebel Slavemongers would be changed into a vulgar puddle.

It is part of the triumphs of Civilization, that no nation can act for itself alone.

Whatever it does for good or for evil affects all the rest.

Therefore a nation cannot forget its obligations to others.

Especially does International Law, when it declares the absolute equality of independent nations, cast upon all the duty of considering well how this privilege shall be bestowed so that the welfare of all may be best upheld.

But the whole Family of Nations would be degraded by admitting this new pretension to any toleration, much more to equality.

There can be no reason for such admission; for it can bring nothing to the general weal.

But this hateful pretension can do nothing but evil for civil society at home or for nations in their intercourse with each other.

The greatest of corporations is a nation; the sublimest of all associations is that composed of nations, independent and equal, knit together in the bonds of peaceful fraternity as the great Christian Commonwealth.

Amidst the general degradation following such obeisance to Slavery, there are two Christian powers that would appear in sad and shameful eminence.

Where, then, is British devotion to the African race, so eloquently proclaimed by the British Minister?

Where, then, is French devotion to ideas, so ostentatiously announced by the French Emperor?

Rather than do this thing, better for the fast-anchored isle that it should sink beneath the sea, carrying down its cathedrals, its castles, its happy homes, its fields of glory, Runnymede, Westminster Hall, and the tomb of Shakespeare.

Let us at all hazards prevent the extension of Slavery and the increase of the Slave Power.