"We rejoice to find that the great principles upon which our society is based are so fully and so cordially recognized by yourself and your beloved husband and brother--First, that personal slavery, in all its varied forms, is a direct violation of the blessed, precepts of the gospel, and therefore a sin in the sight of God; and secondly, that every victim of this unjust and sinful system is entitled to immediate and unconditional freedom. For, however we might acquiesce in the course of a nation which, under a sense of its participation in the guilt of slavery, should share the pecuniary loss, if such there were, of its immediate abolition, yet we repudiate the right to demand compensation for human flesh and blood, as (to employ the emphatic words of Lord Brougham) we repudiate and abhor 'the wild and guilty fantasy that man can hold property in man.' And we do not hesitate to express our conviction, strengthened by the experience of emancipation in our own colonies, that on the mere ground of social or political expediency, the immediate termination of slavery would be far less dangerous and far less injurious than, any system of compromise, or any attempt at gradual emancipation.
"Let it be borne in mind, however,--and we record it with peculiar interest on the present occasion,--that it was the pen of a woman that first publicly enunciated the imperative duty of immediate emancipation. Amid vituperation and ridicule, and, far worse, the cold rebuke of Christian friends, Mrs. Elizabeth Heyrick boldly sent forth the thrilling tract which taught the abolitionists of Great Britain this lesson of justice and truth; and we honor her memory for her deeds. Again we are indebted to the pen of a woman for pleading yet more powerfully the cause of justice to the slave; and again we have to admire and honor the Christian heroism which has enabled you, dear madam, to brave the storm of public opinion, and to bear the frowns of the church in your own land, while you boldly sent forth your matchless volume to teach more widely and more attractively the same righteous lesson.
"We desire to feel grateful for the measure of success that has crowned the advocacy of these sound antislavery principles in our own country; but we cannot but feel, that as regards the continuance of slavery in America, we have cause for humiliation and shame in the existence of the melancholy fact that a large proportion of the fruits of the bitter toil and suffering of the slaves in the western world are used to minister to the comfort and the luxury of our own population. When this anomaly of a country's putting down slavery by law on the one hand, and supporting it by its trade and commerce on the other, will be removed, it is not for us to predict; but we are conscious that our position is such as should at least dissipate every sentiment of self-complacency, and make us feel, both nationally and individually, how deep a responsibility still rests upon us to wash our own hands of this iniquity, and to seek by every legitimate means in our power to rid the world of this fearful institution.