Chapter 20

In the first Parliamentary debate on the slave trade, Colonel Tarleton, who boasted to have killed more men than any one in England, pointing to Wilberforce and others, said, "The inspiration began on that side of the house;" then turning round, "The revolution has reached to this also, and reached to the height of fanaticism and frenzy." The first vote in the House of Commons, in 1790, after arguments in the affirmative by Wilberforce, Pitt, Fox, and Burke, stood, ayes, 88; noes, 163: majority against the measure, 75. In 1807 the slave trade was abolished, and in 1834 slavery in the British colonies followed; and even on the very night when the latter bill passed, the abolitionists were taunted by Gladstone, the great Demerara slaveholder, with having toiled for forty years and done nothing. The Roman Catholic relief bill, establishing freedom of thought in England, had the same experience. It passed in 1829 by a majority of a hundred and three in the House of Lords, which had nine months before refused by a majority of forty-five to take up the question at all.

The English corn laws went down a quarter of a century ago, after a similar career of failures. In 1840 there were hundreds of thousands in England who thought that to attack the corn laws was to attack the very foundations of society. Lord Melbourne, the prime minister, said in Parliament, that "he had heard of many mad things in his life, but, before God, the idea of repealing the corn laws was the very maddest thing of which he had ever heard." Lord John Russell counselled the House to refuse to hear evidence on the operation of the corn laws. Six years after, in 1846, they were abolished forever.

How Wendell Phillips, in the anti-slavery meetings, used to lash pro-slavery men with such formidable facts as these,--and to quote how Clay and Calhoun and Webster and Everett had pledged themselves that slavery should never be discussed, or had proposed that those who discussed it should be imprisoned,--while, in spite of them all, the great reform was moving on, and the abolitionists were forcing politicians and people to talk, like Sterne's starling, nothing but slavery!

We who were trained in the light of these great agitations have learned their lesson. We expect to march through a series of defeats to victory. The first thing is, as in the anti-slavery movement, so to arouse the public mind as to make this the central question. Given this prominence, and it is enough for this year or for many years to come. Wellington said that there was no such tragedy as a victory, except a defeat. On the other hand, the next best thing to a victory is a defeat, for it shows that the armies are in the field. Without the unsuccessful attempt of to-day, no success to-morrow.

When Mrs. Frances Anne Kemble came to this country, she was amazed to find Americans celebrating the battle of Bunker Hill, which she had always heard claimed as a victory for King George. Such it was doubtless called; but what we celebrated was the fact that the Americans there threw up breastworks, stood their ground, fired away their ammunition,--and were defeated. Thus the reformer, too, looking at his failures, often sees in them such a step forward, that they are the Bunker Hill of a new revolution. Give us plenty of such defeats, and we can afford to wait a score of years for the victories. They will come.

INDEX

Acidalius, Valens Adams, J.Q. Adams, Mrs. John Addison, Joseph Adelung, J.C. Agassiz, Alexander Agrippa, Cornelius Alabaster, Henry Alcott, Louisa Alderson, Baron Amalasontha, Queen Anne, Queen Antisthenes Aponte, Emanuele Arblay, Madame d' Aristotle Ashburton, Lady

Bacon, Francis Bagehot, Walter Barry, J.S. Barton, Clara Beaujour, L.F. de Beecher, H.W. Behn, Mrs. Aphra Bennett, Mr. Beyle, Henri (Stendhal) Blackburn, Henry Blackstone, William Blind, Karl Bolingbroke, H.S. Bonaparte, Napoleon Bonheur, Rosa Boswell, James Boufflet, Margaret Brigitta, Saint Brooks, Phillips Brougham, Lord Brown, John Browne, C.F. (Artemus Ward) Browning, Elizabeth B. Browning, Robert Buchan, Countess of Buckle, H.T. Buffon, Count de Bulan, Madame Burke, Edmund Burleigh, Lord Butler, Samuel Byron, Lord

Cæsar, Julius Calhoun, J.C. Cameron, Dr. Canning, George, Catherine II., Empress Channing, W.E. Chapman, Chief Justice Charlemagne Chatham, Earl of Chaucer, Geoffrey Chesterfield, Earl of Child, Lydia M. Choate, Rufus Choisi, Abbé Christina of Sweden Christlieb, Professor Churchill, Charles Clarendon, Earl of Clarke, E.H. Clay, Henry Coleridge, Justice Comer, Mr. Comte, Auguste Confucius Copley, J.S. Cornaro, Elena Cowper, William Crocker, Mrs. H. (Mather) Cromwell, Oliver Currie, James Curzon, George

Dacier, Madame Dahlgren, Mrs. M.V. Dall, Mrs. Caroline A. Dana, Mr. Dante degli Alighieri Darling, Grace Darwin, Charles Davy, Sir Humphry Demosthenes Dickens, Charles Dickinson, Anna Dinser, George Dinser, Lena Dix, Dorothea Dobell, Sidney Domenichi, Ludovico Douglass, Frederick Drake, Sir Francis Dryden, John Dudevant, Madame (George Sand) Dufour, Madame Gacon

Eastman, Mary F. Edgeworth, Maria Elizabeth, Queen Elizabeth of Russia Elstob, Elizabeth Emerson, R.W. Everett, Edward

Fénelon, Francis de S. de la M. Fern, Fanny. _See_ Parton. Flammer, Justice Fontanges, Duchesse de Fonte, Moderata Fox, C.J. Franklin, Benjamin Frederick II. Frederick, Prince Frith, W.P. Froissart, John Froude J.A. Fuller, Thomas

Garrick, David Garrison, W.L. Genlis, Mme. de Gibbon, Edward Gibson, Anthony Gladstone, W.E. Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft Goethe, J.W. von Goguet, A.Y. Goldsmith, Oliver Goodwin, W.W. Grant, U.S. Grattan, Henry Greenwood, Grace. _See_ Lippincott Griswold, R.W. Guillaume, Jacquette Guion, Madame

Hale, E.E. Hallock, Peter Hamilton, Gail Harland, Marion Harte, F.B. Haüy, R.J. Hawthorne, Nathaniel Herbert, Sidney Hesiod Heyrick, Elizabeth Hoar, G.F. Hogarth, William Homer Hopkins, Mark Howard, John Howe, Mrs. Julia W. Howe, W.F. Howland, Rachel Humboldt, F.H.A. von Hume, David Huxley, T.H. Hyacinthe, Père

James I., King Jameson, Mrs. Anna Jefferson, Thomas Joan of Arc Johnson, Andrew Johnson, Samuel Jones, C.C. Jonson, Ben

Kean, Edmund Kemble, Frances A. Kemble, John Kent, James

Lagrange, Madame Lamb, Charles Launay, Mlle. de Lawrence, W.B. Layard, Sir A.H. Leland, C.G. Leonowens, Mrs. Leopold, Grand Duke of Tuscany Lessing, G.E. Lewes, Mrs. (George Eliot) Libussa Lincoln, Abraham Lippincott, Mrs. S.J. (Grace Greenwood) Liszt, Abbé Livermore, Mary Livingstone, David Locke, John Lockhart, J.G. Louise of Savoy Lowe. _See_ Sherbrooke Lowell, J.R. Lowery, Captain Lubbock, Sir John Lucretia

Macaulay, T.B. Magann, William Mahaffy, J.P. Maintenon, Madame de Malibran, Madame Maréchal, Sylvain Margaret of Austria Marguerite of Navarre Maria Theresa, Empress Marmella, Lucrezia Marlborough, Duke of Martineau, Harriet Mazarm, Julius Melbourne, Lord Mill, J S. Mohammed Molière, J.B.P. de Monk, George Montpensier, Mlle. de Moore, Thomas Mott, Lucretia Muloch, D.M.

Napoleon, Louis Nelson, Horatio Newton, Sir Isaac Niebuhr, Carsten Nightingale, Florence Nogarola, Isotta Norton, Hon. Mrs. Caroline

Ormond, James Butler, Duke of Ossoli, Margaret (Fuller) Otis, James Ovid

Parker, Theodore Parkman, Francis Parsons, Theophilus Parton, Mrs. (Fanny Fern) Patten, Mrs. Paul, Jean _See_ Richter Peabody, F.G. Pembroke, Earl of Pepys, Samuel Pericles Peterborough, Charles Mordaunt, Earl of Petersdorff Petrarch Philip II, King Phillipps, Adelaide Phillips, Wendell Pitt, William Plato, Plummer, Miss Pompadour, Mme. Pope, Alexander Porson, Richard Pythagoras

Quincy, Edmund Quincy, Josiah

Ramsay, Allan Reade, Charles Ream, Vinme Remond, Charles Reynolds, Sir Joshua Richelieu, Armand J. Duplessis, Cardinal Richter, J.P.F. Robert the Bruce Robin, Abbé Robinson, W.S. (Warrington) Rochambeau, General Rogers, Samuel Roland, Madame Romilly, Sir Samuel Rossi, Properzia de Russell, Lord John

Safford, T.H. Saint Augustine Saintouges, Françoise de Sand George. _See_ Dudevant Sappho Schiller, J.C.F. von Schurman, Anna Maria Scott, Sir Walter Shakespeare, William Sheppard, Jack Sherbrooke, Lord (Robert Lowe) Sheridan, P.H. Sherman W.T. Sidney, Sir Philip Smith, Goldwin Socrates Somerville, Mrs. Mary Southworth, E.D E.N. Sparks, Jared Spenser Edmund Stael, Madame de Stendhal _See_ Beyle. Stephen, Fitzjames Sterne, Laurence Stevens, Mrs. Paran Stone, Lucy Story, W.W. Stove, Harriet (Beecher) Strafford, Thomas Wentworth, Earl of Sumner, Charles Swift, Jonathan

Taine, H.A. Tambroni, Clotilda Tarleton, Colonel Ten Broeck Tennyson, Alfred Thackeray, W.P. Thoreau, H.D. Thou, J.A. De Timon of Athens Tocqueville, Alexis de Trench, Mrs. Richard

Varro, M.T. Victoria, Queen Volney, C.F. Chasseboeuf, Count de Voltaire, F.M.A. de

Wallace, A.R. Walpole, Horace Walworth, M.T. Ward, Artemus. _See_ Browne, C.F. Warrington. _See_ Robinson. Washington, George Webster, Daniel, Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, Duke of, Westbrook, Judge Whipple, E.P. Whittier, J.G. Wieland, C.M. Wilberforce, William Winkelried, Arnold Withington, Leonard Wlasla Wollstonecraft, Mary. _See_ Godwin. Woodbury, Augustus Wordsworth, William