[438] however, an argument which does honor even to those against whom it is urged, and which aims to establish future relations of the closest alliance. Senator Sumner's chief reproach is this,—that we have acted unworthily of ourselves, unfaithfully to our deepest convictions and best memories. * * * There runs through the whole of Mr. Sumner's gigantic oration—far too long to have been spoken as printed, but yet without a word of superfluous argument or declamation—an idea on which we can now only touch. From the first sentence to the last, Slavery is present to his mind. It colors all his reasoning. It inspires him to prodigious eloquence. Not merely as the Senator for Massachusetts, the honored chieftain of the political Abolitionists, but as the Chairman on Foreign Relations, he sees everywhere the presence of the Slave Power. Against it he invokes, in periods of classic beauty, all the moral forces of the Mother Country. To England he makes a pathetic and passionate appeal—more for her own sake than that of the slave—more for the sake of the future than of present effects—that she withdraw all favor and succor from Rebel slaveowners.1
