Congressional system of representation and election to the House of Commons. At a meeting of anti-corn law deputies, held at Manchester, in November, after the business for which they had assembled was finished, Mr. S. brought forward the subject of "complete suffrage." His lucid and practical views begat a general desire among the deputies for the commencement of a movement for a thorough reform in Parliament. In December following he issued a "Declaration," embracing the outlines of his plan, which ultimately drew to his views a portion of the Chartists, who, throwing off the old name, united with others in adopting that of Complete Suffragists.

In February, 1842, a meeting of delegates was held in London, on the call of Mr. Sturge, cotemporaneously with an immense anti-corn law convention, which had assembled to protest against Mr. Peel's proposed new law. After a full discussion, in which many members of the latter convention participated, the basis was laid for a union between the CornLaw Repealers and the Complete Suffragists. In April following, a conference was held in Birmingham, mainly through his influence, composed of delegates from England, Scotland, and Ireland. The proceedings of this important body, over which Mr. Sturge presided, gave new energy to the movement commenced at the previous meeting in London. "The National Complete Suffrage Union" was formed by this conference, and Mr. Sturge was chosen its first President. In the course of this year a vacancy happened in the representation of Nottingham, a town containing some four thousand electors. Mr. Sturge was requested to stand as the Radical candidate, merely as an experiment, no one expecting him to succeed. his address to the electors, he avowed himself in favor of universal suffrage, the severance of the Church from the State, and the total repeal of the corn laws; declared he would not spend a farthing in electioneering purposes, (i. e., bribing and treating,) nor countenance any efforts in his behalf, not sanc

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tioned by the precepts of morality; and urged his friends to employ only such measures, during the canvass, as would make defeat honorable, and add luster to victory. His opponent, Mr. Waiter, the proprietor of the London Times, stimulated the exertions of his supporters with a purse of £15,000. At the close of the poll, Mr. Sturge lacked but seventy-four votes of an election. He would have succeeded, but for the extensive bribery and intimidation of his opponent, who, on this account, was unseated on the reassembling of Parliament.

During the last six years, Mr. Sturge has devoted himself, with his characteristic ability, zeal, and munificence, to the promotion of general education, complete suffrage, church reform, corn-law repeal, slavet-rade extermination, universal peace, and cognate reforms.

On the summoning of a new Parliament, in 1847, he reluctantly consented to contest Leeds. In the course of his speech at the hustings, his proposer, the venerable Edward Baines, who had long represented the town, said: “I have to propose for your choice, as one of your representatives in Parliament, my friend and your friend, the friend of his country and of the human race, Joseph Sturge. With his principles you are well acquainted. They are the principles of liberty, of humanity, of economy, of equal rights, of freedom of trade and of thought, of voluntary education, of universal peace, and of justice to all mankind, of whatever color and of whatever clime. There are in Parliament an abundance of merchants, of manufacturers, of bankers, of lawyers, of soldiers, of sailors, of ecclesiastical patrons, of peers, and of bishops; but there is a deplorable deficiency of such men as Joseph Sturge." In his address to the electors, Mr. Sturge gave a thorough expo sition of his political views, in the face of frowning Whigs and hissing Tories, both of whom brought forward candidates, and made him the object of their common hostility. After a hot contest, he was barely defeated by the concentration of a part

of the Tory votes upon one of the Whig candidates; but the result was a moral triumph for Mr. Sturge and his cause.

Mr. Sturge is a member of the Society of Friends, and his beneficent life and amiable deportment are a beautiful embodiment of the principles of that sect. Till within a few years, he was extensively engaged in the corn trade, and has long been one of the most wealthy and influential citizens of Birmingham. Not satisfied with devoting liberal sums and remnants of time to philanthropic objects, he withdrew from a profitable mercantile connection, that he might consecrate all his energies to the advancement of civil and religious liberty. With no pretensions to literary or oratorical excellence, he is able to express his clear and vigorous ideas with terseness and point, both with pen and tongue. His plans, like his mind, are eminently practical; and he goes straight to the subjectmatter, stripping off the husk, somewhat regardless of its texture and hue, and piercing at once to the kernel. His mercantile training has given him business habits of the first order, making him as efficient in executing plans as he is shrewd in their formation. A little apt to push aside, not to say push over, obtuseness and sluggishness, yet he mingles his unostentatious activity with such purity of intention and suavity of manner, as not to offend colder and more timid natures, while doing in a day what would occupy a month in their hands. Should he ever enter the House of Commons, he would be found, not among its brilliant, but certainly among its most useful members.

In this chapter it would be impossible to name all who bore a prominent part in the cause now under review. The Society of Friends alone kept an army in the field during the war. And no soldiers did better service than the household troops of George Fox. I may name William Allen, to whose many virtues the Duke of Kent gave the highest evidence, by appointing him one of the guardians of his daughter Victoria— and James Cropper, the munificent Liverpool merchant-and

Joseph and Samuel Gurney, the London bankers, the former of whom traveled over the Continent to investigate the state of its prisons, and made the tour of the West Indies, to examine into the condition of the emancipated negroes-and George William Alexander, who has visited France, Denmark, Holland, and Spain, to arouse them to the duty of abolishing slavery.

I can only allude to Thomas Pringle, one of England's sweetest and most graceful poets, who officiated as Secretary of the London Anti-Slavery Society in its infancy, its vigor, and its victory-and Captain Charles Stuart, one of the purest and bravest of mankind, whose voice and pen were sacred to Freedom-and John Scoble, who twice visited the West Indies, and whose chaste oratory on the platform, and terse productions as Secretary of the British and Foreign AntiSlavery Society were of signal service to the cause. Of George Thompson, whom Lord Brougham pronounced one of the most eloquent men either in or out of Parliament, I shall speak at greater length, in connection with the abolition of East Indian Slavery.

I will close this chapter by briefly noticing a few of the many clergymen who rendered important services to the AntiSlavery cause.

North of the Tweed, was Rev. ANDREW THOMSON, D.D., of Edinburgh, a leading minister of the Kirk of Scotland. He has been dead several years. Posthumous fame tells wondrous tales of his overpowering eloquence. The reports of his speeches, which I have read, show him to have been a son of thunder. He did not polish the angles of his sentences so much as Dr. Chalmers, but he possessed in large measure the comprehensive views, argumentative power, and splendid imagination, which distinguished that great divine; while, in directness and point, and ability to arouse and sway the passions of men, he undoubtedly excelled him. Robert Hall never said of Andrew Thomson, that he was a massive door,

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always turning on its hinges, but never moving onward. speech of three hours length, delivered by him, in 1830, before the Edinburgh Anti-Slavery Society, in vindication of the principle of immediate as opposed to gradual abolition, and which was widely published, brought over the great body of Scottish Abolitionists to the new doctrine, chiefly through its intrinsic merits, partly, no doubt, because of the high standing of the orator. Its influence crossed the Border, and among its English converts was the celebrated Mr. George Thompson, who soon afterward became a lecturing agent of the London Committee.

The perfect opposite of Dr. Thomson, was the eminent dissenting minister, Rev. RALPH WARDLAW, D.D., of Glasgow. His tall person is the fitting embodiment of his large tuind; and his benignant countenance is the index of the purity of his heart. No one ever attended his chapel without pronouncing him a model for the pulpit. One of the best readers that ever opened the sacred Volume, his mellow voice, musical cadence, and chaste delivery, give to the precept or parable he has selected for the exercise a force and reality that never appeared to the hearer before. And his sermon-how harmoniously do strength and simplicity blend, to give vigor and transparency to the argument; and how his felicitous similes and pointed tropes illustrate and adorn it, without confusing the reason or sending off the fancy in a chase after mere imagery.

But, though justly celebrated as a preacher and a divine, he is more widely known for his able advocacy of Voluntaryism, in opposition to Church Establishments, his early and steady services in behalf of negro emancipation, and his devotion to the general cause of civil and religious liberty. Probably no chapel in Scotland has opened its doors to so many secular meetings for the improvement of the human race as his; and usually the venerable pastor is present to give his countenance and voice to the work.