Excerpt from The Progress and Results of Emancipation in the English West Indies: A Lecture Delivered Before the Philomathian Society of the City of New-York

Our bosoms glow with sympathetic emotion, and we are feign to imagine, that though other lands might boast their love of freedom, Switzerland was the very home of her worshippers, and that each drop of Switzer blood that had stained her snowy glaciers, or been drunk in by her green valleys, was shed in the purest devotion to her noble cause. We turn from this people in time of war, fighting for their children, and their hearthstones, expecting to see them in the peaceful days that follow the struggle, relinquishing the sword for the spade and the pruning hook, to reap in quiet thankfulness, the fruits of their exertions. Alas! we find no such result. Natural as were our anticipations, they are yet disappointed by the unutterable deceitfulness of the human heart, and the inexplicable enigmas of human conduct. Peace dawns upon the Swiss valleys, and her people are free as the chamois on her mountains, but the sword is still unsheathed, and ready to be wielded against any nation, friend or foe, far or near, in behalf of any other, that will repay their butchery with gold.

If actual deeds can thus mislead us in forming an estimate of character, how much more shall words? It costs but little to be philanthropic in opinion, just and righteous in avowal, and we are not obliged to recur to other lands or other ages to satisfy ourselves of the truth, that profession is often empty and heartless, that there is no virtue without effort, and that to thousands it would be the severest trial to practice for a day principles which they profess during their whole lives.

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