********************START OF HEADER******************** This text has been proofread but is not guaranteed to be free from errors. Corrections to the original text have been left in place. Title: The British India Society, an electronic edition Author: Chapman, Maria Weston, 1806-1885 Publisher: The Liberty Bell Place published: Date: 1839 ********************END OF HEADER******************** THE BRITISH INDIA SOCIETYBY MARIA WESTON CHAPMANIt would seem as if a word were hardly needed, to commend this newly-formed, but most important Society, to the warmest sympathies of American abolitionists. It is, in fact, doing their work for them, by bringing the free labor of British India in direct competition with slave labor;--by silencing the captious objector to a world-wide benevolence, when he says "why do not the English people reform their East Indian oppressions, before they speak of ours;"-by arousing the world with the grand idea of a great nation emulous of righteousness and freedom, laboring to make the beauty of its example flame out like a beacon-light to all its peers, till they shall see their cherished in stitutions of oppression, fade away beneath the splendor of its moral potency.Even though the hearts of American abolitionists could fail to be deeply moved by this commencement of a mighty moral revolution, the heads of American statesmen will not fail to perceive its importance. They will clearly discern how the lower elements of national character will come in to aid the noblest, for the prosecution of such an enterprise. They see both the patriotism and the cupidity of Britain ready to aid her ph8ilanthropists, in any decided measure that would secure to British India the undivided demand of the British cotton-market. They will not fail to mark the cloud hanging over the great southern staple and the vast northern tonnage. Already a RUSH has hinted at the consequences of this idea, which a HUSKISSON deemed fully practicable, and a THOMPSON, a BROUGHAM, and an O'CONNELL have set in operation:--already he sees "the cotton of India brought forward to England in ways and to an extent not now dreamed of."The practical bearings of this Society upon the American slave-system have been happily touched upon by Wendell Phillips; at the present time, the representative of New England abolitionists in Europe. Would that he were now here to animate them with all the encouraging considerations presented by this subject, and which the worn and wearied laborers for Freedom so greatly need."We need thy blended eloquence of lip, and eye, and brow;-- We need the righteous as a shield:--why art thou absent now?"