Slavery and America's Bastard Republicanism: An Address Delivered in Limerick, Ireland, on November 10, 1845
SLAVERY AND AMERICA'S BASTARD REPUBLICANISM: AN ADDRESS DELIVERED IN LIMERICK, IRELAND, ON 10 NOVEMBER 1845
Limerick Reporter, 11 November 1845.
On the evening of 10 November 1845 Douglass inaugurated a series of antislavery lectures in Limerick, Ireland. The audience that crowded the Belford Row Independent Chapel consisted of "all classes and parties" and included "a large number of females." After a brief introduction by presiding officer J. J. Fisher, a local Quaker, Douglass addressed the gathering for approximately an hour and a half. Later, copies of his Narrative were sold, at half a crown each. Douglass observed that "as the lectures were free, the sale of his book was the only means of bringing him from town to town; and as he did not wish to make money, but to have the means of exposing American slavery, and enlisting against it the feelings of the people of this country, he found the sale of his work which he had got reprinted since he came over to be quite sufficient for his purpose." Apparently, the audience responded favorably to Douglass’s initial speech. According to the Limerick Reporter, "There was no man who listened to his eloquent and touching statement that did not burn with indignation against the atrocious system which makes chattel property of men made in the image of God and only 'guilty of skin not coloured' like that of their white tyrants."
While praising the content of Douglass’s speech, however, the Reporter sharply criticized Douglass’s style. Douglass’s rebuke of a local actor named Bateman for performing "Jim Crow . . . apes of the negro" seemed unwarranted to the editor, who thought Bateman a "clever actor" whose "representation of a particular negro character, debased by his white despot" did not apply to "negros generally." Douglass had erred again, according to the Reporter, in selecting a church as his lecture hall, "thus giving a sectarian appearance to a cause that equally belongs to all." The Reporter urged that future lectures be held in some public building accessible to "the citizens of Limerick at large."
Mr. Douglas[s] (for that is his name) proceeded to address them. He said slavery was a question in which every human being ought to feel a deep interest. It aimed at, and accomplished, the destruction of all the rights of men. It was an enemy of the entire human family. The principle that enslaved the black would enthral the white, and the spirit of tyranny that for the last 300 years made the children of Africa its victims, would devote every one whom he now addressed to its cruel altar. It was a strange contradiction that in human character, that in a country that boasts to be the freest in the world, slavery exists in its worst and most aggravated forms—a country that threw off the yoke of colonial bondage for a three-penny tax on tea, proceeding upon the principle that all men were equal, and yet was the propagator of the heinous crime of slavery. It was to slavery, as it existed in the United States, he alluded, and he thought he might be permitted to speak of it, having himself endured its woes, and felt the bloody lash.
He had been met with the objection that slavery existed in Ireland, and that therefore there was no necessity for describing its character as found in another country (hear, hear).1Many Irish nationalists felt that abolitionism diverted attention from the more pressing issue of Irish independence. The Waterford (Ire.) Freeman of 10 September 1845 found ill-advised the charity of "the white slaves of Ireland" toward American bondsmen. "[A] people in serfdom cannot afford to make new enemies," the Freeman editorialized. "We wish with our whole heart that the abolitionists of America would . . . call upon the government of the Republic to commence doing what the English did—buy up the manurnission of the negroes, or pass a law enabling the slave to purchase his freedom. "The Waterford editor approvingly quoted a strategy endorsed by the Tipperary Free Press: “When we are ourselves free, let us then engage in any struggle to erase the sin of slavery from every land, But, until then, our own liberation is that for which we should take counsel, and work steadily." His answer was, that if slavery existed here, it ought to be put down, and the generous in the land ought to rise and scatter its fragments to the winds (loud cheers).—But there
was nothing like American slavery on the soil on which he now stood. Negro-slavery consisted not in taking away any of the rights of man, but in annihilating them all—not in taking away a man's property, but in making property of him, and in destroying his identity—in treating him as the beasts and creeping things. GOD had given the negro a conscience and a will, but his conscience was no monitor to him, for he had no power to exercise his will—his master decided for him not only what he should eat and what he should drink, what he should wear, when and to whom he should speak, how much he should work, how much and by whom he is to be punished—he not only decided all these things, but what is morally right and wrong. The slave must not even choose his wife, must marry and unmarry at the will of his tyrant, for the slaveholder had no compunction in separating man and wife, and thus putting asunder what GOD had joined together. Could the most inferior person in this country be so treated by the highest? If any man exists in Ireland who would so treat another, may the combined execrations of humanity fall upon him, and may he be excluded from the pale of human sympathy!
There was a feeling in some quarters that the descriptions given in this country of negro-slavery were all exaggerations. He had seen a sketch by a geologist, Doctor or Professor Lyell, who had gone from England on a tour to America, and returned from it apparently under the impression that the negro’s lot was not an unenviable one. If this individual be only as loose in his reasoning, and as fallacious in his premises in geological matters, his theories were of little value. It was but eleven days' sail to America, and there was, therefore a great intercourse between the two countries. Tourists were constantly going over. Professor Lyell was a geologist, and when he visited America, he was kindly received by geologists in the northern states. He also visited the south where he saw slavery, but he was taken by the hand by the slaveholding geologists—he walked with their daughters, dined at their tables; in fact, lived with them. It was from these he received all his impressions of slavery, and was it [not] to be presumed that the wolf would say that the lamb loved to be eaten up by him (laughter, and cheers). Thus, even geologists were led astray. He said that slaves laughed and sung, and were, therefore, happy. This man was not the geologist for him. But he would not attack his geology, but his slaveology.2Sir Charles Lyell (1797–1875), eminent English geologist, first visited the United States in 1841. When Douglass reached the British Isles, Lyell's account of his travels had just appeared. Lyell thought the Southern planter's life-style similar to that of the "English country gentleman" and was "agreeably surprised" to find Southern slaves "so remarkably cheerful and light hearted." In South Carolina he enjoyed the sound of bondsmen "singing loudly and joyously in chorus after their day’s work" and found his black guides to be "as talkative and chatty as children." Lyell could think of no "practicable plan" for ending slavery and held a low opinion of abolitionists "on both sides of the Atlantic." Charles Lyell, Travels in North America, In the Years 1841–2; with Geological Observations on the United States. Canada, and Nova Scotia. 2 vols. (New York, 1845), 1 : 144–45, 149; DNB. 12: 319–25. And it was important that a slave who struck off his fetters
should come forth and proclaim to the world what he experienced in his own person.
He would, in the first place, proceed to show them some of the laws and the implements under which the bondsmen luxuriated.—(There were here loud cries of "hear, hear, hear." The speaker then said that in America they were not accustomed to much applause at public meetings, and without any wish to alter the customs of this country, or introduce American customs, he begged respectfully to say that he had no desire for any demonstrations of applause, and, considering the sacred character of the building in which they were assembled, he would prefer being allowed to proceed without them, as he was anxious not to give offence, or have it given to those who might have any objection to cheers.) Mr. Douglas[s] then proceeded to read extracts from the laws of the slave holding states, from which it appeared that a slave was liable to be whipped severely, and have his ear cut off for the most trivial offence, such as riding a horse without the written permission of his master. There were now 14 slaveholding states, Florida having been lately added to the union, and Texas was about to be added, which would make 15 slave-holding to 13 free states. Now, he charged the American nation with being emphatically responsible for slavery in the whole of the country. It was not peculiar to the Southern States, for all the states were united under one constitution, and that constitution protected and supported slavery—For instance there was no one spot in all America upon which he could stand free.
Though God had said, "thou shalt not deliver up the slave to his master,"3Douglass paraphrases Deut. 23 : 15: "Thou shalt not deliver unto his master the servant which is escaped from his master unto thee." the constitution of the United States said differently. He was an outlaw in America, and he could be hunted back again to his master, if identified. Yet their liberty caps were striking the clouds (there were here loud cries of "hear, hear," when the speaker again said that these demonstrations rather disconcerted than aided him. He proceeded)—The Americans were most anxious to have it understood, that all the country
was not implicated in slavery, and accordingly when one of them came to this country he was sure to say that he was from a free state; but unless he came as an out-and-out abolitionist he came stained with robbery and human blood—a participator in the law of the land, that the slave must be a slave or die. To carry out this law the judges and the other officers of the state solemnly swore every year. Even the battle places could not protect the slave. If he (Mr. Douglas[s]) should go to Bunker's Hill, and there seizing the monument erected to liberty, and claim the freedom for which his fathers shed their blood (for it was a negro who shed the first blood, and fired the first gun on that battle field),4Douglass probably refers to Peter Salem, alias Salem Middleux. Greene, Black Defenders of America, 20; Quarles, Negro in the American Revolution, 10–11. yet there would be no liberty for him there. Even when that monument was dedicated, and Daniel Webster, the great American orator, was eloquent upon human liberty, boasting of the deeds achieved by their ancestors, and their throwing off the British yoke,5The Bunker Hill Monument, a 222-foot granite obelisk, was erected between 1825 and 1842 on the famous battle site in Boston. Daniel Webster delivered two speeches there, the first when the cornerstone was laid on 17 June 1825 and the second at the monument's formal dedication on 17 June 1843. Douglass probably refers to Webster’s second address. Frederick Lewis Weis, A Brief History of the Bunker Hill Monument Association, 1823–1948 (n.p., n.d.); The Writings and Speeches of Daniel Webster, 18 vols, National ed. (Boston, 1903), l : 233–84; Richard Frothingham, History of the Siege of Boston and the Battles of Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill, 4th ed., rev. (Boston, 1873), 337–59. John Tyler, the man-slayer, was there—John Tyler who had even sold his own children as slaves, he was present with a slave holding an umbrella over his head (hear, hear).6John Tyler (1790–1862). a Virginia slaveholder, became the tenth president of the United States upon the death of William Henry Harrison in April 1841. Douglass’s allegation that Tyler "sold his own children as slaves" echoed a charge which the American abolitionist Henry C. Wright had made in Belfast earlier in 1845 on the eve of Tyler’s planned visit to the British Isles. Wright caused to be reprinted from the Boston Emancipator and Free American a purported interview in 1841 with a slave in Virginia who claimed he had been sired and sold away by John Tyler, his namesake. The U.S. consul in Belfast, in a reply to Wright, claimed that the story had been fabricated by Whigs angered by Tyler's veto of Henry Clay's Bank Bill. It was also rumored that Tyler, white president. had sold his daughter to a New Orleans slave trader after she had attempted to elope to a free state. Henry C. Wright to Editor. 8 January 1845. James M’Henry to Editor, 16 January 1845. H. C, Wright to James M'Henry, 1 February 1845, in Belfast Northern Whig, 11, 23 January, 6 February 1845; Lib. 28 March 1845; Jane G. Swisshelm, Half a Century (Chicago, 1880), 129; Joel A. Rogers, Sex and Race: A History of White, Negro, and Indian Miscegenation in the Two Americas. 3 vols. (New York, 1940–44), 2 : 197–98, 223; Oliver Perry Chitwood, John Tyler, Champion of the Old South (New York, 1939), 322–23; Riach, Campaign Against American Slavery, 280; DAB, 19 : 88–92.
Yes; the Americans, as a nation, were guilty of the foul crime of slavery, whatever might be their hypocritical vaunts of freedom. It was
not his wish to condemn republicanism, but the slavery that was identified with it; but it was not a true democracy, but a bastard republicanism that enslaved one-sixth of the population—They were free booters who wished to be free to plunder every one within their reach—stretching their long, bony fingers into Mexico, and appropriating her territory to themselves in order to make it a hot bed of negro slavery. Mexico with all her barbarism and darkness had wiped away the stain of slavery from her dominions, and now the enlightened, Christian United States had stained again what was washed. He wanted them to know, and if there was a reporter present they would know that a slave had stood up in Limerick and ridiculed their democracy and their liberty.
One of the reasons why he was there to-night was that he was not secure in his own country; he was a fugitive, and it was no disgrace to be a fugitive from a nation of men-stealers. He did not say there were not many good men in America, but the majority of the country and the legislature were stained with blood. About 7 years ago he escaped from his master Thomas Auld,7Thomas Auld (1795–1880) inherited Douglass along with ten other slaves from the estate of Aaron Anthony in 1827. Auld had married Anthony's daughter Lucretia in 1823, while he was serving as captain of the new Lloyd family sloop. the Sally Lloyd, and boarding periodically at the Anthony home. Shortly thereafter Auld became a storekeeper in Hillsborough, Maryland, in Caroline County. He later kept store in St. Michaels where he also served as postmaster, before retiring to a nearby farm. The 1850 census listed him as a "farmer" with $8,500 worth of real estate. References to Thomas Auld in Douglass's Narrative and public speeches are generally uncomplimentary, although Douglass disclaimed any personal hostility toward his former owner. In an 1845 letter to the Delaware Republican, former Maryland resident A. C. C. Thompson defended Thomas Auld as a "respectable merchant" and a "honorable and worthy member of the Methodist Episcopal Church . . . only notable for his integrity and irreproachable Christian character. " Douglass censured Auld in an 1848 letter to him published in the North Star, but he admitted to being “unjust and unkind” toward his former master in another public letter to Auld the following year. A reconciliation occurred in the post-Reconstruction period when Douglass visited the dying Auld in St. Michaels, Maryland. NASS, 25 November 1845; North Star, 8 September 1848, 7 September 1849; Baltimore Sun, 19 June 1877; Emerson B. Roberts, "A Visitation of Western Talbot," Maryland Historical Magazine, 41 : 235–45 (September 1946); Tilghman, Talbot County, 1 : 395; Douglass, Life and Times, 483–86; Quarles, FD, 342–43; Preston, "Aaron Anthony," 5; Manuscript U.S. Census Returns, 1850, St. Michaels District, Talbot County, Maryland, Schedule I, Free Inhabitants, 169; "Distribution of Negroes in Estate of Aaron Anthony, 27 September 1827," folder 77, Dodge Collection, MdAHR; "Division of Slaves in Aaron Anthony Estate," Talbot County Distributions, VJP#D, 58–59, 22 October 1827, MdTCH, Easton, Maryland. in Maryland, into Massachusetts, the freest of the free states. He lived there till within the last 3 months, and his family were there still. He escaped on the 3d of December [September], 1838, and came to New Bedford.8Douglass fled Baltimore on 3 September 1838. Douglass, Narrative, 111; Douglass to Thomas Auld, 3 September 1848, in Lib., 22 September 1848. He got his livelihood by rolling oil casks, and the labour was sweet to him, for it was voluntary, and he
received his own earnings which were filched from him before by his master.
About 3 years after his escape some gentlemen hearing of his addressing meetings of the black population on the subject of slavery induced him to go about lecturing through that state, concealing his name and the place from which he escaped, for had these been made known, some Judas or Iago would have betrayed him. Having thus lectured for 4 years a number of persons began to doubt if he ever were a slave. He did not answer the Jim Crow description which was given of negroes at New York, and in theatres in this country. He was sorry to find that one of these apes of the negro had been recently encouraged in Limerick, but the reptile was only supported by those of his own kind. The people of the free state of Massachusetts thought from the description they had seen given of negroes, and from the fact of his having an education, the conclusion was come to by many—that he was not a slave. This led him to publish a narrative of his life, in which he detailed the crimes of the slaveholders, and mentioned their names. That settled the question, but it endangered his safety. There were 6500 copies of the work sold from the time of its publication May last till the first of August.
Not deeming it safe to remain in America, he embarked at Boston, on the 16th of August, in the Cambria, for this country; and he could not illustrate slavery better than by stating what took place on board the Ship. The slaveholders got up a regular mob, and threatened to throw him over board. They first manifested their feeling when they found he took a cabin passage, and insisted that he should go to the steerage, for it is the law of the skin aristocracy at the other side of the waters, that a negro should not go in the cabin with whites. He had therefore, to change to the steerage, and he was content with it particularly when he reflected that every wave brought him further from the bloody and persecuting prejudice that drove him out of his country. A gentleman asked him where he was going, and he soon found out that he was a fugitive slave; considerable interest was excited on board, and there was a wish among the Scotch, English, and Irish passengers that he should address them and give a narrative of his case. He well knew that he could not do so without the permission of the Captain, and he accordingly declined. Some gentlemen however made interest with Captain Judkins, who gave the permission when they got in sight of Ireland. He little thought that he had American democrats on board—The meeting was announced on the saloon or quarter deck, among the rest the slaveholders made their
appearance and would not allow him to speak; but the Hudson family9Although Jesse and Polly Hutchinson had no fewer than thirteen children, the family name was principally identified with the musical quartet composed of Judson (Adroniram Judson Joseph, 1817–59), John (John Wallace, 1821–1908), Asa (1823–84), and Abby (Abigail Jemina, 1829–92). This group traveled with Douglass to England aboard the Cambria in 1845 and occasionally performed at meetings where Douglass spoke. Although one of the Hutchinson brothers, Jesse, was "identified with the very beginnings of antislavery agitation," Judson, John, and Asa Hutchinson joined the abolitionists only after meeting Frederick Douglass, who lived near their store in Lynn, Massachusetts. It was probably late in 1842 or in 1843 that the brothers first heard Douglass's story and acquired an "earnest desire to aid him in his work." Hutchinson. Story off the Hutchinsons, 1 : 6, 40, 70–71, 146, 187–89; Merrill and Ruchames, Garrison Letters, 3 : 158n.; Carol Brink, Harps in the Wind: The Story of the Singing Hutchinsons (New York, 1947): Tidings from the Hutchinsons! in Concord (N.H.) Herald of Freedom, 29 August 1845; Jesse Hutchinson, Jr., to Nathaniel P. Rogers, 23 August 1845, ibid., 26 September 1845; Jesse Hutchinson, Jr., to Horace Greeley, 24 October 1845, ibid., 26 December 1845; Jesse Hutchison, Jr., to Nathaniel P. Rogers, 18 November 1845, ibid., 12 December 1845; "Come-Outers of Lynn—No, 4," ibid., 6 March 1846; Jesse Hutchinson, Jr., to [Henry] Clapp, 30 January 1846, ibid., 6 March 1846; William Hewitt, "Memoir of the Hutchinson Family," ibid., 24 July 1846. being on board, and being American abolitionists, they sung one of their beautiful songs, and drowned the uproar. At the conclusion of it the Captain took advantage of the silence, and introducing him begged them to hear what he had to say. He had not uttered an entire sentence when one of the slaveholders said "that is a lie." When he got into the middle of another sentence, another slaveholder said “that is a lie" in true American fashion. Well said he (Mr. Douglas[s]) if every thing he had stated upon his own authority was a lie, he would read for them what they would admit was not a lie.
He then took up a book and quoted from it the laws of the slaveholding states. A spark of fire thrown into a magazine could not have produced a greater explosion—They could not bear to have the iniquities of slavery exposed, and they reared up against him like demons. One said, shaking his fist at him (Mr. D.) he wished he had him at Cuba. Another little creature, that he wished he had him at New Orleans; and a third, if he had him at Savannah how he would "use him up;" he would be one of the number to throw him overboard. How very courageous, one of an indefinite number to throw one man overboard (laughter).
There happened to be an Irishman present from Dublin whose name was Gough; he was so tall that he (Mr. Douglas[s]) had to look up to him. It was remarkable, that not a man of the slaveholders wished to have him (Mr. Douglas[s]) in Ireland, for they knew that he would get
fair play there (hear, and cheers), and when the fellow threatened to throw him overboard, he was told by the Irishman that two might play at that game (enthusiastic cheering). He (Mr. Douglas[s]) then called for three cheers for old Ireland. Mr. Gough had stood up with such a calm dignity, over-looking these little creatures, that he awed them into silence. Afterwards, however, they cursed and swore, and raved, as only slaveholders can.10The only Gough listed on the Cambria's manifest was a Capt. Thomas [Dunbury] Cough of the 33rd Foot (The Duke of Wellington's Regiment). An English passenger recalled the presence of a Mr. Gough, of the 33rd, but mistakenly gave his initials as "R. W. F." Capt. Gough was almost certainly the "broad shouldered. good humoured" six-foot man whom George D. Warburton remembered standing "with his hands in his pockets, chuckling with the most unfeigned delight," at a "very short man, of immense rotundity of person, [who] kept vehemently 'guessing' that, if it had not been for some untimely interference of two of his friends, he would certainly have knocked [Gough] down." Boston Evening Transcript, 16 August 1845; Alexander, L 'Acadie, 2 : 260; Warburton Hochelaga, 2 : 361; The Army List (London, 1846). The Captain called them to order, and told them their conduct was derogatory to the character of gentlemen, of Christians, and of men. He had, at the request of a number of the passengers, permitted Mr. Douglas[s] to address them; and if there were any there who did not wish to hear him, let them go to another part of the ship. The Captain then said, "Douglas[s], pitch into them like bricks" (loud laughter). He did his best to comply with the Captain’s order, when a New Orleans man ran at him. The Captain, who was a powerful man, pushed the little fellow aside, when he put his hand into his breast, and he (Mr. Douglas[s]) thought he was now about to draw a bowie knife to stab the Captain, but behold he showed him his card, and told him he would meet him at Liverpool. "Very well," said the Captain, "I will meet you there," a reply which caused the slaveholder to slink away in silence, and he afterwards seemed to have totally forgotten the challenge (hear, and laughter).
The Captain then desired the mate to bring irons to put these gentlemen into who were so fond of putting others in irons. This silenced them. And these were the friends of free speech! So much did they hate discussion on the subject of slavery, that if any man stood up in that assembly and defended it against him (Mr. D), they would be anything but obliged to him. It was upon this feeling of slaveholders that he wished to operate, and his words would be borne on the wings of the press beyond the Atlantic wave. They would fly up and down through the regions of the north—they would cross the line of the slave-holding south—they would reverberate through the valley of the Mississippi,
and there was no part of the land into which they would not penetrate.
Mr. Douglas[s] then proceeded to exhibit some of the implements used in torturing the slaves, among which was an iron collar taken from the neck of a young woman who had escaped from Mobile. It had so worn into her neck that her blood and flesh were found on it (sensation). After showing the fetters used in chaining the feet of two slaves together, he exhibited a pair of hand-cuffs taken from a fugitive slave who escaped from Maryland into Pennsylvania. He knew the man well. He was being brought in custody to his master by a constable—he saw a sharp rock before him, and with one mighty effort he raised his hands, and, striking the hand-cuffs against the stone, broke them, and at the same time his left wrist (sensation). He fled and was overtaken, but with the unbroken hand he drew a dirk from his breast, and cut down his pursuers (cries of "bravo"). He escaped to Canada where alone on the American Continent he could be safe, and there he enjoyed that liberty under a monarchical government which he looked for in vain in his own land under a boasted democracy.
So true was it that the slave must leave his native soil to be free. In the language of Curran, their own orator—"I speak in the spirit of the British law which makes liberty commensurate with, and inseparable from British soil; which proclaims even to the stranger and sojourner, the moment he sets his foot on British earth, that the ground upon which he treads is holy, and consecrated by the genius of universal emancipation. No matter in what language his doom may have been pronounced; —no matter in what complexion incompatible with freedom, an Indian or an African sun may have burnt upon him;—no matter in what disastrous battle his liberty may have been cloven down—no matter with what solemnities he may have been devoted upon the altar of slavery; the first moment he touches the sacred soil of Britain, the altar and the God sink together in the dust; his soul walks abroad in her own majesty—his body swells beyond the measure of his chains, that burst from around him, and he stands redeemed, regenerated and disenthralled by the irresistible genius of universal emancipation (applause).11John Philpot Curran (1750–1817) was an Irish lawyer and M.P. famed for his oratory. A staunch Irish nationalist, he supported "Catholic Emancipation" and sympathized with the militant United Irishmen. In 1794, while defending United Irishman Archibald Hamilton Rowan against the charge of seditious libel, Curran delivered the apostrophe to liberty that Douglass paraphrases. Thomas Davis, ed., The Speeches of the Right Honorable John Philpot Curran (Dublin, 1845), 182; CIB, 118–20; DNB, 5 : 332–40.
If an American ever came among them speaking of the liberty of his country, let them make his cheek crimson by telling him that there is not a single spot in all his land where the sable man can stand free. Mr. Douglas[s] then went on to exhibit a horrid whip which was made of cow hide, and whose lashes were as hard as horn. They were clotted with blood when he first got them. He saw his master tie up a young woman eighteen years of age, and beat her with that identical whip until the blood ran down her back.12Douglass refers to the whipping of his crippled cousin Henny by Thomas Auld at St. Michael's, Talbot County, Maryland. Douglass, Narrative, 68–69; idem, Bondage and Freedom, 201.—And the wretch accompanied the whipping with a quotation from Scripture, "He that knew his master's will and did it not shall receive many stripes" (cries of "horrible").13This paraphrases Luke 12 : 47. This man was Thomas Auld, of St. Michael[s]. He would proceed further in his exposure of slavery, but it was now too late, being half-past nine o’clock, and he would therefore reserve what he had to say till Wednesday evening, when he would give another lecture of the series he intended to deliver.