Rensselaer Republican, Volume 18, Number 47, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 July 1886 — BEECHER IN LONDON. [ARTICLE]

BEECHER IN LONDON.

Tho First of His Series of Lectures a Decided Success—His References to Conservatism Loudly Applauded. [Cable dispatch from London.] Twenty-three years ago Mr. Beecher spoke at Exeter Hall. There fras a lively time, because he preached anti-slavery to an unsympathetic audience. Richard Cobden shook him by the hand when it was over, and said that no man had ever been able to cow and subdue an English audience as Beecher had done. Thomas Scott presided at that meeting, a brown-bearded man of 45. To-night the Bame Thomas Scott, now City Chamberlain of London and a white - bearded mad nearly 70, presided in the same hall. There was no lack of sympathy in the audience that greeted Mr. Beecher this lime, except in so far as some exception was taken by some white-neck-clothed gentlemen to his unorthodox characterization of some generally accepted religous beliefs. There was some little exception, of a political character, which was drowned by thunders of applause, when he intimated that the Conservatives were marked by “dull, watery, and sluggish brains, but that God never made them to be the fathers of progress.” He went on: “They were very useful as crags on the way down-hill, but they have never been known to draw anything up hill.” It may have been an audience of Liberal sympathies. At any rate it applauded every reference he made 4 to the progress that the United States had made under a liberal democratic form of particularly when he said: “The common schools and the church are the stomach-of America; and wheu a man goes in there, whether he be a Dutchman or an Irishman, be is bound to come out an American. You are educating society from the top, we are educating it irom the bottom. TVe are not departing from democratic government. AVe are endeavoring to educate 60,000,000 of men in the way of conducting a government.” L v Beecher, among them being several hundred clergymen. On the platform, among others, were Can op Farrar, the Revs. Simon, Parker, Gidding, and Haweis. l>e- , sides a large American contingent. Hundreds crowded around after the lecture to shake hands with Mr. Beecher and tell him that they had heard him twenty-three years ago. The first English lecture of Beecher was unquestionably a big success.