| <trailer><p> <Socialist 4 November 1910> 
| <pb n="1"> </p></trailer>
| <headline><p> <At The Gaiety. "The Abolitionists."> 
| <Lecture by Mr Frank Anstey, MHR.> </p></headline>
| <p> Everything was first-rate at the Gaiety Theatre 
| on Sunday night ~~ attendance, musical programme, and 
| lecture. Mr Alf Wilson presided, and skilfully made 
| the necessary announcements. The collective singing 
| was inspiring. The ever-improving orchestra gave a 
| couple of selections, including 
| <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo"> 
| "Old Sea Songs," </title> in which 
| the solo parts were both popular and ably-played. A 
| neat effect in the piece was readily perceived by 
| the delighted audience, and had to be repeated. The 
| choir essayed the Hunting Chorus from 
| <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo"> "Dorothy," </title> 
| and acquitted itself creditably. Miss MacNaughton 
| acceptably sang, and Mr W.E. Hardeman was never in 
| better form in a couple of really humorous 
| recitations. Mr Arthur S. Cooper brought down the 
| house with one of his exquisite tenor numbers, and 
| the encore was not to be denied. Miss Irene Ayres 
| accompanied throughout. </p>
| <p> At a fitting break Mr Jack Curtin (secretary of 
| Socialist Party) referred the financial worries of 
| the organisation, and announced an extraordinary 
| general meeting for the following evening. </p>
| <p> In respect to the memory of Comrade J. Deering 
| the large audience stood to its feet. </p>
| <p> The lecturer of the evening was Mr Frank Anstey, 
| MHR who met with a rousing reception. His subject 
| was <title rend="PRE lsquo POST rsquo"> "The 
| Abolitionists, Wendell Phillips and Lloyd 
| Garrison." </title> These were not the first, nor yet 
| the last, of the abolitionists, said the speaker. 
| The working-class movement today was made up of 
| those who believed in the abolition of poverty. For 
| thousands of years the world had believed chattel 
| slavery to be necessary, but it had been abolished 
| in the finish. There were today numbers who believed 
| poverty necessary and eternal, but "the modern 
| abolitionists" held that poverty was no more 
| necessary than chattel slavery, and would disappear. 
| Prior to our time, all abolition movements had only 
| to strike off the shackles of a particular wrong, 
| but nowadays not only had the shackles of oppression 
| to be severed, but a reconstructive policy had to be 
| imposed <mdash>-</mdash> and this called for 
| intelligence and capacity such as had never before 
| been required. Seventy years ago there was hardly a 
| man in America who did not regard slavery as 
| essential. Slavery was part and parcel of religious 
| and commercial sentiment. Behind the respective 
| noteworthy agitations of O'Connell in Ireland and 
| Cobden in England there were formidable forces, but 
| behind the American abolitionists there was at the 
| outset no support. </p>
| <p> And now the lecturer graphically told the story 
| of Garrison's beginnings, and of the conversion of 
| Phillips, and of how the two worked together, and of 
| what they achieved. It was an interesting and 
| dramatic recital, and was followed with rapt 
| attention. The whole anti-slavery agitation was 
| brightly covered, with significant comments on the 
| Dred Scot decisions and the Kansas and Nebraska 
| constitution. Lincoln's part in the movement was 
| sketched, and the civil war and its results 
| thrillingly diagnosed. Upon the main facts Mr Anstey 
| did not enlarge, but he devoted some attention to 
| the abolitionists themselves, showing how that, in 
| the hour of growing power, there fastened upon the 
| movement the merely parasitical, who in the hours of 
| obscurity and impotence had held aloof. There came 
| to be among the abolitionists the moderates and the 
| extremists, and there were also the politicians who 
| played the movement false. It was the extremists who 
| made the movement and it was their uncompromising 
| position that gained abolition. Yet they endured 
| every form of epithet and opprobrium, and it was 
| urged against them that they were the enemies of 
| society and morality, and the family, and so forth. 
| This argument was used in every crisis. For the 
| thinker the abolitionist movement of America 
| contained many lessons. The struggles of today and 
| our sacrifices were insignificant compared to those 
| of the past; maybe the great crisis was needed to 
| test a nation. It was said that no nation was really 
| great until it had been baptised in blood, and 
| possibly such a baptism awaited Australia. It 
| remained true, however, that a nation’s societies, 
| parties, powers, and vitalities depended not so much 
| upon its resources as upon its economic justice. </p>
| <p> Mr Anstey concluded by referring to the division 
| <mdash>-</mdash> no, diversity <mdash>-</mdash> 
| between the Labour Party and the Socialist Party, 
| and said it seemed as if the movement needed a party 
| inside Parliament with responsibilities, and a party 
| outside which was educative and agitatory. Let each 
| give the other credit for the best of motives. He 
| took no part with those of the Labour Party who 
| looked askance at the Socialists. Every movement was 
| all the better for a vanguard. And as regarded the 
| financial difficulties of the Socialist Party, every 
| movement, too, had them. Let them be of good cheer. 
| (Loud applause.) </p>