the most extreme publications, and
made common cause with the most reckless declaimers. The wildest ravings
of the _Liberator_ have been constantly lauded; agents have been
commissioned whose great distinction was a talent for eloquent
vituperation; coincidence of opinion as to the single point of immediate
emancipation has been sufficient to unite men of the most discordant
character. There is in this conduct such a strange want of adaptation
between the means and the end which they profess to have in view, as to
stagger the faith of most persons in the sincerity of their professions,
who do not consider the extremes to which even good men may be carried,
when they allow one subject to take exclusive possession of their minds.
We do not doubt their sincerity, but we marvel at their delusion. They
seem to have been led by the mere impulse of feeling, and a blind
imitation of their predecessors in England, to a course of measures,
which, though rational under one set of circumstances, is the hight of
infatuation under another. The English abolitionists addressed
themselves to a community, which, though it owned no slaves, had the
power to abolish slavery, and was therefore responsible for its
continuance. Their object was to rouse that community to immediate
action. For this purpose they addressed themselves to the feelings of
the people; they portrayed in the strongest colors the misery of the
slaves; they dilated on the gratuitous crime of which England was guilty
in perpetuating slavery, and did all they could to excite the passions
of the public. This was the course most likely to succeed, and it did
succeed. Suppose, however, that the British parliament had no power over
the subject; that it rested entirely with the colonial Assemblies to
decide whether slavery should be abolished or not. Does any man believe
the abolitionists would have gained their object? Did they in fact make
converts of the planters? Did they even pretend that such was their
design? Every one knows that their conduct produced a state of almost
frantic excitement in the West India Islands; that so far from the
public feeling in England producing a moral impression upon the planters
favorable to the condition of the slaves, its effect was directly the
reverse. It excited them to drive away the missionaries, to tear down
the chapels, to manifest a determination to rivet still more firmly the
chains on their helpless captives, and to resist to the ut