I agreed to do so, and the _Visiter_ explained that it had been mistaken
in saying that both or either of the two Riddles would aid in returning
fugitives. They both scorned the business, and Robt. M., would cut off
his right hand, rather than engage in it. He only meant that other
people should do what would degrade him. He was not a good citizen, and
did not intend to be. As for his Reverence, he would shirk his Christian
duties; would not pray by that lamppost, or any other lamp-post, for the
success of slave-catchers. He had turned his back upon Paul, and had
fallen from grace since preaching his famous sermon. The gentlemen had
been accredited with a patriotism and piety of which they were
incapable, and a retraction was necessary; but if any other more
patriotic politician or divine, further advanced in sanctification would
send their names to the _Visiter_, it would notify the South.

In answering Bible arguments, as to the righteousness of the Fugitive
Slave Bill, the main dependence of _the Visiter_ was Deuteronomy xxiii:
15 and 16:

"Thou shalt not deliver unto his master, the servant which is escaped
from his master unto thee.

"He shall dwell with thee, even among you, in that place where he shall
choose, in one of thy gates, where it liketh him best, thou shalt not
oppress him."

That old Bible, in spite of pro-slavery interpreters, proved to be the
great bulwark of human liberty.

In 1852, Slavery and Democracy formed that alliance to which we owe the
Great Rebellion. The South became solid, and Whigs had no longer any
motive for catching slaves.

CHAPTER XXIX.

BLOOMERS AND WOMAN'S RIGHTS CONVENTIONS.

The appearance of _The Visiter_ was the signal for an outbreak, for
which I was wholly unprepared, and one which proved the existence of an
eating cancer of discontent in the body politic. Under the smooth
surface of society lay a mass of moral disease, which suddenly broke out
into an eruption of complaints, from those who felt themselves oppressed
by the old Saxon and ecclesiastical laws under which one-half the people
of the republic still lived.

In the laws governing the interests peculiar to men, and those affecting
their interests in common with woman, great advance had been made during
the past six centuries, but those regarding the exclusive interests of
women, had remained in _statu quo_, since King Alfred the Great and the
knights of his Round Table fell asleep. The anti-negr