e of
the very first to seek the side of Mr. Garrison, and pledge to the slave
his life and efforts,--a pledge which thirty years of devoted labors
have redeemed. If it has either merit or truth, they are due to no
legal learning recently added to our ranks, but to some of the old
and well-known pioneers. This claim has since received the fullest
investigation from Mr. Lysander Spooner, who has urged it with all his
unrivalled ingenuity, laborious research, and close logic. He writes
as a lawyer, and has no wish, I believe, to be ranked with any class of
anti-slavery men.

The influence of slavery on our Government has received the profoundest
philosophical investigation from the pen of Richard Hildreth, in his
invaluable essay on _Despotism in America_,--a work which deserves a
place by the side of the ablest political disquisitions of any age.

Even the vigorous mind of Rantoul, the ablest man, without doubt, of
the Democratic party, and perhaps the ripest politician in New England,
added little or nothing to the store-house of antislavery argument. *
* * His speeches on our question, too short and too few, are remarkable
for their compact statement, iron logic, bold denunciation, and the
wonderful light thrown back upon our history. Yet how little do they
present which was not familiar for years in our anti-slavery
meetings! Look, too, at the last great effort of the idol of so many
thousands,--Mr. Senator Sumner,--the discussion of a great national
question, of which it has been said that we must go back to Webster's
reply to Hayne, and Fisher Ames on the Jay treaty, to find its equal in
Congress,--praise which we might perhaps qualify, if any adequate report
were left us of some of the noble orations of Adams. No one can be blind
to the skilful use he has made of his materials, the consummate ability
with which he has marshalled them, and the radiant glow which his genius
has thrown over all. Yet, with the exception of his reference to the
antislavery debate in Congress in 1817, there is hardly a train of
thought or argument, and no single fact in the whole speech, which has
not been familiar in our meetings and essays for the last ten
years. * * *

The relations of the American Church to slavery, and the duties of
private Christians, the whole casuistry of this portion of the question,
so momentous among descendants of the Puritans,--have been discussed
with great acuteness and rare common-sense by Messrs. Garri