1 We ought not to be surprised, however, that the attendance of Miss Martineau at the anti-slavery meeting creates a stir among our opponents, for it is as if a thunderbolt had fallen upon their heads. I believe, could they have foreseen this event, to prevent its occurrence they would have permitted even George Thompson to address the ladies without interruption, and have chosen to sacrifice the honor and glory accruing from a mobocratic victory. It is thus that the wicked are taken in their own craftiness, and the counsels of the froward are carried headlong. Surely, it is better to trust in the Lord than to put confidence in princes. Well, it is announced that the great Dr. Channing has published his thoughts upon the subject of slavery! Of course, we must now all fall back, and ‘hide our diminished heads.’ The book I will not condemn until I peruse it; but I do not believe it is superior either in argument or eloquence to many of our own publications. However, I am heartily glad that he is now committed upon this subject; for, however cautiously and tenderly he may have handled it, if he does not soon have a Southern hornets' nest about his ears, then it will be because hornets have respect unto the persons of men! They will sting him unmercifully, and he will suffer greatly if he is not provided in advance with the genuine abolition panacea. . . . If the extract from the work [in the Christian Register] be a fair sample of the whole of it, it is weak and incoherent enough—indeed, that alone is enough to spoil a good book, especially a book upon moral reform. The Doctor says there are slaveholders who ‘deserve great praise.’ Why? Because they profess to ‘deplore and abhor the institution.’ So did all the slaveholders until they were compelled to tear off their hypocritical mask; and now they go in a body—synods, presbyteries, and all—in open advocacy of the bloody system! But the Doctor's meritorious slaveholders ‘believe that partial emancipation, in the present condition of society, would bring unmixed evil on bond and free.’ So do all of them—slave-drivers, slave-traders, and slave-robbers! But these good souls further believe, that ‘they are bound to continue the relation [what a nice, soft term!] until it shall be dissolved by comprehensive ’
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1 [57] reference is to Nathan Hale, whose offence has been surpassed in the second generation. The Rev. Edward Everett Hale, in a seventy years review of the course of the Boston Advertiser (Jan. 19, 1883), glories in its having been ‘pitiless in its denunciations of such foreign carpet-baggers as the Thompsons and Martineaus’!
The Century Company. , 1885-1889.
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