[63] Hawes, Hartford, and found that he had come out as boldly on the subject, Thanksgiving Day, as he dare. He has since been requested to preach the sermon to the Free Church in Hartford. He told me [he] thought of drawing it up with more care, and, after preaching it there, give it to the public. I replied, I hoped he would if it was orthodox. He said, O yes, yes, he was true to the principles, but then he couldn't go exactly with all our movements; and intimated that he had taken some exceptions to them—just enough, to use his own expression, to ‘save his shins.’ The plain English of the whole of it, then, is this, that he— and he is but one of a hundred such —can't keep still any longer on the subject, but cannot bear to come out on the subject without taking sundry exceptions, just to ‘save their shins’ from the kicks we have had to take, as well as to seem to have some justification for their long and guilty silence. Winslow,1 I understand, is coming out also with his famous sermons. Others, I doubt not, will follow suit. In this state of things, it seems to me all-important that every such man who comes out should be reviewed without respect of his person; and where he is naked, let his nakedness be made visible. It is better to keep the rod over them, and make them hold still, than to have them come out mere go-betweenities. Still, while we show them no mercy, let us treat them with due respect, and acknowledge the good they say, and thank them for it, and at the same time make the public see how, by their contradictions, they eat and re-eat their own words. I intend, if Wright2 wishes it, to review Channing in the Quarterly Magazine.
W. L. Garrison to Henry E. Benson, at Boston.Brooklyn, December 15, 1835.3 The bundle of papers, via Worcester, was safely conveyed and put into my hands on Friday evening, and great was my4 surprise, as well as pleasure, to receive a copy of the Liberator.5 In my article on Mr. Cheever's sentence, you perceive I broached my ultra doctrines respecting reliance upon the civil arm and appeals to the law. Tracy will probably nibble at it,6 and perhaps start anew the cry of ‘French Jacobinism!’ but so be it. I am more and more convinced that the doctrine is inseparably connected with perfect Christian obedience.7
This text is part of:
W. L. Garrison to Henry E. Benson, at Boston.
1 Rev. Hubbard Winslow; ante, 1.478.
3 Ms.
6 Ed. Boston Recorder. Ante, 1.472.
7 The Rev. George B. Cheever, of Salem, Mass., had been convicted in June of libel for a temperance allegory entitled Deacon Giles's Distillery, for which he had previously been assaulted publicly (Lib. 5: 27). Mr. Garrison came to his support by reprinting the article in the Liberator (5: 32). For the subsequent stages in this cause celebre see Lib. 5.36, 56, 107, 112. An extract has already been made (ante, 1: 478) from Mr. Garrison's comments on Attorney-General Austin's argument at the June term. The article now in question (Lib. 5.199) was concerned with the same lawyer's argument on the appeal, on Nov. 4, 1835. In the course of it the recent victim of an atrocious mob declared—‘I believe that all those who “name the name of Christ,” and profess to be his followers, and to be willing to follow him through good and through evil report, through flood and fire, as lambs in the midst of wolves, ought never to trust in an arm of flesh for protection, but should wholly “cease from man” —ought never to prosecute, or imprison, or put to death, for any injury done to them by their enemies.’
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