[128] any such committee; having come to the opinion that the movement went on best without. Foster then interferes with the publication, and the publisher felt insulted and was offended, and a quarrel ensued.My part in it was to say to the Committee that they had no right to interfere, except as individuals, and no occasion, so far as I knew. They persisted. The Standard and Liberator friends became alarmed at my notions about organization, and espoused Foster's side of the small, local quarrel—made it a great one— and now it is all abroad, and you will have the pain and mortification of hearing about it, and the enemies here and everywhere will rejoice. If I were well and disposed to quarrel, it might lead to a revolution in the movement here. But I am sick, and shall leave the friends to do me any injustice their position may lead them to. Their mistake is in maintaining, in their moral movement, the forms and usages and principles of politics.1 It will assuredly prostrate them, Garrison and all, if they do not forsake it. Garrison, I think, would,2 but his city associates could not join him in it. I feel anxious that the friends abroad who have loved me should n't be misinformed and led to mistake my position. I wish, therefore, they would ask me to explain anything they may think needs it, in my doings or the publishing of the Herald. I think we were both doing worthily and disinterestedly in endeavoring to keep it clear from the destructive control of the nominal Committee of the Society.
The British friends of the cause had no difficulty in3 arriving at a clear judgment of the issue raised in New Hampshire;4 but not so a portion of the abolitionists (in Rhode Island particularly) whose personal attachment to5 Rogers was very warm. These not even the refusal of French to print in the Herald the overwhelmingly adverse6
