Passed round in turn from mouth to mouth;

If any ism should arise,

They look on it with constable's eyes,

Tie round its neck a heavy athe-,

And give it kittens' hydropathy.

This trick with other (useful very) tricks
Is laid to the Babylonian meretrix,

But 't was in vogue before her day
Wherever priesthoods had their way,

And Buddha's Popes with this struck dumb

The followers of Fi and Fum.

Well, if the world with prudent fear

Pays God a seventh of the year,
And as a Farmer, who would pack
All his religion in one stack,

For this world works six days in seven
And on the seventh works for Heaven,
Expecting, for his Sunday's sowing,
In the next world to go a-mowing
The crop of all his meeting-going;-
If the poor Church, by power enticed,
Finds none so infidel as Christ,
Quite backward reads his Gospel meek,
(As 't were in Hebrew writ, not Greek,)
Fencing the gallows and the sword
With conscripts drafted from his word,
And makes one gate of Heaven so wide
That the rich orthodox might ride
Through on their camels, while the poor
Squirm through the scant, unyielding door,
Which, of the Gospel's straitest size,

Is narrower than beadneedles' eyes,

What wonder World and Church should call
The true faith atheistical?

CHAP. VI. 1846.

Lib. 16:82, 167.

Geo. N.
Briggs,

Wm. Slade.

Lib. 16: 87,

90, 91, 113.

Ante, p. 139.

MS. Sept. 30, 1846, Jackson to W. L. G.

As some men do, for Right or Wrong.
But for this subject (long and vext)
I must refer you to my next,

As also for a list exact

of goods with which the Hall was packed.1

The author of the 'Biglow Papers' had already begun that inimitable satire of the national crime against Mexico, marked, so far, by Taylor's military successes at Matamoras and Monterey. The demoralization which war immediately produces as a mere status, was lamentably shown by the compliance of the Whig governors Briggs and Slade (of Massachusetts and Vermont respectively) with the President's request for a State call for volunteers. This action did not prevent the party from renominating Briggs, nor did Robert C. Winthrop's acceptance of the war afford a sufficient handle to the Conscience Whigs (as Charles Francis Adams denominated those who were not Cotton Whigs) to deprive him of a renomination. The Cotton Whigs swept the State. One heard Daniel WebLib. 16:182. ster proclaim in Faneuil Hall: "I am for the Constitution as our fathers left it to us, and standing by it and dying by it." But also one heard John Quincy Adams, from his Lib. 16: 194. home in Quincy, deny that there was anything left to stand by: "The Constitution of the United States - stat magni nominis umbra." This quotation, said the editor of Lib. 16:194. the Liberator, "indicates pretty clearly the position and feelings of this venerable statesman in regard to the American Union. Then if it be only a shadow that is left to us, it is at best but a mockery, and ought not to be treated as a reality. . . Let Daniel Webster, the greatest and meanest of his countrymen, exhaust his powers of eulogy upon it, if he will: the effort will but

1 Referring to her husband's Hudibrastic production, Maria Lowell wrote from Cambridge to Maria Mott Davis (MS. Jan. 8, 1847): "I wonder if you enjoyed his description of the Fair as much as I did. I saw Garrison the other day, and he seemed to be especially pleased with it, and the account of Stephen Foster delighted him. Of that and Maria Chapman he spoke most particularly. Miller made one error, and only one, in his copy, and that was 'sweet' instead of 'swift' eyes. Mrs. Chapman's eyes are not sweet, but swift expresses exactly their rapid, comprehensive glance."

1846.

render his character base and contemptible with posterity. CHAP. VI. What the people need is a new government- a free government no slavery-no guaranties to men-st alers'NO UNION WITH SLAVEHOLDERS!'"

We might end here, if it were not instructive to remark

17:14.

on Liberty Party endorsement of the Mexican War, even Lib. 16:115; Gamaliel Bailey, in his Philanthropist, praying for the safety of the "noble" Taylor and his "brave army." There were other proofs that the party was in a bad way. In the spring of 1846 one of its thirty organs affirmed that "its present position is inaction—a perfect standstill." Lib. 16:57. Almost "at a dead stand" was William Goodell's report of progress, speaking both for New York and for Massachusetts. In Maine the State Convention admitted that the party there merely held its own, and looked forward to "certain death" for the party at large if the stationary stage were not quickly escaped - Joshua Leavitt himself Lib. 16:57. being present, and discounting the impending catastrophe by denying that the party and the ballot-box were the sole means of abolishing slavery. Bailey gave a discouraging account of the Ohio section, and predicted that all would be over with it if it manifested no strength in the coming gubernatorial election. Gerrit Smith lamented in New Lib. 16:77. York a falling away on all sides, and W. L. Chaplin and J. C. Jackson confirmed his statements. Only one dollar was raised to ten formerly. Edmund Quincy judged it at Lib. 16: 174, this time to be on its last legs; and the fall elections showed that it could send only five Representatives out of Lib. 16:194. 232 to the Massachusetts lower House, polling a total vote of about 10,000. In New York it cast but 12,000 votes, against 16,000 in 1844. Quincy was quite right in assuring Webb that

"There are many more A. S. Whigs and Democrats than Third Party men, and many more Whig papers, especially, which are more thoroughly anti-slavery than any of the Third Party ones. There is not a Third Party paper that compares in thoroughness and usefulness with the Boston Whig, or even the N. Y. Tribune. And they have not a man who comes near Charles

Cf. ante,

2:310.

175.

Lib. 17: 11. Lib. 16:194.

MS. Mar.

28, 1847. Cf. Lib.

17:170.

CHAP. VI.

1846.

F. Adams (son of J. Q. A.), editor of the Whig, Charles Sumner,
J. G. Palfrey, S. G. Howe, Stephen C. Phillips, and others of the
A. S. Whigs, in point of character, talent, or social standing.
These gentlemen are high-minded, honorable, well-educated
men, who would compare favorably with any public men you
have in Parliament. And they have actually sacrificed political
prospects and caste by their A. S. course, which is more than can
be said of a single Third Party man
because I know of none

who had anything of the sort to lose. Yet we cannot admit
these men though so much better abolitionists, and so many
more of them to be the real thing, any more than the Third
Party men, as long as, like them, they are ready to swear to
support the U. S. Constitution and to perform its pro-slavery
provisions."

EARL

CHAPTER VII.

FIRST WESTERN TOUR.- 1847.

MS. Mar.
8, 1847, J.
Elizabeth
Jones to

W. L.

G.

ARLY in 1847, Mr. Garrison was solicited by the abolitionists of Ohio to visit their section of the country; and in the Liberator of March 19 he gave notice that he would spend the month of August in that State. Lib. 17:46. This decision led to numerous invitations from friends in Central New York, as well as in Pennsylvania, along the two lines of Western travel. The programme, as finally made up, chose the Southern route for the outward trip, and the Northern for the homeward.

MSS. Feb.
28, 1847,
Charlotte G.
Coffin to

H. G.;
Mar. 23, O.
A. Bowe to

W. L. G.
Lib. 17: 122.

Lib. 17:2,

10, 22, 26, 30, 42, 46, 207.

The intervening months were spent in the usual manner -in editorial drudgery, in occasional lecturing, in attendance at the three great anniversaries in Boston and New York. Opposition to the Mexican War, and reiterated appeals for a peaceable dissolution of the Union, were the regular anti-slavery work of the year, to which was added support of the Wilmot Proviso, or the attempt in Congress Lib. 17:193. to ensure freedom to the territory certain to be acquired, by force or purchase, of Mexico. In Massachusetts, littlewas needed to maintain the Legislature in its attitude of Lib. 17:14, aversion to the war, or to procure its endorsement of the Proviso; but to disunion it of course turned a cold Lib. 17:58. shoulder.

As usual, too, Mr. Garrison's lecture topics embraced religion and peace as well as abolition; and in the philanthropic anniversary month we have a glimpse of him amid kindred spirits. The Rev. Samuel May, Jr.,1 writes to Mary Carpenter from Boston, May 29, 1847:

1 Mr. May-a Unitarian clergyman residing at Leicester, Mass., and universally esteemed and beloved in his own denomination; a cousin of S. J.

74.