Francis Jackson Garrison, William Lloyd Garrison, 1805-1879; the story of his life told by his children: volume 1

And thus George Thompson, in a lecture on ‘Slavery in the United States’ at Edinburgh (October 25, 1833):

Leave it to the Government, said some, and slavery will¹ soon be abolished. Why, in the Government, the slaveholders were omnipotent, and would not. Leave it to the other individual free States, said others. Why, they had no power. How then were they to propose to attack slavery?—what lever were they to use to overthrow it, and where would they take their stand? They should attack it with the same weapons by which the victory had been gained in this country, by the weapons of mercy, justice, truth, and love; they should overthrow it by the lever of public opinion; and they should take their stand upon the Declaration of Independence—upon the Constitution of the United States—liberty and equality, and that every man is equal in the sight of God.²

This purely moral agitation was, of course, calculated to work a political revolution in a country where the ruling power reposed on the ‘sum of all villanies’—a fact which made it appear to some of the English abolitionists a delicate matter to send over missionaries. ‘I hope our good friend Stuart,’ writes James Cropper to³ Mr. Garrison, ‘will be safely arrived in America before this time. I have taken no part in promoting missions to America. I did, however, contribute to the fund which is placed at Stuart's disposal. I am a little afraid of our stepping out of our proper place in paying agents to travel in the United States, but I am satisfied there is a degree of apathy from which it is needful the people in your country should by some means be aroused.’ To Cropper's correspondent the employment of such agents was as patriotic as his own propagandism in England. Thompson and Stuart in America were merely Exeter Hall transported and made visible—English opinion personified and brought home—a judgment and a censure no longer felt as afar off, but present and hourly delivered with burning eloquence. To invoke and enforce this censure without striving to remove the cause,