The Pastoral Letter then dilates upon the appropriate sphere of woman, and the danger of her stepping into the wrong place. Quaker women had long been accustomed to preach in New England, and occasionally in Congregational meetinghouses, without alarming ecclesiastical bodies, but they were now preaching successfully in favor of immediate emancipation, and against the prejudice that fed the Colonization Society; and the clergy became alarmed.

When it is remembered that "the parochial limits of settled pastors" are intended to cover (if they do sometimes lack a little of it) the entire area of the Commonwealth-every foot of the soil in it-the modesty of the demand becomes as apparent as the condition of a people who should be led to recognize such "sacred and important rights." Whatever the pastor might preach, or omit preaching, his "rights are violated" if any one else is encouraged to lecture or preach! The religious "rights" of the community, if proportionately circumscribed to meet this demand, may be represented by a cypher -they utterly vanish away.

Whether it was too late in the day, or too early, to set up pretensions like these, it was certainly attempted at a very unfortunate moment. A small portion of the "prudence" so much commended, would have withheld the conservative clergy from broaching so exciting a topic. The great are not always wise.

If a portion of abolitionists have come to regard the insti tutions of Church and Clergy with unreasonable aversion, the reader may now see, as posterity will certainly see, the school in which they have been trained. If Christian institutions, if the Bible, if anything pertaining to true religion falls into temporary disrepute, a fearful weight of responsibility rests on the clerical bodies who have so recklessly and needlessly furnished the occasion. It would be difficult to fasten upon any class of abolitionists the charge of having been disrespectful towards the church and the clergy, until manifestations like these had appeared. Had the pastors manfully discharged their duty

in reproving the giant sin of the country, instead of waiting for the stones to cry out, they might have magnified their high calling, promoted the cause of religion, delivered their country from thraldom, and their own memories from merited disgrace.

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CHAPTER XXXVI.

PERSECUTIONS OF ABOLITIONISTS.

Ecclesiastical persecutions-La Roy Sunderland-Lewis Tappan-E. W. Goodwin— Presbyteries and Church Sessions-"Friends"-Charles Marriot and Isaac T. Hopper-Other modes of persecution-Principal victims-Benjamin LundyWilliam Lloyd Garrison-Miss Prudence Crandall-Dr. Reuben Crandall-George Storrs-Jonathan Walker-Elijah P. Lovejoy-John B. Mahan-Alanson Work -James E. Burr-George Thompson-Charles T. Torrey-William L. ChaplinMessrs. Drayton and Sayres.

NEITHER northern legislative enactments, nor riots, nor personal assaults, could prove of much permanent service in the work of suppressing free discussion and punishing deeds of mercy to the poor, without other and more permanent instrumentalities. These were furnished by the ecclesiastical machinery of the sects at the North, and the sanguinary slave code of the South. Whenever active abolitionists fell into the hands of either of these, they expected no mercy, or expected only to discover their mistake.

No persecutions of abolitionists have been perhaps so vexatious, so annoying, so exhausting, or, on the whole, so effective, as those suffered by some of the more active among them, in their church or ecclesiastical relations. Not that their anti-slavery principles and measures were, in very many cases, charged directly against them as heresies or crimes. It was not commonly the policy of their persecutors to pursue precisely that course. It was always easy to harass them with unfounded charges of disorderly or disorganizing conduct, and thus cripple, and harass, and disgrace, and discour age them. The trials of La Roy Sunderland, of Lewis Tappan,

and of E. W. Goodwin, were but specimens of the persecu tions of scores and hundreds, if not thousands, of less prominent, but equally faithful and abused men. The records of Presbyterian Church Sessions and Presbyteries, would alone furnish ample materials for a humiliating but instructive volume of such details, even in a very condensed form. Similar persecutions have been encountered all over the country in the walks of social and domestic life. The "gospel of deliverance to the captives" has "not brought peace upon the earth, but a sword"-" a man's foes have been those of his own household;" and if the "prophets" of emancipation are looking for "honor," it seems not likely to come from those of their "own country and kindred." Even those who are now preparing to "enter into their labors" have already learned the art and policy of disparaging them.

The vast powers wielded by clerical bodies, missionary boards, conventions, and managers and committees of benevolent societies, have been exerted to cripple and crush abolitionists who would persist in agitating the slave question.

These ecclesiastical annoyances and persecutions have not been confined to the sects whose general associated action has been found recorded on the side of slavery, or whose recognized leaders have labored to press the Bible into its support. Sects claiming the reputation of being decidedly anti-slavery -sects that do not allow slaveholding among their members, nor maintain any ecclesiastical connection with slaveholders, have opposed the agitation of the subject by anti-slavery societies, and have censured and even excommunicated their members for their activity in them. The Hicksite Friends, for example, in the City and State of New York, disowned two of their most estimable members, Charles Marriot of Athens, and Isaac T. Hopper of New York city, solely for that cause. The only excuse was the sanctimonious plea that "Friends" must not mingle with "the world," nor co-operate with other sects. The real fact was, that "Friends" in general had so "mingled with the world" in its commercial cupidity and its political servility, as to sympathize with

"other sects" in their hatred of active abolitionists. Their members can co-operate with their fellow-citizens of other sects, to elect slaveholding and slave-hunting Presidents of the United States, without fear of church censure. The "Friends" in New England are extensively and largely interested in the cotton manufacture, and like most of that class, are averse to an agitation which is offensive to the planters. And hence an earnest and active Quaker abolitionist loses caste with his sect.

It would be strange if there were not many apostacies under such trials. Yet unremitting persecution has proved less effective than a brief season of it, alternated with patronage, and flattery, and favor. It has been by these adroit appliances that the ranks of reformers, especially among clergymen and leading laymen, have been corrupted and thinned. There are many who withstood manfully the tempest of popular fury, and even the prospect of imprisonment, who have since fainted under the sunshine of political or ecclesiastical favor, or been laid asleep by the fireside of domestic quiet. But others have taken their places. "The last have been first, and the first last, for many are called, but few are chosen."

We will now notice some other forms of persecution, and in doing this, will briefly recapitulate some of the prominent cases, with the names of the victims.

BENJAMIN LUNDY was repeatedly assaulted in the streets of Baltimore, and once brutally beaten by Austin Woolfolk, a slave-trader, before any of the modern Anti-slavery Societies were organized. Mr. Lundy was a feeble man, a quiet, unresisting Quaker, but the "peculiar institutions" of Southern Chivalry provided no protection for him.

WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON'S imprisonment in Baltimore, and the violent assault upon his person, and his imprisonment in Boston, have been narrated already.-(See Chap. XXXII.)

MISS PRUDENCE CRANDALL, a pious and benevolent young lady, established and taught a school for colored pupils, at Canterbury, Conn. Through the influence of leading mem