ciety will be wholly
revealed to him. But truth in the breast of a reformer as of others must
needs follow the great law of moral growth, first the blade, then the
ear, and then the full corn in the ear. It is enough that he has made
the tremendous step from gradual to immediate and unconditional
emancipation on the soil.

At this period he tested the disposition of slaveholders to manumit
their slaves. The Colonization Society had given it out that there was
no little desire on the part of many masters to set their slaves free.
All that was wanted for a practical demonstration in this direction was
the assurance of free transportation out of the country for the
emancipated slaves. Lundy had made arrangement for the transportation of
fifty slaves to Hayti and their settlement in that country. So he and
Garrison advertised this fact in the _Genius_, but they waited in vain
for a favorable response from the South--notwithstanding the following
humane inducement which this advertisement offered: "THE PRICE OF
PASSAGE WILL BE ADVANCED, and everything furnished of which they may
stand in need, until they shall have time to prepare their houses and
set in to work." No master was moved to take advantage of the
opportunity. This was discouraging to the believers in the efficacy of
colonization as a potent anti-slavery instrument. But Garrison was no
such believer. With unerring moral instinct he had from the start placed
his reliance "on nothing but the eternal principles of justice for the
speedy overthrow of slavery."

He obtained at this period an intimate personal knowledge of the free
colored people. He saw that they were not essentially unlike other
races--that there was nothing morally or intellectually peculiar about
them, and that the evil or the good which they manifested was the common
property of mankind in similar circumstances. He forthwith became their
brave defender against the common slanders of the times. "There is a
prevalent disposition among all classes to traduce the habits and morals
of our free blacks," he remarked in the _Genius_. "The most scandalous
exaggerations in regard to their condition are circulated by a thousand
mischievous tongues, and no reproach seems to them too deep or
unmerited. Vile and malignant indeed is this practice, and culpable are
they who follow it. We do not pretend to say that crime, intemperance,
and suffering, to a considerable extent, cannot be found among the free
blacks