o no inconsiderable extent, doubtless, to the loose
business methods of the reformer and his partner. The _Liberator_ at the
beginning of its fourth year was struggling in a deep hole of financial
helplessness and chaos. Would it ever get out alive, or "SHALL THE
_LIBERATOR_ DIE?" burst in a cry of anguish, almost despair, from its
editor, so weak in thought of self, so supreme in thought of others.

This carelessness of what appertained to the things which concerned
self, and devotion to the things which concerned his cause, finds apt
and pathetic illustration in this letter to Samuel J. May in the summer
of 1834, when his pecuniary embarrassments and burdens were never harder
to carry:

"In reply to your favor of the 24th [July], my partner joins with me in
consenting to print an edition of Miss Crandall's [defence] as large as
the one proposed by you, at our own risk. As to the profits that may
arise from the sale of the pamphlet, we do not expect to make any; on
the contrary, we shall probably suffer some loss, in consequence of the
difficulty of disposing of any publication, however interesting or
valuable in itself. But a trial so important as Miss C.'s, involving
such momentous consequences to a large portion of our countrymen,
implicating so deeply the character of this great nation, ought not to
go unpublished, and _shall_ not while we have the necessary materials
for printing it."

It is interesting to note that the weekly circulation of the
_Liberator_, in the spring of 1834, was twenty-three hundred copies, and
that this number was distributed in Philadelphia, four hundred; in New
York, three hundred: in Boston, two hundred; in other parts of the free
States eleven hundred; and that of the remaining three hundred, one-half
was sent as exchange with other papers, and eighty of the other half
were divided equally between England and Hayti, leaving seventy copies
for gratuitous distribution. The colored subscribers to the paper were
to the whites as three to one.

There were several suggestions by sundry friends looking to the release
of the _Liberator_ from its embarrassments, and, to the relief of its
unselfish publishers, from the grinding poverty which its issue imposed
upon them. The most hopeful and feasible of them was the scheme of which
Garrison wrote his betrothed April 14, 1834: "I am happy to say," he
pours into her ears, "that it is probable the managers of the New
England Anti-Slavery Society