only one of the friends of
the _Liberator_ who grieves over your 'more anon' and 'more next
week'--which 'anon' and 'next week' never arrive.

"Then we complain that your editorials are too often wanting, or else
such, from apparent haste, as those who love your fame cannot wish to
see; that important topics, which you feel to be such, are too often
either entirely passed over or very cursorily treated, and important
moments like the present neglected....

"We have our suspicions, too, that good friends have been disaffected by
the neglect of their communications; but of this we can only speak by
conjecture. In short, it appears to those who are your warmest friends
and the stanchest supporters of the paper, that you might make the
_Liberator_ a more powerful and useful instrumentality than it is,
powerful and useful as it is, by additional exertions on your part. It
is very unpleasant to hear invidious comparisons drawn between the
_Liberator_ and _Emancipator_ with regard to the manner of getting it
up, and to have not to deny but to excuse them--and we knowing all the
time that you have all the tact and technical talent for getting up a
good newspaper that Leavitt has, with as much more, intellectual ability
as you have more moral honesty, and only wanting some of his (pardon me)
industry, application, and method."

Garrison, to his honor, did not allow the exceeding candor of his mentor
to disturb their friendship. The pioneer was not wholly without defence
to the impeachment. He might have pleaded ill health, of which he had
had _quantum suf._ since 1836 for himself and family. He might have
pleaded also the dissipation of too much of his energies in consequence
of more or less pecuniary embarrassments from which he was never wholly
freed; but, above all, he might have pleaded his increasing activity as
an anti-slavery lecturer. His contributions to the movement against
slavery were of a notable character in this direction, both in respect
of quantity and quality. He was not alone the editor of the _Liberator_,
he was unquestionably besides one of the most effective and interesting
of the anti-slavery speakers--indeed in the judgment of so competent an
authority as James Russell Lowell, he was regarded as the most effective
of the anti-slavery speakers. Still, after all is placed to his credit
that can possibly be, Quincy's complaints would be supported by an
altogether too solid basis of fact. The pioneer was m