successful engine
in the great work of reform. Private expostulations and individual
confessions were indeed sometimes made; but no systematic efforts were
adopted to give precision to the views or a bias to the sentiments of
the people." Such was the state of public morals and the state of public
sentiment up to the year 1826, when there occurred a change. This change
was brought about chiefly through the instrumentality of a Baptist city
missionary, the Rev. William Collier. His labors among the poor of
Boston had doubtless revealed to him the bestial character of
intemperance, and the necessity of doing something to check and put an
end to the havoc it was working. With this design he established the
_National Philanthropist_ in Boston, March 4, 1826. The editor was one
of Garrison's earliest acquaintances in the city. Garrison went after
awhile to board with him, and still later entered the office of the
_Philanthropist_ as a type-setter. The printer of the paper, Nathaniel
H. White and young Garrison, occupied the same room at Mr. Collier's.
And so almost before our hero was aware, he had launched his bark upon
the sea of the temperance reform. Presently, when the founder of the
paper retired, it seemed the most natural thing in the world, that the
young journeyman printer, with his editorial experience and ability,
should succeed him as editor. His room-mate, White, bought the
_Philanthropist_, and in April 1828, formally installed Garrison into
its editorship. Into this new work he carried all his moral earnestness
and enthusiasm of purpose. The paper grew under his hand in size,
typographical appearance, and in editorial force and capacity. It was a
wide-awake sentinel on the wall of society; and week after week its
columns bristled and flashed with apposite facts, telling arguments,
shrewd suggestions, cogent appeals to the community to destroy the
accursed thing. No better education could he have had as the preparation
for his life work. He began to understand then the strength of
deep-seated public evils, to acquaint himself with the methods and
instruments with which to attack them. The _Philanthropist_ was a sort
of forerunner, so far as the training in intelligent and effective
agitation was concerned, of the _Genius of Universal Emancipation_ and
of the _Liberator_. One cannot read his sketch of the progress made by
the temperance reform, from which I have already quoted, and published
by him in the _Phil