it was
riveted to the centre. The wind blows, and the little popularity-hunting
head dodges this way and that, in endless fluctuation. Such is Congress,
or a great portion of it. It will point to the northwest heavens of
Liberty, whenever the breezes bear down irresistibly upon it, from the
regions of political fair weather. It will abolish slavery at the
Capitol, when it has already been doomed to abolition and death
everywhere else in the country. 'It will be in at the death.'"

Replying to the charge that the Abolitionists of the North were "secret"
in their movements and designs, he says:--

"'In secret!' Why, our movements have been as prominent and open as the
house-tops from the beginning. We have striven from the outset to write
the whole matter cloud-high in the heavens, that the utmost South might
read it. We have cast an arc upon the horizon, like the semicircle of
the polar lights, and upon it have bent our motto, 'Immediate
Emancipation,' glorious as the rainbow. We have engraven it there, on
the blue table of the cold vault, in letters tall enough for the reading
of the nations. And why has the far South not read and believed before
this? Because a steam has gone up--a fog--from New England's pulpit and
her degenerate press, and hidden the beaming revelation from its vision.
The Northern hierarchy and aristocracy have cheated the South."

He spoke at times with severity of slaveholders, but far oftener of those
who, without the excuse of education and habit, and prompted only by a
selfish consideration of political or sectarian advantage, apologized for
the wrong, and discountenanced the anti-slavery movement. "We have
nothing to say," said he, "to the slave. He is no party to his own
enslavement,--he is none to his disenthralment. We have nothing to say
to the South. The real holder of slaves is not there. He is in the
North, the free North. The South alone has not the power to hold the
slave. It is the character of the nation that binds and holds him. It
is the Republic that does it, the efficient force of which is north of
Mason and Dixon's line. By virtue of the majority of Northern hearts and
voices, slavery lives in the South!"

In 1840, he spent a few weeks in England, Ireland, and Scotland. He has
left behind a few beautiful memorials of his tour. His Ride over the
Border, Ride into Edinburgh, Wincobank hall, Ailsa Craig, gave his paper
an interest in the eyes of many who h