a Sewall,
and a host of others. All these men esteemed it their joy and honor to
be amongst the most odious of the contemptible handful referred to.
These were men of mind, of piety, of influence, of energy; men not to
be deterred from doing their duty by the harsh music of the birds of
ill omen, from the Upas Tree of Slavery, who sent forth their
croakings, by night and by day, to scare the nation from its
indispensable work of Justice and Truth--and yet these men are odious
and contemptible! Your agent, too, is contemptible--he was the agent
of the 'goodies' of Glasgow--and--his fair auditors could scarcely
believe what epithets were lavishly bestowed on him and them--yet
their agent, as contemptible as he was, was, perhaps, the only
Englishman, who had ever been honored as he had been by the President
of the United States of America. He who was so contemptible in the
eyes of the Americans--who was a most impetuous, and untameable, and
worthless animal--who was the representative of the 'goodies' and
superannuated maids and matrons of Glasgow--was honored by a notice
and a rebuke in the message to Congress of the President of the United
States! This looked much like being insignificant and contemptible! He
did not seek the honor which had been thus conferred upon him--it came
upon him unaware--but he had not therefore refused it. It was an honor
to be persecuted in the United States with the abolitionists of 1830.
And when their children, and their children's children looked back
upon these persecutions, they would exult and be proud to say they
were the sons, the grandsons, or the great grandsons of the Coxs, the
Jays, the Garrisons, the Tappans, and the Thompsons of England and
America. After alluding to the treatment he had experienced from the
New York Courier and Enquirer, Mr. T. said--let us bear these honors
meekly--when calumniated for truth's sake, let us be humble, while we
are joyful. One word more as to the odious handful. Seven-eights of
the Methodist Episcopal ministers in the New Hampshire Conference,
and seven-eights of the New England Conference were abolitionists. The
students of the colleges and institutions, academical and theological
of the country, known by the names of Lane Seminary, Oberlin
Institute, Western Reserve College, Oneida Institute, Waterville
College, Brunswick College, Amherst College, and the Seminaries of
Andover, were many of them in some, and all of them in others,
abolitionist