Some of his countrymen, accordingly, conceived the plan of a national testimonial to the philanthropist, which should ensure to him during the rest of his life a competence.

A committee having this end in view was organized March 28, 1866, at the house of Dr. Henry I. Bowditch.  John A. Andrew, who was its chairman, wrote the address to the public, to which were appended the chief names in the politics and literature of the land.  Nearly two years afterward, on March 10, 1868, the committee were able to place in Mr. Garrison’s hands the handsome sum of thirty-one thousand dollars with a promise of possibly one or two thousand more a little later.  To the energy and devotedness of one man, the Rev. Samuel May, Jr., more than to any other, and perhaps than all others put together, this noble achievement was due.  The pioneer was deeply moved at the high and generous character of the recognition accorded his labors.  “Little, indeed, did I know or anticipate how prolonged or how virulent would be the struggle,” said he in his reply to the committee, “when I lifted up the standard of immediate emancipation, and essayed to rouse the nation to a sense of its guilt and danger.  But having put my hands to the plow, how could I look back?  For, in a cause so righteous, I could not doubt that, having turned the furrows, if I sowed in tears I should one day reap in joy.  But, whether permitted to live to witness the abolition of slavery or not, I felt assured that, as I demanded nothing that was not clearly in accordance with justice and humanity, sometime or other, if remembered at all, I should stand vindicated in the eyes of my countrymen.”  The names of John Bright, John Stuart Mill, William E. Foster, and Samuel Morley, among the contributors to the fund, lent to the testimonial an international character.

In May, 1867, Garrison went abroad the fourth time, and traveled in Great Britain and on the Continent.  Everywhere that he went he was received as an illustrious visitor and as a benefactor of mankind.  At a breakfast in London which “was intended to commemorate one of the greatest of the great triumphs of freedom, and to do honor to a most eminent instrument in the achievement of that freedom,” and at which were gathered the genius, the wealth, and aristocracy of England and Scotland, John Bright, who presided, welcomed the illustrious guest “with a cordiality which knows no stint and no limit for him and for his noble associates, both men and women,” and ventured to speak a verdict which he believed would be sanctioned by all mankind, viz., that “William Lloyd Garrison and his fellow-laborers in that world’s work—­are they not

  “On Fame’s eternal bead-roll worthy to be filed?”