“To my apprehension, the subject of slavery involves interests of greater moment to our welfare as a republic, and demands a more prudent and minute investigation than any other which has come before the American people since the Revolutionary struggle—­than all others which now occupy their attention.  No body of men on the face of the earth deserve their charities, and prayers, and united assistance so much as the slaves of this country; and yet they are almost entirely neglected.  It is true many a cheek burns with shame in view of our national inconsistency, and many a heart bleeds for the miserable African.  It is true examples of disinterested benevolence and individual sacrifices are numerous, particularly in the Southern States; but no systematic, vigorous, and successful measures have been made to overthrow this fabric of oppression.  I trust in God that I may be the humble instrument of breaking at least one chain, and restoring one captive to liberty; it will amply repay a life of severe toil.”  The causes of temperance and peace came in also for an earnest parting word, but they had clearly declined to a place of secondary importance in the writer’s regard.  To be more exact, they had not really declined, but the slavery question had risen in his mind above both.  They were great questions, but it was the question—­had become his cause.

Lundy, after his visit to Garrison at Bennington, started on a trip to Hayti with twelve emancipated slaves, whom he had undertaken to colonize there.  Garrison awaited in Boston the return of his partner to Baltimore.  The former, meanwhile, was out of employment, and sorely in need of money.  Never had he been favored with a surplusage of the root of all evil.  He was deficient in the money-getting and money-saving instinct.  Such was plainly not his vocation, and so it happened that wherever he turned, he and poverty walked arm in arm, and the interrogatory, “wherewithal shall I be fed and clothed on the morrow?” was never satisfactorily answered until the morrow arrived.  This led him at times into no little embarrassment and difficulty.  But since he was always willing to work at the case, and to send his “pride on a pilgrimage to Mecca,” the embarrassment was not protracted, nor did the difficulty prove insuperable.

The Congregational societies of Boston invited him in June to deliver before them a Fourth of July address in the interest of the Colonization Society.  The exercises took place in Park Street Church.  Ten days before this event he was called upon to pay a bill of four dollars for failure to appear at the May muster.  Refusing to do so, he was thereupon summoned to come into the Police Court on the glorious Fourth to show cause why he ought not to pay the amercement.  He was in a quandary.  He did not owe the money, but as he could not be in two places at the same time, and, inasmuch as he wanted very much to deliver his address before the Congregational Societies, and did