of Universal Emancipation.  “As the news of my imprisonment became extensively known,” he wrote, “and the merits of the case understood, not a mail rolled into the city but it brought me consolatary letters from individuals hitherto unknown to me, and periodicals of all kinds from every section of the Union (not even excepting the South), all uniting to give me a triumphant acquittal—­all severely reprehending the conduct of Mr. Todd—­and all regarding my trial as a mockery of justice.”  This unexpected result was one of those accidents of history, which “have laws as fixed as planets have.”

The prosecution and imprisonment of Garrison was without doubt designed to terrorize him into silence on the subject of slavery.  But his persecutors had reckoned without a knowledge of their victim.  Garrison had the martyr’s temperament and invincibility of purpose.  His earnestness burned the more intensely with the growth of opposition and peril.  Within “gloomy walls close pent,” he warbled gay as a bird of a freedom which tyrants could not touch, nor bolts confine: 

  “No chains can bind it, and no cell enclose,
  Swifter than light, it flies from pole to pole,
  And in a flash from earth to heaven it goes!”

or with deep, stern gladness sang he to “The Guiltless Prisoner” how: 

  “A martyr’s crown is richer than a king’s! 
  Think it an honor with thy Lord to bleed,
  And glory ’midst intensest sufferings;
  Though beat—­imprisoned—­put to open shame
  Time shall embalm and magnify thy name.”

“Is it supposed by Judge Brice,” the guiltless prisoner wrote from his cell, “that his frowns can intimidate me, or his sentence stifle my voice on the subject of African oppression?  He does not know me.  So long as a good Providence gives me strength and intellect, I will not cease to declare that the existence of slavery in this country is a foul reproach to the American name; nor will I hesitate to proclaim the guilt of kidnappers, slave abettors, or slaveowners, wheresoever they may reside, or however high they may be exalted.  I am only in the alphabet of my task; time shall perfect a useful work.  It is my shame that I have done so little for the people of color; yea, before God, I feel humbled that my feelings are so cold, and my language so weak.  A few white victims must be sacrificed to open the eyes of this nation, and to show the tyranny of our laws.  I expect and am willing to be persecuted, imprisoned, and bound for advocating African rights; and I should deserve to be a slave myself if I shrunk from that duty or danger.”  The story of the trial of William Lloyd Garrison, from which the above brave words are taken, fell into the hands of that noble man and munificent merchant, Arthur Tappan, of New York.  From the reading of it he rose “with that deep feeling of abhorrence of slavery and its abettors which every one must feel who is capable of appreciating the blessings of liberty,” and