For had he not with malice prepense put down the
"most glorious of Christian enterprises," and rebuked his own country in
the house of strangers as recreant to freedom? And when O'Connell in
Exeter Hall pointed the finger of scorn at America and made her a
by-word and a hissing in the ears of Englishmen, was it not at a meeting
got up to further the designs of this "misguided young gentlemen who has
just returned from England whither he has recently been for the sole
purpose as it would seem [to the _Commercial Advertiser_] of traducing
the people and institutions of his own country." Had he not caught up
and echoed back the hissing thunder of the great Irish orator:--"_Shame
on the American Slaveholders_! Base wretches should we shout in
chorus--base wretches, how dare you profane the temple of national
freedom, the sacred fane of Republican rites, with the presence and the
sufferings of human beings in chains and slavery!"
The noise of these treasons on a foreign shore, "deafening the sound of
the westerly wave, and riding against the blast as thunder goes," to
borrow O'Connell's graphic and grandiose phrases, had reached the
country in advance of Mr. Garrison. The national sensitiveness was
naturally enough stung to the quick. Here is a pestilent fellow who is
not content with disturbing the peace of the Union with his new
fanaticism, but must needs presume to make the dear Union odious before
the world as well.
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