The above letter so fully embodies my view of the state of the Society in reference to the anti-slavery cause, that I shall think it needless, after a few general observations, again recur to this subject.  I feel bound to acknowledge that this public mode of making my sentiments known was disapproved by some Friends; yet of all the objections that were made to the proceeding, none tended to impugn the accuracy of my representation of the existing state of things.  This is approved by some, and deplored by others, but my statement has not been denied by any.  In consequence of a remonstrance made to me on special grounds in the kindest and most Christian manner by two beloved friends, I felt called upon to subject my motives and conduct, in issuing such an address, to deliberate reconsideration; and the result was, that I not only felt myself clear of just censure, but that in no other way could I have discharged my duty according to my own interpretation of its dictates.  Of other objectors, I may add, that simply to enumerate their reasons, stated to me in private conference, would be the severest public animadversion that could be made, either on the individuals themselves, or on the Society whose views they professed to represent.

In the present state of this great controversy, the abolitionists may justly say, “he that is not with us, is against us,” while the pro-slavery party can witness, “he that is not against us, is on our side.”  Hence the praise bestowed on the neutrality of the Society of Friends by the great slave-holding senator, Henry Clay.  Hence also the suspicious compliments of the late President Van Buren, the first act of whose administration was a pledge to refuse his signature to any bill for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia.  I fear it is undeniable that in the last eight years the collective influence of the Society has been thrown into the pro-slavery scale, and this notwithstanding the existence of much diffused and passive sympathy and right feeling on behalf of the slave, in the breasts of probably a large majority of individual members.  The abolitionists of the United States have been treated by too many influential Friends, as well as by the leading professors of other denominations, as a party whose contact is contamination; yet to a bystander it is plainly obvious that the true grounds of offence are not always those ostensibly alleged, but the activity, zeal, and success with which they have cleared themselves of participation in other men’s sins, and by which they have condemned the passive acquiescence of a society making a high profession of anti-slavery principles.  I do not intend to defend all the proceedings of the anti-slavery societies.  That they have sometimes erred in judgment and action,—­that they have had unworthy men among their members, I have little doubt.  But, the same objections might have been raised to the old anti-slavery societies, in which the leading Friends of the United States