comeouters” made the trembling South demand the Fugitive Slave Law, and the Fugitive Slave Law provoked Mrs. Stowe to the good work of “Uncle Tom.”  That is something!  Let me say, in passing, that you will nowhere find an earlier or more generous appreciation, or more flowing eulogy, of these men and their labors, than in the columns of the Liberator.  No one, however feeble, has ever peeped or muttered, in any quarter, that the vigilant eye of the Pioneer has not recognized him.  He has stretched out the right hand of a most cordial welcome the moment any man’s face was turned Zionward.

I do not mention these things to praise Mr. Garrison; I do not stand here for that purpose.  You will not deny—­if you do, I can prove it—­that the movement of the Abolitionists converted these men.  Their constituents were converted by it.  The assault upon the right of petition, upon the right to print and speak of slavery, the denial of the right of Congress over the District, the annexation of Texas, the Fugitive Slave Law, were measures which the anti-slavery movement provoked, and the discussion of which has made all the Abolitionists we have.  The antislavery cause, then, converted these men; it gave them a constituency; it gave them an opportunity to speak, and it gave them a public to listen.  The antislavery cause gave them their votes, got them their offices, furnished them their facts, gave them their audience.  If you tell me they cherished all these principles in their own breasts before Mr. Garrison appeared, I can only say, if the anti-slavery movement did not give them their ideas, it surely gave the courage to utter them.

In such circumstances, is it not singular that the name of William Lloyd Garrison has never been pronounced on the floor of the United States Congress linked with any epithet but that of contempt!  No one of those men who owe their ideas, their station, their audience, to him, have ever thought it worth their while to utter one word in grateful recognition of the power which called them into being.  When obliged, by the course of their argument, to treat the question historically, they can go across the water to Clarkson and Wilberforce—­yes, to a safe salt-water distance.  As Daniel Webster, when he was talking to the farmers of Western New York, and wished to contrast slave labor and free labor, did not dare to compare New York with Virginia—­sister States, under the same government, planted by the same race, worshipping at the same altar, speaking the same language—­identical in all respects, save that one in which he wished to seek the contrast; but no; he compared it with Cuba—­the contrast was so close!  Catholic—­Protestant; Spanish—­Saxon; despotism—­municipal institutions; readers of Lope de Vega and of Shakespeare; mutterers of the Mass—­children of the Bible!  But Virginia is too near home!  So is Garrison!  One would have thought there was something in the human breast which would sometimes break through policy.