predecessor. The moralist looked on doubtfully--the whole community
esteemed the enterprise desperate. Mountains of prejudice, overtopping
the Alps, were to be beaten down to a level--strong interest, connected
by a thousand links, severed--new habits formed; Every house, and almost
every individual, in a greater or less degree, reclaimed. Derision and
contumely were busy in crushing this sublime project in its
birth--coldness and apathy encompassed it on every side--but our
predecessor, nevertheless, went boldly forward with a giant's strength
and more than a giant's heart--conscious of difficulties and perils,
though not disheartened, armed with the weapons of truth--full of
meekness, yet certain of a splendid victory--and relying on the promises
of God for the issue." What an inestimable object-lesson to Garrison was
the example of this good man going forth singlehanded to do battle with
one of the greatest evils of the age! It was not numerical strength, but
the faith of one earnest soul that is able in the world of ideas and
human passions to remove mountains out of the way of the onward march of
mankind. This truth, we may be sure, sunk many fathoms deep into the
mind of the young moralist. And no wonder. For the results of two years
agitation and seed sowing were of the most astonishing character. "The
change which has taken place in public sentiment," he continues, "is
indeed remarkable ... incorporated as intemperance _was_, and still
_is_, into our very existence as a people.... A regenerating spirit is
everywhere seen; a strong impulse to action has been given, which,
beginning in the breasts of a few individuals, and then affecting
villages, and cities, and finally whole States, has rolled onward
triumphantly through the remotest sections of the republic. As union and
example are the levers adopted to remove this gigantic vice, temperance
societies have been rapidly multiplied, many on the principle of entire
abstinence, and others making it a duty to abstain from encouraging the
distillation and consumption of spirituous liquors. Expressions of the