DEAR FRIEND,--I regret that circumstances beyond my control will not
allow of my attendance at the annual meeting of the New England Anti-
Slavery Society.

I need not say to the members of that society that I am with them, heart
and soul, in the cause of abolition; the abolition not of physical
slavery alone, abhorrent and monstrous as it is, but of that intellectual
slavery, the bondage of corrupt and mistaken opinion, which has fettered
as with iron the moral energies and intellectual strength of New England.

For what is slavery, after all, but fear,--fear, forcing mind and body
into unnatural action? And it matters little whether it be the terror of
the slave-whip on the body, or of the scourge of popular opinion upon the
inner man.

We all know how often the representatives of the Southern division of the
country have amused themselves in Congress by applying the opprobrious
name of "slave" to the free Northern laborer. And how familiar have the
significant epithets of "white slave" and "dough-face" become!

I fear these epithets have not been wholly misapplied. Have we not been
told here, gravely and authoritatively, by some of our learned judges,
divines, and politicians, that we, the free people of New England, have
no right to discuss the subject of slavery? Freemen, and no right to
suggest the duty or the policy of a practical adherence to the doctrines
of that immortal declaration upon which our liberties are founded!
Christians, enjoying perfect liberty of conscience, yet possessing no
right to breathe one whisper against a system of adultery and blood,
which is filling the whole land with abomination and blasphemy! And this