CHAPTER IX.
AGITATION AND REPRESSION.
William Lloyd Garrison's return from his English mission was signalized by two closely related events, viz., the formation of the New York City Anti-Slavery Society, and the appearance of the first of a succession of anti-slavery mobs in the North.

The news of his British successes had preceded him, and prepared for him a warm reception on the part of his pro-slavery countrymen.

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.

And his return, what is it to be but the signal for increased agitation on the slavery question.