It was not popular rage, which he feared but popular apathy.

If he could goad the people to anger on the subject of slavery he would soon be rid of their apathy.

And so week after week he piled every sort of combustible material, which he was able to collect on board the _Liberator_ and lighting it all, sent the fiery messenger blazing among the icebergs of the Union.

Slaveholders were robbers, murderers, oppressors; they were guilty of all the sins of the decalogue, were in a word the chief of sinners.

At the same moment that the reformer denied their right of property in the slave, he attacked their character also, held them up in their relation of masters to the reprobation of the nation and of mankind as monsters of injustice and inhumanity.