41

LIFE AND TIMES OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS 193

what they would not themselves adventure to do in person. He is supposed
to have been well paid for the abomination.

"What a perversion, an abuse, an iniquity against the law of reciprocal
righteousness, to call thousands together, and get them, some certain ones,
to seem conspicuous and devoted for one sole and grand object, and then all
at once, with obliquity, open an avalanche on them for some imputed evil or
monstrosity, for which, whatever be the wound or injury inflicted, they were
both too fatigued and hurried with surprise, and too straightened for time, to
he properly prepared. I say it is a streak of meanness! It is abominable! On
this occasion Mr. Douglass allowed himself to denounce America and all its
temperance societies, together as a grinding community of the enemies of his
people; said evil, with no alloy of good, concerning the whole of us; was
perfectly indiscriminate in his severities; talked of the American delegates,
and to them, as if he had been our school-master, and we his docile and
dernted pupils: and launched his re,engeful missiles at our country without
une pallative, and as if not a Christian or a true anti-slavery man lived in the
whole of the United States. The fact is, the man has been petted, and flat-
tered, and used, and paid by certain abolitionists, not unknown to us, of the
ne plus ultra stamp, till he forgets himself; and, though he may gratify his
own impulses, and those of old Adam in others, yet sure I am that all this is
just the way to ruin his own influence, to defeat his own object, and to do
mischief—not good—to the very cause he professes to love. With the single
exception of one cold-hearted parricide, whose character I abhor, and whom
I will not name, and who has, I fear, no feeling of true patriotism or piety
within him, all the delegates from our country were together wounded and
indigniant. No wonder at it, I write freely. It was not done in a corner. It was
inspired, I believe from beneath, and not from above. It was adapted to re-
kindle on both sides of the Atlantic the flames of national exasperation and
war. And this is the game which Mr. Frederick Douglass and his silly patrons
are playing in England and in Scotland, and wherever they can find 'some
mischief still for idle hands to do,' I came here his sympathizing friend; I am
such no more, as I know him. My own opinion is increasingly that this spirit
must be exorciscd out of England and America before any substantial good
can be effected for the cause of the slave. It is adapted only to make bad
worse, and to inflame the passions of indignant millions to an incurable
resentment. None hut an ignoramus or a madman could think that this way
was that of the inspired apostles of the Son of God. It may gratify the feel-
ings of a self-deceived and malignant few, but it will do no good in any
direction—least of all to the poor slave! It is short-sighted, impulsive, parti-