nothing but tremendously hard blows will ever split it open. Ah! John, replied the elder, I see thou understandest _how_ to do thy master’s work. Now, I believe this nation is _rotten at the heart_, and that nothing but the most tremendous blows with the sledge-hammer of abolition truth, could ever have broken the false rest which we had taken up for ourselves on the very brink of ruin. ‘Abolitionism, on the contrary, is a system of _coercion_ by public opinion.’ By this assertion, I presume thou ‘hast not been correctly informed’ as to the reasons which have induced abolitionists to put forth all their energies to rectify public opinion. It is _not_ because we wish to wield this public opinion like a rod of iron over the heads of slaveholders, to _coerce_ them into an abandonment of the system of slavery; not at all. We are striving to purify public opinion, first, because as long as the North is so much involved in the guilt of slavery, by its political, commercial, religious, and social connexion with the South, _her own citizens_ need to be converted. Second, because we know that when public opinion is rectified at the North, it will throw a flood of light from its million of reflecting surfaces upon the heart and soul of the South. The South sees full well at what we are aiming, and she is so unguarded as to acknowledge that ‘if she does not resist the danger in its inception, it will _soon_ become _irresistible_.’ She exclaims in terror, ‘the truth is, the _moral_ power of the world is against us; it is idle to disguise it.’ The fact is, that the slaveholders of the South, and their northern apologists, have been overtaken by the storm of free discussion, and are something like those who go down to the sea and do business in the great waters: ‘they reel to and fro, and stagger like a drunken man, and are at their wit’s end.’