Thou art altogether under a mistake, if thou supposest that our ‘main principle of action’ is the successful effort of abolitionists in England, in reference to the abolition of the slave-trade; for I hesitate not to pronounce the attempts of Clarkson and Wilberforce, at that period of their history, to have been a _complete failure_; and never have the labors of any philanthropists so fully showed the inefficacy of halfway principles, as have those of these men of honorable fame. The doctrines now advocated by the American Anti-Slavery Society, were not advanced by the abolitionists of that day. _They_ were _not_ immediate abolitionists, but just such gradualists as thou art even now. If I supposed that our labors in the cause of the slave would produce _no better_ results than those of these worthies, I should utterly despair. I need not remind thee, that they bent all their energies to the annihilation of the slave-trade, under the impression that _this_ was the mother of slavery; and that after toiling for twenty years, and obtaining the passage of an act to that effect, the result was a mere _nominal_ abolition; for the atrocities of the slave-trade are, if possible, _greater_ now than ever. I will explain what I mean. A friend of mine one evening last winter, heard a conversation between two men, one of whom had, until recently, been a slave-trader. He had made several voyages to the coast of Africa, and said that once his vessel was chased by an English man of war, and that, in order to avoid a search and the penalty of death, he threw every slave overboard; and when his companion expressed surprise and horror at such a wholesale murder, ‘Why,’ said the trader, ‘it was the fault of the English; they had no business to make a law to hang a man on the yard arm, if they caught him with slaves in his ship.’ He intimated that it was not an uncommon thing for the captains of slavers thus to save their lives.[1] Where, then, I ask, is this glorious success of which we _hear_ so much, but _see_ so little?