It is hard to see what ought to have been done under these circumstances by abolitionists. Some who were afterwards known as "Liberty men" set up an independent ticket, headed by a martyr to the cause. They had quite as much right to do this as Garrison had to refuse to vote. He had hitherto taken little responsibility for the proceedings of the national society; but when the annual meeting was held at New York in May, 1840, he brought on more than five hundred of his own adherents from New England, in order to pack the convention. Thus he secured the passage of a declaration that the independent nominations were "injurious to the cause" and ought not to be supported. Garrison has justly been compared to Luther, and this was like Luther at his worst. Most of the officers and members seceded and organised a rival society which did good work in sympathy not only with the Liberty men but with the Free Soilers; and these parties gained most of the new converts to abolitionism. In 1847 the _Liberator_ published without comment an estimate that it did not represent the views of one active abolitionist in ten; and a coloured clergyman of high ability, Dr. Garnett, declared in 1851 that the proportion was less than one per cent. Most of the clergymen who were friendly to Garrison before 1840 were thenceforth against him. So many pulpits were suddenly closed against the agitators, that one of them, named Foster, kept insisting on speaking in meeting without leave in various parts of New England. He was usually dragged out summarily, and often to the injury of his coat-tails, though never of his temper. Boston was one of the most strongly anti-slavery cities; but twenty pastors out of forty-four refused to asked the people to pray for a fugitive slave who was imprisoned illegally in 1842. Those who complied had comparatively little influence. The rural clergy in New England, New York, Michigan, and Northern Ohio, had much more sympathy with reform than their brethren to the southward, especially in large cities. Garrison's personal unpopularity in the churches had been much increased by his violent language against them, and also by his asserting the injustice of Sunday laws, as well as the right of women to speak for the slave. His position on these points will be considered later.