The first attempt to destroy antislavery principles was by means of mobs. Mobs seldom take place in a community unless where the upper stratum of society and the lower are in sympathetic opposition to some struggling minority. Then the lower class takes its convictions from the higher, and regards itself as the hand executing what the head thinks ought to be done. Respectability denounces the victim, and the rabble hastens to take vengeance on him. Even a mob cannot act efficiently unless inspired by ideas; and these it must receive from some higher source. So it was when Priestley was mobbed at Birmingham; so it was when Wesley and his friends were mobbed in all parts of England. So it was also in America when the office of the "Philanthropist" was destroyed in Cincinnati; when halls and churches were burned in Philadelphia; when Miss Crandall was mobbed in Connecticut; when Lovejoy was killed at Alton. Antislavery meetings were so often invaded by rioters, that on one occasion Stephen S. Foster is reported to have declared that the speakers were not doing their duty, because the people listened so quietly. "If we were doing our duty," said he, "they would be throwing brick-bats at us." These demonstrations only roused and intensified the ardor of the Abolitionists, while bringing to their side those who loved fair play, and those in whom the element of battle was strong. Mobs also were an excellent advertisement for the Antislavery Society; and this is what every new cause needs most for its extension. Every time that one of their meetings was violently broken up, every time that any outrage or injury was offered to the Abolitionists, all the newspapers in the land gave them a gratuitous advertisement by conspicuous notices of the event. So the public mind was directed to the question, and curiosity was excited. The antislavery conventions were more crowded from day to day, their journals were more in demand, and their plans and opinions became the subject of conversation everywhere.