The clerical appeal was, in fact, an invitation to the leaders of the opposing host of clergymen, to come and take the direction of the Anti-Slavery cause. The former character of its signers as abolitionists--their confident tone, and the suddenness of the movement, drew general attention and remark. A lively sensation ensued throughout New England. The appellants reported that they were cheered on by nine tenths of their brother clergymen. This increased the agitation; for the abolitionists had found, from the beginning, their most active opponents among this class of men. Coming, as it did, immediately after the claim of the Mass. General Association of Ministers, for more respect and for the exclusion of agitating topics, the appeal identified its originators with the opposing ministry, and disjoined them from abolitionists. It was already seen of all, that this new principle of suppressing the truth when the truth gives offence, would, if generally adopted, completely extinguish the Anti-Slavery cause. Merchants, who had received hints that they were to be hissed off ’Change, for bringing their principles into daily practice,--lawyers, whose clients had deserted them in disgust when the pictures of kneeling slaves found room in their places of business,--women, who had been proscribed from their respective social circles for making a morning call the medium of presenting a petition,--all perceived that this case was the parallel of their own, and demanded of a clergyman that he should resist _his_ temptations to a sinful neglect of duty as well as themselves. They also exclaimed against the unworthy idea of yielding up, on demand, those whose very faithfulness was the origin of all the outcry. A whisper was circulated by the friends of the clerical appeal, that struggle was useless, that they were sustained not only _without_ but _within_ the camp, that the Executive Committee at New York did not disapprove of their doings, and that it had been decided at head quarters “_to cast off Garrison_.” This facilitated the general movement of every eye to New York. Societies and individuals loudly protested against the treachery to the cause, the treachery to their own religious principles of action, and the treachery to their comrades of which the appeal was the vehicle.--The religious world, through all its various organs of communication with the universal public, set up a shout of triumph. From Maine to the Potomac, and from the Atlantic to the Ohio, the “Appeal” was the subject of conversation with all to whom the name of abolition was familiar. The Anti-Slavery editors in every state, discerned the spiritual peril as clearly as if it had been a combat before the bodily eye, and all spoke out for the right, except the Emancipator, the organ of the Committee at New York, and James G. Birney, then editor of the Philanthropist in Cincinnati. _His_ misapprehension of the case was excused by