One spark of true love of Freedom--the feeblest real desire to impart it to the enslaved, would have overpowered, in his heart, this spirit of the clerical appeal, and forbade him to identify himself with any such effort to subvert the broad foundations of the cause or to exclude any who had borne the burden and heat of the earlier abolition day. Notwithstanding all the efforts of calumny, bigotry and tyranny, Mr. Garrison still led the van. There was no help for it. It was a necessity growing out of the nature of the case, and which could not be avoided, however much the foe might desire it, and the false friends labor to accommodate them. There is an efficacy in treacherous concealment, to “be-darken and confound the mind of man,” or these Parleys and Flatterwells must have discerned the philosophical impossibility. But, failing to do so, they went on with their secret devices. In all these efforts, the friends of the clerical appeal joined with great zeal. They had announced the intention of weeping in secret places, because of its ill success. They were better than their word; not only weeping, but laboring in secret places. Mr. Torrey, who had, in the mean time removed from Providence to Salem, was particularly active. He instituted a vigorous secret correspondence to facilitate the establishment of a new anti-slavery paper in Massachusetts. He was now the Secretary of the Essex Co. Society, and, as such, used all the influence in his power to misrepresent and injure the Liberator; he intimated that Mr. Garrison had become insufferably idle and negligent, that his paper was left to printer’s boys and _any body_ to fill up, that it was demoralizing in its tendency and miserably deficient in talent; and in conformity with these declarations, he instructed the agents of the county society to recommend other papers in the towns where they labored. Having done this, he urged the necessity of a new paper, because there was such a prejudice against the Liberator, that it was impossible to get it into sufficient circulation, even to advertise the county meetings. He was aided in sowing the new-paper seed, by Mr. Phelps and Mr. St. Clair. The latter will be recollected as the neophyte of the Massachusetts Annual Meeting of 1837. The apparent sincerity and heartiness of his appearance there had recommended him to an agency. His summary absolution of all the sins of the Liberator, past, present, _and to come_, was pardoned, as prompted by a good feeling, though too carelessly expressed.[2] It seemed impossible to believe that he was insincere, though certainly indiscreet.