To the surprise of the Massachusetts men, who _then_ could perceive no sufficient motive for such a course, the New York Committee declined to accept these terms. Were they suffering for the money? Why then did they not take the readiest and the best way to get it?--_through_ the Massachusetts Society,--not _over_ it? Did they love peace and unity? Why then for one moment hesitate? They were invited to send in their agents, and take any other means they might deem best, under the arrangement of the preceding June. What more ought brethren and honest men to desire? What more could be accomplished by _their_ plan, of going on as if the Massachusetts Society were not in existence? _One_ thing more it could not _fail_ to accomplish,--the destruction of the Massachusetts Society. Was it possible that the New York brethren had _aimed_ at that? _Were_ it so, they could not better have hit the mark than by coming at that painful moment, to envenom a financial embarrassment which, singly, could have been so easily met, by mingling it with the poisoned sources of difficulty that had just been laid bare. They came for money, at a moment when the state treasury was found empty--the state agents proved treacherous, the state energies bent upon working out a political demonstration in the eyes of the whole country. And because, under all these difficulties, a part of the money had not been paid when it became due, they refused to collect it, _with_ permission, for the mere pleasure, it seemed, of collecting it _without_ permission. If they were unwilling to acknowledge, even in form, the existence of the Massachusetts Society, what was the legitimate inference? Did the Committee really agree with the slaveholder, and his soul-guard from the truth,--the associations of the ministry, that the Massachusetts Society _ought_ to be destroyed? Massachusetts men deemed it a virtue to repel these thoughts, which the conduct of the New York Committee could not fail to suggest. They shrunk from the pain of beholding and weighing the evidence of a want of fraternal confidence, and devotion to the cause. They were doomed for this weakness, to feel soon, in their own persons, how much better it is to judge our fellows by _their_ deeds, than by our _own_ hopes or _fears_. FOOTNOTE: [4] For the terms of this contract and the occasion of its necessity, see pages 10 and 47. CHAPTER V. THE DENOUEMENT. What _we would think_, is not the question here. The affair speaks for itself, and clearest proofs.--SCHILLER.