A sudden light burst upon the meeting. All this whole long day’s labored ringing of changes upon “dollars”--“contract”--“non-fulfilment”--“null and void”--all the foregone course of the Committee,--it was only a pretence, then, for keeping hostile agents in the State to work the Society’s destruction, under pretence of obtaining money! This debt of a few thousand dollars--men now saw why the wound it had made should be so dangerous. It was like the scratch of a poisoned weapon--slight, but possibly mortal. Rodney French, of New Bedford, informed the meeting of the manner in which the funds of abolitionists had been necessarily absorbed; those of the clear-sighted, in sustaining the cause against the insidious attacks it had been undergoing--those of the blinded, in unsuspectingly co-operating with the disguised enemy. “Had this paper been presented in its true colors,” said he, “no funds would have been swallowed up by it in our county of Bristol. But men have been deceived, and they are now finding it out. Let me beseech our National Committee to change the ground they have taken. I do entreat them to meet us like brothers, and accede to this resolution. It is an olive-branch. The money will easily be raised by this harmonious co-operation--confidence will be preserved, and the slave in his chains will rejoice.” Abby Kelly, the delegate from Millbury, followed in the same strain. “Let us even make ourselves beggars,” she said, “for the slave, who is denied the poor privilege of begging!” and she pledged herself to pay fifty dollars of the amount necessary to be raised, and her town of Millbury three times that sum. John A. Collins, the General Agent of the Massachusetts Society, stepped upon the platform, with securities to the amount of seven hundred dollars, in his hands, and begged Mr. Birney, who had risen to speak, to give way for a moment, that he might announce them to the meeting. Mr. Birney waved him aside--“We do not want your pledges!” and proceeded to reply to Rodney French.--“If the gentleman supposes that I will be the bearer of such a proposition as the one contained in this resolution, to my colleagues at New York, let me tell him that he has altogether mistaken my character.” No more remained to be said. Wendell Phillips immediately withdrew the resolution so decisively repulsed. Mr. Tappan commented with severity upon the “disgraceful scene he had witnessed,” and counselled a division in the Society, saying that were he resident in Massachusetts as he was in New York, he should endeavor to effect it. A division in the Society, because the Society had determined, for the slave’s sake, _to continue to exist_; and had sustained its Board of Managers in their efforts for its preservation! here, then, was another layman, ready to do the bidding of the ministry in breaking up the Massachusetts Society. He _might_ not be doing it intentionally, but _doing_ it men saw he was, by this counsel.