One of the signers of the letter to Mr. Webster incautiously betrayed, I think, the open secret of the retainers when he said--"I don't care a damn how many slave States they annex!" This is a secret, because not avowed; open, because generally known, or at least believed, to be the sentiment of a strong party in Massachusetts. I am glad to have it also expressed; now the issue is joined, and we do not fight in the dark. It has long been suspected that some inhabitants of Boston were engaged in the slave-trade. Not long since, the brig "Lucy Anne," of Boston, was captured on the coast of Africa, with five hundred and forty-seven slaves on board. This vessel was built at Thomaston in 1839; repaired at Boston in 1848, and now hails from this port. She was commanded by one "Captain Otis," and is owned by one "Salem Charles." This, I suppose, is a fictitious name, for certainly it would not be respectable in Boston to extend slavery in this way. Even Mr. Winthrop is opposed to that, and thinks "a million swords would leap from their scabbards to oppose it." But it may be that there are men in Boston who do not think it any worse to steal men who were born free, and have grown up free in Africa, and make slaves of them, than to steal such as are born free in America, before they are grown up. If we have the Old Testament decidedly sustaining slavery, and the New Testament never forbidding it; if, as we are often told, neither Jesus nor his early followers ever said a word against slavery; if scarcely a Christian minister in Boston ever preaches against this national sin; if the Representative from Boston has no religious scruples against returning a fugitive slave, or extending slavery over a "hundred or a hundred thousand square miles" of new territory; if the great Senator from Massachusetts refuses to vote for the Wilmot Proviso, or reaffirm an ordinance of nature, and reënact the will of God; if he calls on us to return fugitive slaves "with alacrity," and demands of Massachusetts that she shall conquer her prejudices; if nine hundred and eighty-seven men in this vicinity, of lawful age,[9] are thankful to him for enlightening them as to their duty, and a professor of theology comes forward to sanction American slavery in the name of religion--why, I think Mr. "Salem Charles," with his "Captain Otis," may not be the worst man in the world, after all! Let us pity him also, as "A man and a brother." * * * * * Such is the crisis in our affairs; such the special issue in the general question between freedom and slavery; such the position of parties and of great men in relation to this question; such the foes to freedom in America.