I am no blind partisan of Charles Sumner. I have often differed from him in opinion. I regretted deeply the position which he thought it his duty to take during the late presidential campaign. He felt the atmosphere about him thick and foul with corruption and bribery and greed; he saw the treasury ringed about like Saturn with unscrupulous combinations and corporations; and it is to be regretted more than wondered at if he struck out wildly in his indignation, and that his blows fell sometimes upon the wrong object. But I did not intend to act the part of his apologist. The twenty years of his senatorial life are crowded with memorials of his loyalty to truth and free dom and humanity, which will be enduring as our history. He is no party to this movement, in which my name has been more prominent than I could have wished, and no word of his prompted or suggested it. From its inception to the present time he has remained silent in his chamber of pain, waiting to bequeath, like the testator of the dramatist, "A fame by scandal untouched To Memory and Time's old daughter Truth." He can well afford to wait, and the issue of the present question before our legislature is of far less consequence to him than to us. To use the words of one who stood by him in the dark days of the Fugitive Slave Law, the Chief Justice of the United States,--"Time and the wiser thought will vindicate the illustrious statesman to whom Massachusetts, the country, and humanity owe so much, but the state can ill afford the damage to its own reputation which such a censure of such a man will inflict." AMESBURY, 3d month, 8, 1873. THE ANTI-SLAVERY CONVENTION OF 1833. [1874.] In the gray twilight of a chill day of late November, forty years ago, a dear friend of mine, residing in Boston, made his appearance at the old farm-house in East Haverhill. He had been deputed by the abolitionists of the city, William L. Garrison, Samuel E. Sewall, and others, to inform me of my appointment as a delegate to the Convention about to be held in Philadelphia for the formation of an American Anti-Slavery Society, and to urge upon me the necessity of my attendance.