The tacit support given to slavery by the Episcopal Church at large and the active support given to it by many individual clergymen was a source of constant grief to Judge Jay and a frequent subject of his thoughts. "You well know," he wrote to Joseph Sturge, "what a mighty effort has been made by our Northern traders in Southern votes and merchandise, under the leadership of Daniel Webster, to roll back the antislavery tide. To a certain extent they have succeeded. The commercial interest in the great towns, through a rivalry for the Southern trade, has professed great alacrity in slave-catching, and political aspirants for office under the Federal Government find it expedient to make slave-hunting the test of patriotism. But the religious feeling of the commonalty--that is, of those who are not pre-eminently gentlemen of property and standing--is shocked by the enormous cruelty and injustice of the fugitive law. To overcome this feeling, which in its demonstrations is exceedingly inconvenient to our merchants and office-seekers, the clergy have been urged by the press and other agencies to come out in support of the law--in other words, to give the sanction of the gospel of Christ to the enslavement of innocent men. Some pastors who preach in fine churches to rich and fashionable city congregations have complied. You must understand that many of our brokers, merchants, lawyers, and editors were exceedingly scandalized by the opposition of religious people to this vile law, and they have trembled for the honour of our holy religion when some of its professors contended that an impious law was not binding on the conscience."