There was still another cause of offence given by Garrison to his countrymen. It was not his _hard language_, but a circumstance less tolerable, if that was possible, than even that rock of offence. It seems that when the editor of the _Liberator_ was in England, and dining with Thomas Powell Buxton, he was asked by the latter in what way the English Abolitionists could best assist the anti-slavery movement in America, and he had replied, "_By giving us George Thompson_." This unexpected answer of the American appeared without doubt to the Englishman at the time somewhat extraordinary. He had his misgivings as to the wisdom, to say nothing of the propriety, of an international act of such importance and delicacy as the sending of George Thompson to America. He questioned whether the national self-love of the American people would not resent the arrival of an Englishman on such a mission among them and refuse him a fair hearing in consequence. But Garrison was confident that while Thompson's advent would stir up the pro-slavery bile of the North and all that, he would not be put to much if any greater disadvantage as a foreigner in speaking in New England on the subject of slavery, than were those Abolitionists who were to the manner born. As to his friend's personal safety in the East, Garrison was extremely optimistic, had not apparently the slightest apprehensions for him in this regard. Well, after due deliberation, George Thompson consented to undertake the mission to America, and the English reformers to send him, though not all of them. For some there were like James Cropper, who were indisposed to promoting such a mission, or "paying agents to travel in the United States." It was natural enough for Mr. Garrison to prefer such a request after hearing George Thompson speak. For he was one of those electric speakers, who do with popular audiences what they will. In figure and voice and action, he was a born orator. His eloquence was graphic, picturesque, thrilling, and over English audiences it was irresistible. Garrison fancied that such eloquence would prove equally attractive to and irresistible over American audiences as well. But in this he was somewhat mistaken, for Thompson had to deal with an element in American audiences of which he had had no experience in England. What that element was he had occasion to surmise directly he arrived upon these shores. He reached New York just sixteen days after the marriage of his friend, the editor of the _Liberator_ to be immediately threatened with mob violence by the metropolitan press in case he ventured to "lecture in favor of immediate Abolition," and to be warned that: "If our people will not suffer our own citizens to tamper with the question of slavery, it is not to be supposed that they will tolerate the officious intermeddling of a foreign fanatic." Then as if by way of giving him a taste of the beak and talons of the American _amour propre_, he and his