They were red hot branding irons without them. One can almost smell the odor of burning flesh as he reads the words: "It is no worse to fit out piratical cruisers or to engage in the foreign slave-trade, than to pursue a similar trade along our coast; and the men who have the wickedness to participate therein, for the purpose of keeping up wealth should be ==>SENTENCED TO SOLITARY CONFINEMENT FOR LIFE; <==_they are the enemies of their own species--highway robbers, and murderers_; and their final doom will be, unless they speedily repent, _to occupy the lowest depths of perdition_. I know that our laws make a distinction in this matter. I know that the man who is allowed to freight his vessel with slaves at home, for a distant market, would be thought worthy of death if he should take a similar freight on the coast of Africa; but I know, too, that this distinction is absurd, and at war with the common sense of mankind, and that God and good men regard it with abhorrence. "I recollect that it was always a mystery in Newburyport how Mr. Todd contrived to make profitable voyages to New Orleans and other places, when other merchants, with as fair an opportunity to make money, and sending to the same ports at the same time invariably made fewer successful speculations. The mystery seems to be unravelled. Any man can gather up riches if he does not care by what means they are obtained." A copy of the _Genius_, containing this article Garrison sent to the owner of the ship _Francis_. What followed made it immediately manifest that the branding irons of the reformer had burned home with scarifying effect. Mr. Todd's answer to the strictures was a suit at law against the editors of the _Genius_ for five thousand dollars in damages. But this was not all. The Grand Jury for Baltimore indicted them for publishing "a gross and malicious libel against Francis Todd and Nicholas Brown." This was at the February Term, 1830. On the first day of March following, Garrison was tried. He was ably and eloquently defended by Charles Mitchell, a young lawyer of the Baltimore Bar. But the prejudice of judge and jury rendered the verdict of guilty a foregone conclusion. April 17, 1830, the Court imposed a penalty of fifty dollars and costs, which, with the fine amounted in all to nearly one hundred dollars. The fine and costs Garrison could not pay, and he was therefore committed to jail as a common malefactor. His confinement lasted seven weeks. He did not languish during this period. His head and hands were in fact hardly ever more active than during the term of his imprisonment. Shut out by Maryland justice from work without the jail, he found and did that which needed to be done within "high walls and huge." He was an extraordinary prisoner and was treated with extraordinary consideration by the Warden. He proved himself a genuine evangel to the prisoners, visiting them in their cells, cheering them by