Letters of Lydia Maria Child, with a biographical introduction by John G. Whittier and an appendix by Wendell Phillips.

16 LETTERS.
state of fermentation now existing here. There are
7,000 Southerners nowv in the city; and I am atfraid
there are not 700 among them who have the slightest
fear of God before their eyes. ATr. Wright was yesterday barricading his doors and windows with stroncg
bars and planks an inch thick. Violence, in some
form, seems to be generally expected. Alas poor
fools! They are building up the very cause they
seek to destroy.
TO REV. CONVVERS FRANCIS.
NEW ROCHELLE [N. Y.], September 25, 1835.
We are boarding in the family of an honest HIicksite Quaker, in this quiet secluded village, which we
chose both for economy and safe distance from cities.
There is nothing in the neighborhood wvoithy of a
traveller's attention except the grtve of Tom Paine,
in the corner of a field, near the road-side. It is surrounded by a rough stone wall, two or three feet high.
In one place the stones are broken down and lying
loose, where Cobbett entered to carry off his bones.
He was buried in this lonely manner, because all
the churches, and even the Quakers, refused hilm admittance into their burying-grouncs. And we who
boast of living in a more liberal aoe, are clarryingo on
the same petty persecution under different forms!
I agree with you most cordially that man, -without
a'" principle of reverence for something higher- than
his own will, is a poor and wretched being;" but I
would have that reverence placed on principles, not
on persons; and this in a true republic would, I believe, be the case. I believe our difticulties grow out
of the fact that we have in reality very little republicanism. A principle of despotism was admitted in