monument of the triumph of mobism over good order and the laws. The neighbouring houses are somewhat scorched, but suffered no material injury, as the fire companies were permitted to play upon them, and deserve great credit for the effective manner in which their duty was performed.

“The hall itself, which was situated on the west side of Sixth, near Race street, was erected by the Abolition Society, and was not finished until last week. It was very large, built in the most substantial and costly manner, and the grand saloon for the purpose of meetings was, we believe, the most spacious and elegant room of the kind in Philadel phia, being 90 feet in length by about 60 in breadth, with galleries, &c., the whole being capable of allowing from 1800 to 2000 persons to be comfortably seated, and of containing nearly 3000 persons. There were, besides, lecture-rooms and other apartments. The entire cost of the establishment, including, we presume, the purchase of the ground, is estimated at 40,000 dollars. It was first opened to the public on Monday last, and we are informed that meetings were held and addresses delivered in it every day and evening up to the time of the catastrophe. "The first tumultuous proceeding in reference to the matter took place on Wednesday evening, when a meeting was held, composed chiefly of women, at which Garrison, Mrs. M. Chapman, of Boston, Mrs. Angelina Grimké Weld, Lucretia Mott, and Abdy Kelly, delivered addresses. The audience was very numerous, and composed of blacks and whites indiscriminately mingled. A mob assembled on the outside, and continued throwing stones at the windows until a late hour. When the meeting broke up, some of the negroes were assaulted as they came out, and the rest were enabled to escape through the back entrances. Loud intimations were given at this time that a more serious disturbance was in contemplation, and that the destruction of the building was resolved on.

"On Thursday much excitement prevailed throughout the city, and every variety of rumour was in circulation; but the abolitionists held their usual meetings. In the afternoon the crowd began to assemble, rapidly increasing in numbers as night approached, and at dark the assemblage in the neighbourhood was very great. It is stated in the papers that the mayor was on the ground at an early hour, and, after addressing the by-standers, closed the hall and retired, it being determined that no lecture should be given that night.

"Soon after eight o'clock the tumult commenced. Stones were thrown at the windows, and the doors and windows of the stores in the basement story, only one of which was occupied, and that as a repository for abolition tracts, books, and papers, were beaten in. An attack was also made upon the entrances to the hall, which being stout, were battered at with various instruments for a long time before they yielded. Every crash was received with cheers and plaudits from a number of the by-standers, though the active rioters were by no means numerous, nor apparently very determined, for they commenced the work of destruction hesitatingly, and did not go on boldly until the gas-lamp was extinguished which shone upon them, and till they obtained confidence by seeing that no police-officers were on the ground, and no impediment would be offered by those in authority to their lawless proceedings; an impunity as unexpected as it was disgraceful in the heart of a populous city, and at an early hour in the evening. Having the game thus completely in their own hands, books and papers were tossed into the air, and a few persons entered the hall. Hints about fire were now bandied about, and in a little while lights were seen gleaming from the windows. Some difficulty seemed to be experienced in kindling the flames. One

man was observed using splinters of the window-blinds for the purpose. Fire, however, was communicated in various quarters, but it progressed slowly, the occasional flashes being greeted by shouts. Finally, however, the flames seized upon the woodwork, and in a very short time the whole edifice was a sheet of fire, illuminating the city far and wide with a brilliance equal to that of noonday. Such a conflagration has not been witnessed in Philadelphia for years, and we trust that many more will elapse before the occurrence of another. The whole population of the city seemed now to throng to the ground, and the rioters, having attained their object, remained quiet.

"Such are the particulars of this high-handed and abominable outrage, which has inflicted a stain of the deepest character upon our city, reducing us to a level, in point of reputation, with the most lawless sections of the Union, and teaching us to be surprised at nothing that passion and madness may see fit hereafter to undertake."

It is known that the mayor was, in his opinions, greatly opposed to the views of the abolitionists, and this may have caused his conduct to be suspected and misrepresented by those entertaining their views; yet, from all I could learn, he appears to have done his own duty as faithfully as his official means would enable him to perform it, but he was unsupported by that portion of the populace who crowded to the spot.

On Friday, the 20th, the day on which this statement appeared in the papers, the excitement in the streets was at its highest groups of persons of all classes were to be seen conferring together in great earnestness, and all appeared to expect something more terrible than had yet occurred. It was said, among other rumours, that the black population of Philadelphia were armed and ready for a rising; but this was soon found to be utterly without foundation, neither their numbers nor their disposition warranting the slightest hope of any success in their object, even should they be so misled as to resort to this step; nor, after a very vigilant search, were arms found in the dwellings or on the persons of any of them.

In the evening of this day, however, a party of the same lawless incendiaries who had burned down the hall repaired to the school for free coloured children in Thirteenth-street, a considerable distance from the hall, and set it on fire. The alarm-bell being rung to indicate this, the whole population were in motion, not knowing what might happen next; but the firemen promptly hastening to the spot, and on this occasion putting forth their energies without restraint, the fire was soon subdued, and the crowd dispersed.

On the same evening, a party of these anti-abolitionists went to the house of one of the most eminent lawyers of

Philadelphia, who had taken a part in the proceedings of opening the hall, Mr. David Paul Brown, and demanded his appearance before them. The doors being bolted below, the wife of this gentleman appeared at the window and inquired their object, when they reiterated their de mand to see her husband. Fortunately for both, he had that day gone into the country, so that she could state this with perfect truth. They were greatly disappointed, and with difficulty prevailed on to retire; but before they went they avowed their intention to have tarred and feathered Mr. Brown if they had got him into their possession, for the part he took in advocating the cause of the abolitionists.

This fact was not made public in any of the journals, from a desire, probably, not to increase the danger to Mr. Brown's life by the mention of the fact at the time the excitement was at its height; but I was assured of its truth by a gentleman who knew the circumstances of the case personally. The following particulars of farther attempts at outrage on Saturday evening are from the National Gazette of Monday, the 21st:

"On Saturday evening a mob gathered in Sassafras Alley, and commenced an assault on the house of a coloured family by breaking in the doors and windows, and scattering the furniture in the street. The family, it is believed, escaped without personal injury.

"The same evening great excitement was produced by the circumstance of an assault made by a coloured on a white man, in the neighbourhood of Lombard and Sixth streets. Colonel Watmough, the sher. iff, assisted by a police force, was successful in preventing any serious disturbance."

This pretended assault was afterward ascertained to be the attack of a white man on a black, and the remonstrance and attempt at defence of the latter; so that no single act occurred by which the negroes could be reproached with having taken the slightest steps to provoke the hostility or to resist the measures pursued towards their advocates.

The whole affair was the most unjustifiable assumption, on the part of a small body of whites, of a power to deny to others, equally lawful citizens with themselves, the right of freely and publicly discussing a subject which they deemed important, and on which they desired to proclaim their opinions to the world. And the controversy being conducted by one party appealing to reason, and using the tongue, the pen, and the press, and the other party appealing to force, and using the torch, the axe, and the crowbar, it is not difficult to determine which were the innocent and which the guilty.

ABOLITION RIOTS.-MEETING OF FIREMEN.

375

The actual operators in this work of destruction were said to be a few shipwrights from the river, who brought with them axes, crowbars, and other instruments for breaking open doors and windows, billets of dry wood and shavings, with tar, turpentine, and other combustible materials; and these were aided and cheered on by the most dissolute of the white population in the crowd, while the firemen and the members of the hose companies, who play the engines and supply the water, undoubtedly assisted in the work of destruction, inasmuch as they refused to use their engines or pour water on the great hall while in flames, and they were, therefore, accessory to its destruction. So completely had the mob been permitted to carry all before them, that even on Sunday, a day more scrupulously respected by all races and colours in America than in any other country on the globe, a large crowd assembled round the African Church in Sixth-street, and, but for the remonstrances of those who were additionally shocked at any attempted violence on the Sabbath, this church might have shared the fate of the hall.

As some symptom either of shame or repentance, or both, a public meeting was held by the firemen in Independence Square, on the evening of Saturday, the 19th, when they passed resolutions declaratory of their determination, in all future cases, to use their best efforts to extinguish all fires, whether created by accident or by the hands of the incendiary; but though this declaration, and the expressions of the public journals, may be taken as a homage to justice, whether willingly or unwillingly paid, it is beyond doubt that in what is called the "best society" of Phila delphia, that is, among the more wealthy classes, the feeling of indignation was directed wholly against the abolitionists, and few scrupled openly to commend the spirit of the populace, to speak of the burning of the hall and the school as a "glorious triumph," while some added a regret that the abolitionists themselves were not buried in the ruins! With persons who entertained such feelings as these, it was of course in vain to reason; they were wholly inaccessible to argument, and so excited, females as well as maies, that it was almost dangerous to be heard to express even a regret that the outrage had been committed.

In the mean time, no immediate steps were taken by the public authorities to find out or apprehend the ringleaders; no reward was promptly offered by the city or state authorities for the apprehension of the offenders; no pains were

taken, in short, to vindicate the laws and punish its violaters, by which the rulers of the city placed themselves in the same position of tacit accessories as the firemen did, who, with engines in their hands, refused to use them to extinguish the conflagration. This is only to be accounted for by the fact that the opinion of the gentry, or most influential class of citizens in Philadelphia, was in favour of such non-interference; and the mayor, finding their dispo sition on this subject to run in the same channel with his own, was content to let the matter sleep undisturbed until the excitement was over.

This deference to public prejudice rather than maintaining the dignity of the law will, no doubt, on reflection, be deeply repented of even by those who, for momentary peace, have sacrificed great principles of public duty; and that this has indeed already begun to take place in some minds, may be inferred from the very sensible observations which appeared in the National Gazette on the evening of Monday, the 21st, when the riots were at an end, and when a few days only of time had allowed reason and reflection to reassume their sway. This is its editorial article:

"One night of riot takes away a city's reputation for three hundred and sixty-five of repose and security. Riots in this country, though growing out of local and transient causes, are viewed and employed abroad as the strongest argument against our form of government.

"It is of no avail that we, in our turn, can retort with what we deem entire effect, by saying that the Peninsula of Spain presents more violence, bloodshed, and cruelty in a single campaign than the Union during its whole history; that in despotic countries popular commotion is an ordinary occurrence; that the life of the French monarch is attempted periodically; and that in Great Britain illegal combinations and tumults are constantly occurring. These all are overlooked in hunting up and presenting, with supercilious acrimony, our lapses from a state of absolute immunity from all such outrage. In one sense it is a tacit acknowledgment that personal security and the rights of property ought to be better respected and enforced under a Democratic form of government than under any other, but that balance of the argument goes for nothing against the practical force of the other set forth. The Parisian, secure in going to the opera and eating-house by virtue of a hundred thousand bayonets, will thank Heaven that his lot is not cast in such a barbarous spot as Philadelphia, which (except in a few instances) has been kept in order by the show of a few batons.

"These considerations should be ever held by the sentient portion of the community; and they never should, under any circumstances whatever, suspend, either by opinion, apathy, or indiscreet conduct of any kind, the force of the grand precept, that under all circumstances and at every cost, the supremacy of the laws must be maintained.' This precept carries with it the provision that adequate means must be taken to maintain them."

I cordially agree with this writer in all the opinions he