town of Springfield in this State. A Convention had been appointed to be held in that place on the evening of February 17th, to continue through the next day. But Springfield being a stronghold of Webster Whiggery, it was thought to be a suitable place for a patriotic demonstration. Accordingly, for some days previously, the proper machinery was set at work to excite the rabble to an assault upon Mr. THOMPSON. The respectable papers and people, to be sure, did it under the disguise of disapproving of any such demonstration; but with pregnant intimations that it was no more than was to be expected, not to say deserved. On Sunday, the day previous, effigies of Mr. THOMPSON and his venerable relative, Mr. John Bull, were hung from trees in the Court Square for the edification of the citizens on their way to public worship. During the night handbills of the most ferocious and bloody description were posted over the town, containing most atrocious appeals to the worst passions of the Americans, and, especially of the Irish, calling upon them, of all men in the world, to come out and put down Mr. THOMPSON as an enemy of their race! Upon his arrival in town a Committee, consisting of Messrs. HOMER FOOT, CHARLES STEARNS, and a Mr. SMITH, Editor of a Democratic paper, waited upon him, not with assurances of protection in his rights and the maintenance of the hospitality of their town on the part of the well-disposed portion of the inhabitants, but to entreat him to depart from their borders and save them from the molestation of a mob to suppress him. This courteous invitation Mr. THOMPSON thought fit to decline. In consequence of the excitement, the proprietors of Hampden Hall, the place fixed upon for the Meeting, refused to permit it to be used, so no session could he held on Monday evening. During the evening there was a riotous assemblage about the Hotel where Mr. THOMPSON and his friends lodged, but their demonstrations were chiefly confined to vociferous denunciations of him and John Bull. The next morning a small hall was procured, which was immediately crowded to overflowing. The meeting was organized by the election of Mr. ELMER as Chairman, and opened with prayer by the Rev. Dr. OSGOOD. Speeches were made by Mr. THOMPSON, Mr. PHILLIPS, Mr. QUINCY, and Judge MORRIS. Mr. THOMPSON was received in the most enthuthiastic manner and tumultuously cheered throughout. In the afternoon the proprietors of the Free Church opened their doors to the Convention, and the spacious room was filled at once and entirely. Mr. QUINCY Spoke first at some length and was followed by Mr. PHILLIPS, who made a speech of great power and effect. When Mr.

THOMPSON entered, which was not until the meeting had proceeded for some time, he was received with long continued cheering, which frequently interrupted the splendid philippic which he proceeded to pour forth. As a specimen of crushing sarcasm, biting satire and overwhelming invective, we doubt whether its equal was ever heard in this country. The manner in which he dealt with the Selectmen of Springfield, the Lynch Committee, and especially the Republican, the Webstero-Ashmuno-Whig paper, which had been busy in creating the disturbance, filling itself with lies about him, and then writing him, in the interval of the meeting, an impertinent letter of inquiry about something he had said in his morning's speech, was transcendantly masterly. He carried his audience along with him in a surprising manner, and the meeting closed most triumphantly. So the result of all the machinations of Webster Whigdom that he should not speak in Springfield was, that the town was stirred up as it never was before, and heard an amount of truth about itself and the nation that it would have escaped had the meeting gone off as it was supposed it would, when it was arranged.

In the evening the noisy demonstrations of the night before were renewed. The mob paraded with drums beating and fifes playing, and burnt in effigy either Mr. THOMPSON, or his parent, Mr. Bull, under the windows of his private parlor; the walls of the house, also, were pelted with eggs and mud, and three or four stones of respectable dimensions thrown through his windows. These, properly labelled, together with a copy of the infamous handbill, Mr. THOMPSON placed among his treasures as curiosities illustrative of American Institutions. During this evening, as well as previously, he was visited by many Abolitionists from distant towns, and by many of the citizens of the town, who expressed a strong sense of the discredit their doings had brought upon them. A very little effort on the part of the magistrates or well-disposed citizens would have been sufficient to have suppressed the disturbance and punished the ringleaders. But the leading influences of the town were on the side of the rioters, and in such a case it is seldom that anything effectual is attempted. In speaking of the Selectmen, we should except Mr. BANNON, the son of an old United Irishman, of the school of 1798, who protested against the inaction of the majority. At a late hour the rioters dispersed, without doing any very serious damage, except to themselves and to the character of the town. The next day Mr. THOMPSON proceeded to the State of New

York, through which, in spite of virulent attempts to excite popular violence against him, his course was a continual triumph.

After Mr. THOMPSON had completed his successful career in New York, he visited Canada, and did much to excite an interest in the American Anti-Slavery cause there. Subsequently he visited Pennsylvania, and held a most successful Meeting in Westchester and another in Norristown. After his return to Boston, preparatory to his departure for Europe, the New England Convention instructed the Managers of this Society to make arrangements for a parting Festival, where he could meet a portion of his friends for the last time. In compliance with this request we procured the Assembly Hall, the largest in the city, and employed Mr. JOSHUA B. SMITH to provide the Entertainment. At eight o'clock, when the officers and invited guests entered the Hall, every seat, (more than a thousand in number,) was filled. Mr. THOMPSON was greeted on his entrance, and when he took his place on the platform, with the most enthusiastic cheers. The scene was an exceedingly beautiful and impressive one. The great assembly, half of which was made up of women, the well spread tables, the brilliant light, the universal cheerfulness and pleasure which was obvious upon every countenance, made up an uncommonly fine picture. After the President had briefly stated the purpose of the Meeting and the auspices under which it was held, concluding with the health of our guest, which was interrupted and welcomed with the most rapturous cheers and plaudits, Mr. GARRISON read a well-written and well-considered Address to Mr. THOMPSON, on behalf of the Abolitionists of America.

After Mr. GARRISON had concluded his Address, Mr. THOMPSON rose, and again cheer followed cheer, and it seemed as if they would never cease sufficiently to allow him to be heard. He was evidently much affected by the tone of the Address and by the feeling manifested towards him by the auditory, and as soon as he was permitted to go on, spoke for more than an hour and a half, frequently interrupted by vociferous applause. Mr. WENDELL PHILLIPS, Mr. REMOND, Hon. EDWARD L. KEYES of the Senate, the Rev. THEODORE PARKER, the Hon. RODNEY FRENCH, and Mr. J. N. BUFFUM, and perhaps one or two others, spoke with great effect in the very best of their respective styles. Several other distinguished gentlemen were present, who could not be called upon from want of time. The party remained together almost entirely unbroken until the close, at a late hour. It was an occasion

justly gratifying to Mr. THOMPSON and to all his friends, and formed a fit contrast to his first greeting in Faneuil Hall.

On Wednesday, June 25th, Mr. THOMPSON sailed for England, in the America, after a visit of about eight months. This visit having now passed into the domain of history, we are competent to look at it with impartial eyes, to decide upon its expediency and to estimate its results. This visit has been long anticipated, both by those who knew him and his services to the cause fifteen years ago, and by those who knew him only by the hearing of the ear, having been born into the Anti-Slavery Gospel since those apostolic days. It has been looked forward to for years as one of those fortunate events which were rather to be desired than hoped for. His own implication in the politics of England, on the one hand, and the doubt whether the bitter hatred which drove him from the country in 1835 had sufficiently subsided to make his return to it safe, on the other, seemed to remove the proba- bility of his long promised visit to an indefinite future. And even when the news arrived that he was actually embarked and on his way across the ocean, there were doubts in many sagacious minds whether the state of the public mind, agitated as it was by the breath of political schemers, and shaking with a pretended apprehension of the downfall of the institutions of the country, under the blows dealt to them by the Abolitionists, would tolerate the reproach of his presence and the rebuke of his lips. The result has most satisfactorily disappointed all such doubts, and has justified the prudent wisdom of the experi

ment.

The immediate and direct effects of Mr. THOMPSON's missionary efforts have been purely and entirely beneficial. The celebrity which both friends and enemies had combined in attaching to his name excited, far and wide, an unprecedented curiosity to see and to hear him. The insult with which he was met upon the threshold of the country, in Faneuil Hall, countenanced and sanctioned by the presence and the silence of the Mayor and Chief of Police, but stimulated this curiosity, and, by the eternal laws of mind, aroused an antagonistic spirit which determined he should have a hearing and fair play. Accordingly, his reception at Worcester and at Lynn was characterized by the utmost warmth and enthusiasm - which indeed marked his treatment with scarce an exception from the beginning of his course to the end. Even at Springfield, where the fire of Webster-whig patriotism blazed out in burnt offerings of tar-barrels and of effigies, and where the united forces of Church and State were brought to play upon the wires which

set mobs in motion, he was heard in two crowded assemblies, and uttered words which have not yet ceased to make the ears that heard them, and that heard of them, to tingle. Wherever he has been, he has re-enforced and enlivened the Anti-Slavery spirit where it previously existed, and aroused and excited it where it had hitherto lain dormant. It was somewhat like his labors in the infancy of the Cause, when he set forth the first principles upon which it rests, only with the advantage of the preparation which fifteen years of continuous effort of the Abolitionists had wrought in the general mind. His mission was, chiefly, one of elementary, rudimental Anti-Slavery doctrine, illustrated and enforced by the examples and history of recent date. Thus, much seed must have been sown in new minds, heretofore unploughed or fallow, which will yet bring forth fruit thirty, fifty, or a hundred fold, according to the native fertility of the soil.

The tour of Mr. THOMPSON has, moreover, been a test or measure of the degree of change which the agitation of the Slavery question has worked in the Northern mind. It has tested whether or not our labors have been in vain, and has shown that the Anti-Slavery Movement has done what it set out to do in kind, and vastly more than it hoped to do in degree, when it set out. His presence was an electrometer of this sort, when he was here before, and it showed that the state of the moral atmosphere was so heavy and fetid with Pro-Slavery vapors that he could not breathe it in safety. Its continual agitation and disturbance by the persistency of the Abolitionists has in some degree defecated and purified it, as was shown by the fact that he went whither he would, in the Free States, even into Philadelphia and Pennsylvania, and there was none to molest him or make him afraid. Fifteen years

ago he was in hiding for weeks before an opportunity could be found to smuggle him into the British Provinces like a bale of contraband goods. Now, he was publicly entertained in the largest hall in Boston by twelve hundred people, on the occasion of his departure, and sailed publicly in one of the Royal Steamers for his native country. And all this in the teeth of a press as malignant, as vile, as unscrupulous and as bloody as that which excited the former persecution against him. Verily, the work of the Abolitionists, however feebly and imperfectly it may have been done, has not been entirely in vain. We have not spent our strength altogether for nought.

Mr. THOMPSON's visit has also been of signal value, apart from its direct influence upon the Anti-Slavery Cause, by the vindication it has proved of the natural right of rebuke, when any national wickedness is