Would it ever get out alive, or "SHALL THE _LIBERATOR_ DIE ?" burst in a cry of anguish, almost despair, from its editor, so weak in thought of self, so supreme in thought of others.
This carelessness of what appertained to the things which concerned self, and devotion to the things which concerned his cause, finds apt and pathetic illustration in this letter to Samuel J.May in the summer of 1834, when his pecuniary embarrassments and burdens were never harder to carry: "In reply to your favor of the 24th [July], my partner joins with me in consenting to print an edition of Miss Crandall's [defence] as large as the one proposed by you, at our own risk.

As to the profits that may arise from the sale of the pamphlet, we do not expect to make any; on the contrary, we shall probably suffer some loss, in consequence of the difficulty of disposing of any publication, however interesting or valuable in itself.

But a trial so important as Miss C.'s, involving such momentous consequences to a large portion of our countrymen, implicating so deeply the character of this great nation, ought not to go unpublished, and _shall_ not while we have the necessary materials for printing it." It is interesting to note that the weekly circulation of the _Liberator_, in the spring of 1834, was twenty-three hundred copies, and that this number was distributed in Philadelphia, four hundred; in New York, three hundred: in Boston, two hundred; in other parts of the free States eleven hundred; and that of the remaining three hundred, one-half was sent as exchange with other papers, and eighty of the other half were divided equally between England and Hayti, leaving seventy copies for gratuitous distribution.

The colored subscribers to the paper were to the whites as three to one.
There were several suggestions by sundry friends looking to the release of the _Liberator_ from its embarrassments, and, to the relief of its unselfish publishers, from the grinding poverty which its issue imposed upon them.

The most hopeful and feasible of them was the scheme of which Garrison wrote his betrothed April 14, 1834: "I am happy to say," he pours into her ears, "that it is probable the managers of the New England Anti-Slavery Society will determine, to-morrow afternoon, to take all the pecuniary liabilities of the _Liberator_ hereafter, and give me a regular salary for editing it, and friend Knapp a fair price for printing it.