MR. BRECKINRIDGE said that the order of the exercises of this evening
had, without the fault of any one, placed him in a position which was
not the most natural. Considering that it was his duty to support the
negative of the point for this evening's discussion, it would have
been most natural had the affirmation been first brought out. He said
this arrangement was not the fault of any one, because it was not
known that the point would fall to be discussed on this particular
evening; for had it fallen on last night or to-morrow night, the order
would have been as it ought to be. His position was, however, made
somewhat better by the fact, that nothing that Mr. Thompson could say
this evening, in an hour or two, could alter the assertions which he
had already repeatedly made and published in Britain. Since the notice
of this discussion had been published, he had, through the providence
of God, been put in possession of six or seven papers and pamphlets
containing the substance of what had been said by Mr. Thompson
throughout the country, and reiterated by associated bodies of his
friends under his eye. After reading these carefully, he found himself
pretty fully possessed of that individual's charges and testimony
against the ministers, private Christians, and churches of America; he
would, therefore, take them as he found them in those publications,
while Mr. Thompson's presence would enable him to explain, correct, or
deny anything that might be erroneously stated. The first thing he
should attempt to do, was to impeach the competency of Mr. Thompson as
a witness in this or any similar case. Mr. Thompson had shown that he
was utterly incompetent, wisely to gather and faithfully to report
testimony on any subject involving great and complicated principles.
He did not wish to say anything personally offensive to Mr. Thompson;
but he must be plain, and he would first produce proof of what he
said, which was as it regarded this whole nation perfectly _ad
hominem_. He would show the audience what Mr. Thompson had said of
them, and then they would better judge what was his competency to be a
witness against the Americans. At a meeting in the Hopeton Rooms at
Edinburgh, since his return from the United States, Mr. Thompson said:
We were really under a worse bondage than the slaves of the
United States. We kissed our chains and hugged our fetters.
We were governed by our drunken appetite.
The lecturer, in the concluding portion of his address,
depicted in a tone of high moral feeling, the degraded
condition of Great Britain as a nation, in consequence of her
extreme drunkenness. He shewed that habits of intemperance,
or feelings and prejudices generated by intemperance,
pervaded every class, from the highest to the lowest, the
richest to the poorest. Statesmen bowed upon the altar of
expediency; and, above all, the sanctuary was not clean. As a
Christian nation, we were paralized in our efforts to
evangelize the world--partly by the millions upon millions
actually expended upon ardent spirits--partly by the selfish
and demoralizing feelings which this sensual indulgence in
particular was known to produce. How could we, as a nation,
upbraid America with her system of slavery when we ourselves
were but glorying in a voluntary slavery of a thousand times
more defiling and abominable description? In our own country,
it might be said that there was, as it were, a conspiracy
against the bodies and souls of her people.
Now in any Court of Justice, he would take his stand upon the fact
that the man who made that speech must be a _monomaniac_, and he
believed no competent tribunal, after hearing it, would receive his
testimony as to the character or conduct of any nation on the face of
the earth. Or if there lingered a doubt on the subject, he should show
from the burden of his charges against America, that he spoke in the
same general spirit, and nearly in the very same terms of her as of
Britain, although the fault found with each country was totally
different. He spoke of each as the very worst nation on the earth,
because of the special crime charged. Any man who could allow himself
to say that the two most enlightened nations on earth were in
substance the two most degraded nations on earth; who could permit
himself to bring such _railing accusations_ successively against two
great people, on account of the sins of a small portion of each, which
he had looked at till he could see nothing else, and with the
perseverance of a goldleaf-beater, exercised his ingenuity in
stretching out to the utmost limits over each community; a man who not
only can see little to love anywhere that does not derive its
complexion from himself, and who, the moment he finds a blot on his
brethren, or his country, instead of walking backwards and hiding it
with the filial piety of the elder sons of Noah, mocks over it with
the rude and unfeeling bitterness of Canaan; such a man is worthily
impeached, as incompetent to testify. Nay, I put the issue where Mr.
Thompson has put it. If this nation be such as he has described it to
be, I demand, with unanswerable emphasis, how can it dare to call us,
or any other people, to account on any subject whatever? If, on the
other hand, what he has said of this nation be false, I equally demand
how can he be credited in what he says of us--of any other nation
under the sun? After this caveat against all that such a witness could
say, he would in the first place observe, that all the accusations
brought by Mr. Thompson against Americans, were imbued with such
bitterness and intemperance as ought to awaken suspicion in the minds
of all who hear them. There was visible not only a violent national
antipathy against that whole country, but also a strong prejudice in
favor of the one side and against the other in the local parties
there, which, before any impartial tribunal, ought greatly to weaken
any credit that might otherwise be attached to his testimony. Besides
an open hostility to the nation as such, and a most envomed hatred to
certain men, parties, and principles in America, the witness has
exhibited such a wounded feeling of vanity from his want of success in
America; such a glorying of his friends, and that just in proportion
to their subserviency to him, and such a contemptuous and unmerited
depreciation of his opponents, as should put every man who reads or
hears his proofs at once on his guard. As to the opinions and
conclusions of such a person, even from admitted facts, they are of
course worthless; and his inferences from hearsay and idle reports,
worse than trash. But what I mean to say is, that such a witness,
considered strictly as testifying to what he asserts of his own
knowledge, is to be heard by a just man with very great caution. For
my own part, at the risk of being called again a pettifogger, by this
informer, I am bound to say that his conduct impeaches his credibility
fully as much as it has before been shown to affect his competency;
and while I have peculiar knowledge of the facts, sufficient to assert
that his main accusations are false, I fully believe that the case he
had himself made, did of itself justify all good men to draw the same
conclusion, merely from general principles. I will venture to go a
step farther, and express the opinion that they who are acquainted
with Mr. Thompson, as he exhibits himself in the public eye, and who
have knowledge of the past success, which really did, or which he
allows himself to believe did attend his efforts in West-India
emancipation, (a success, however, which I do not comprehend, as the
case was settled against him and his party, on the two chief points on
which they staked themselves, namely, _immediate abolition_ and _no
compensation_,) they who can call to mind the preparation and
pretension with which he set out for America, the gigantic work he had
carved for himself there, the signal defeat he met with, and the
terror in which he fled the country; may find enough to justify the
fear that the fate of George Thompson has fully as large a share in
his recollections of America as the fate of the poor slave. In the
_second place_, I charge upon Mr. Thompson that those parts of his
statements which might possibly be in part true, are so put as to
create false impressions, and have nearly the same effect as if they
were wholly false on the minds of those who read or hear them. This
results from the constant manner of stating what might possibly be
true; and it is not only calculated to produce a false impression, and
make the casual reader believe in a result different from what would
be presented if Mr. Thompson were on oath and forced to tell the whole
truth, but the uniformity and dexterity with which this is done,
leaves us astonished how it could be accidental. He (Mr. B.) assumed
that all of them had read or would read Mr. Thompson's charges. After
doing so they would the better apprehend what was now meant; but, in
the mean time, he would illustrate it by a case or two. Thus, when Mr.
T. spoke of the ministers in the United States being slave-holders, he
did it in such a way as to lead the reader to believe that this was a
general thing; that the most of them, if not the whole of them, were
slave-owners. He did not tell them that none of the ministers in
twelve whole States were or could easily be slave-holders, seeing they
were not inhabitants of a slave State; he did not tell them that the
cases of ministers owning slaves were rare even in some of the slave
States; and a fair sample of the majority in not a single State of the
Union; he left the charge indefinite, and did not condescend to tell
whether the number of ministers so accused was one half, or one third,
or one fourth, or one hundredth part of the whole number in the United
States. He left it wholly indefinite, on the broad charge that
American ministers were slave-holding ministers; knowing, perhaps
intending, that the impression taken up should be of the aggregate
mass of American ministers; when he knew himself all the while that
the overwhelming mass of American ministers had never owned a slave;
and that those who had, were exceptions from the general rule rather
than samples of the whole. It may well be asked how much less sinful
it was to rob men of their good name, than of their freedom? Not
content with even this injustice, Mr. Thompson had gone so far as to
charge the ministers of America with dealing in slaves; _slave-driving
ministers_ and _slave-dealing ministers_, were amongst his common
accusations. Now, said Mr. B., he would lay a strong constraint upon
himself, and reply to these statements as if they were not at once
atrocious and insupportable. The terms used by Mr. Thompson were
universally understood in the United States, to mean the carrying on
of a regular traffic in slaves as a business. The meaning was the same
here, and every one who had heard or read one of his printed speeches,
was ex vi termini obliged to understand this charge like the
preceding, as expressing his testimony as to the conduct of American
ministers generally, if not universally.
Now I will admit that there may be in America, one minister in one
thousand, or perhaps five hundred, who may at some period of his
ministry, when he had no sufficient light on the subject, have bought
or sold slaves a single time, or perhaps twice, or possibly thrice.
But I solemnly declare I never knew, nor heard of, nor do I believe
there exists in all America, one such minister, as is above described;
nor any sect that would hold fellowship with him. He would throw under
the _third general head_ charges of a different kind from the
preceding. Mr. Thompson, when generalities fail, takes up some extreme
case, which might probably be founded on truth, and gives it as a
specimen of the general practice; thereby creating by false instances,
as well as by indefinite accusations, an impression which he knows to
be entirely foreign from the truth. If he, (Mr. B.) were to tell in
America that on his way to this meeting to-night, he saw two blind men
begging in the streets, with their arms locked to support their
tottering steps, while the crowd passed them idly by; and if he gave
this as a specimen of the manner in which the unfortunate poor were
treated in Scotland, he would not give a worse impression, nor make a
more unfair statement of the fact, than Mr. Thompson had done, nearly
without exception, in his statements of America. Such a spirit and
practice as this, pervaded the whole of Mr. Thompson's speeches. He
would select a few instances to enforce his meaning. There was a
single Presbyterian Church at Nashville, Tennessee. Now he, (Mr. B.)
happened, in the providence of God, to be somewhat acquainted with the
past history of that church; and was happy to call its present
benevolent minister his friend. He could consequently speak of it from
his own knowledge. Mr. Thompson said that a young man went to
Nashville, who, either through his own imprudence, or the violence of
the disjointed times, was arrested, tried by a popular committee,
found guilty of spreading seditious papers, and sentenced to be
whipped; that he had received twenty lashes, and was then discharged.
This he believed to be substantially true, and well remembered hearing
of the occurrence; and taking the young man's account of it as true,
he had been greatly shocked at it, and had now no idea of defending
it. But in Mr. Thompson's statement of the case, there was a minute
misrepresentation, which showed singular indifference to facts. Mr. T.
said the young man went to Tennessee to sell cottage bibles, in which
business he succeeded well, for the reason, adds the narrator, that
Bibles were scarce in the South; although he could not fail to know,
that before the period in question, every family in all those States
that would receive a Bible, had been furnished with one by the various
Bible Societies. This, however, was not the main reason for a
reference to this case; but was mentioned incidentally, to show the
nature of the feelings and accusations indulged in by this gentleman.
His account went on to say, sometimes that there were seven, sometimes
eleven elders of this Presbyterian Church. It was not intended to lay
any stress on the discrepancy; as the fault might be the reporter's.
But seven, or eleven; it was again and again charged, that all of
them, every one, was present, trying, and consenting to the punishment
of the unhappy young man, "plowing up his back," and mingling, perhaps
in the mob who cursed him, even for his prayers. To make the case
inexpressibly horrible, it is added, that these seven or eleven
elders, had as to part of them, distributed the sacramental elements,
to the abolitionist, the very Sabbath before, the day on which the
seven elders participated in this outrage. Now I say first, that if
this story were literally true, no man knows better than Mr. Thompson,
that no falsehood could be more glaring than to say or insinuate, that
the case would be a fair average specimen of what the leading men in
the American churches generally might be expected to do, in like
circumstances. Yet for this purpose, he has repeatedly used it! No man
could know better than he, that if the case were true in all its
parts, it would every where be accounted a violent and unprecedented
thing, which could happen at all only in most extraordinary
circumstances. Yet he has so stated it, over and over, as to force the
impression that it is a fair sample of American Christianity. But,
said Mr. B. I call in question all parts of the story, that implicate
any Christian. I do not believe the statements. Let me have proof. I
do not believe there were either seven or eleven elders in the church
in question. Record their names. If there were so many, it is next to
impossible, that every one of them, was on the comparatively small
committee that tried the abolitionist. Produce the proofs; and I
believe it will turn out, that if either of them was present, it was
to mitigate popular violence; and that his influence perhaps, saved
the life of him he is traduced for having oppressed. He did not mean
to stake his assertion against proof; but from his experience and
general knowledge of the parties, he had no hesitation in giving it as
his opinion, that the facts, when known, would not justify the
assertions of Mr. Thompson, even as to the particular case; and
believing this, I again challenge the production of his authority.
But, if it be true in all its parts, I repeat, it is every thing but
truth, to say that it affords a just specimen of the elders of the
Presbyterian Churches of America. Another case resembling the
preceding in its principle, is found in what Mr. Thompson has said of
the Baptists of the Southern States. There are, says he, above 157,000
members in upwards of 3000 Baptist Churches, in those States, "almost
all both ministers and members being slave holders." Allowing this
statement to be true, and that each slave holder has ten slaves on an
average, which is too small for the truth, there would be an amount of
slaves equal to 1,570,000 owned by the Baptist of the Southern States.
If this be true, and the census of 1830 true also, there were only
left about 500,000 slaves to divide among all the other churches;
leaving for the remainder of the people, none at all! So that after
all this, though churches be bad, the nation is clean enough.
Let us now make some allowance for this gentleman's extravagance,
especially as he did think he was speaking under correction, and
divide his 157,000 Baptists into 52,000 families, of three professors
of religion in each. This is more than the average for each family;
especially in a church admitting only adults; and the true number of
families, for that number of professors, would be nearer one hundred
than fifty thousand. Twenty slaves to the family is below the average
of the slave owning families of the South; so that at the lowest rate,
the Baptists in a few States, according to this person, own 1,040,000
slaves at the least, or above half the number that our last census
gives to the whole union. The extraordinary folly of such statements,
would appear more clearly to the audience when they understood, that
as large a proportion of all the blacks, as of all the whites in
America are professors of religion; that above half of all slaves who
profess religion, are Baptists; and that, therefore, if there are
157,000 Baptists in the Southern States, instead of being "almost all
slave holders," at least a third of them are themselves slaves. He
gave these instances to show that Mr. Thompson had taken extreme cases
containing some show of truth as specimens of the whole of America,
and had thereby produced totally false impressions. What truth there
was in them, was so terrifically exaggerated, that no dependence
whatever could be placed upon any of his testimony. And this would be
still more manifest after examining the charge brought by Mr.
Thompson, that the very churches in America own slaves; and several of
his speeches contain a pretty little dialogue with some slaves in the
fields, the whole interest of which turns on their calling themselves
"_the Church's Slaves_." This was spoken of as it were in accordance
with the usual course of things in the United States. Indeed, Mr.
Thompson had not only spoken with his usual violence and generality of
the "slave holding churches of America," and declared his conviction
that "all the guilt of the system" should be laid "on the church of
America;" but at the very latest joint exhibition of himself and his
friend _Moses Roper_, in London, it was stated by the latter in one of
his usual interludes to Mr. Thompson, perhaps in his presence,
certainly uncontradicted, that, slave holding was universally
practised by "all Christian _societies_" in America; the societies of
Friends only excepted. It may excite a blush in America, to know that
the poor negro's silly falsehood was received with cheers by the
London audience.
What then should the similar declarations of Mr. Thompson, made
deliberately and repeatedly, and with infinite pretence of candour and
affection, what feelings _can_ they excite; and how will that insulted
people regard the easy credulity which has led the Christians of
Britain to believe and reiterate charges in which it is not easy to
tell whether there is less truth or more malignity? For how stood the
facts? What church owns slaves? What Christian corporation is a
proprietor of men? Out of our ten thousand churches perhaps half are
involved in this sin? Perhaps a tenth part? Surely one Presbytery at
least? No,--this mountain of fiction has but a grain of truth to
support its vast and hateful proportions. If there be above five
congregations in all America that own slaves, I never heard of them.
The actual number, of whose existence I ever heard, is, I believe,
precisely _three_! They are all Presbyterian congregations, and
churches situated in the southern part of Virginia, and got into their
unhappy condition in the following manner:--Many years ago, during
those times of ignorance at which God winked--when such a man as John
Newton could go a slaving voyage to Africa, and write back that he
never had enjoyed sweeter communion with God than on that voyage;
during such a period as that, a few well meaning individuals had
bequeathed a small number of slaves for the support of the gospel in
three or four churches. These unfortunate legacies had increased and
multiplied themselves to a great extent, and under present
circumstances to a most inconvenient degree. A fact which puts the
clearest contradiction on that assertion of this "accuser of the
brethren"--representing their condition as being one of unusual
privation and suffering. Of late years these cases had attracted
attention, and given great uneasiness to some of the persons connected
with these churches. I have on this platform, kindly furnished me,
like most of the other documents I have, since this debate was
publicly known--a volume of letters written to one of these churches
on the whole case, by the Rev. Mr. Paxton, at that time its pastor.
That gentleman is now on this side of the Atlantic, and may perhaps
explain what Mr. Thompson has so sedulously concealed; how he was a
colonizationist; how he manumitted and sent his own servants to
Liberia; how he labored in this particular matter with his church,
long before the existence of abolitionism; and how, finding the
difficulties insuperable, he had written this kind and modest volume,
worth all the abolition froth ever spued forth,--and left the charge
in which he found it so difficult to preserve at once an honest
conscience and a healthful influence. It will not, however, be
understood that even these few churches are worthy of the
indiscriminate abuse lavished on us, all for their sakes; nor that
their present path of duty is either an easy or a plain one. Whether
it is that there are express stipulations in the original instruments
conveying the slaves in trust for certain purposes; or whether the
general principle of law, which would transfer to the State, or to the
heir of the first owner, the slaves with their increase,--upon a
failure of the intention of the donor, either by act of God, or of the
parties themselves, embarrass the subject; it is very certain that
wiser and better men than either Mr. Thompson or myself, are convinced
that these vilified churches have no power whatever to set their
slaves free. If the churches were to give up the slaves, it could only
have the effect, it is believed, to send them into everlasting bondage
to the heirs of the original proprietors. They have therefore justly
considered it better for the slaves themselves that they should remain
as they were in a state of nominal servitude, rather than be remitted
into real slavery. Such is the real state of the few cases which have
first been exhibited as the sin, if not the actual condition of the
American churches; and then exaggerated into the utmost turpitude by
hiding every mitigating circumstance, adding some purely new, and
distorting all things. Whether right or wrong, the same state of
things exists amongst the Society of Friends in North Carolina, to a
partial extent, and in another form. They did not consider themselves
liable to just censure, although they held title in and authority over
slaves, as individuals, while they gave them their whole earnings, and
had collected large sums from their brethren in England, which were
applied to the benefit of these slaves. It is not now for the first
time that charges have been made against the Church of God--that Judah
is like all the heathen. But all who embark in such courses--have met
with the common fate of the revilers of God's people; and they, with
such as select to stand in their lot--may find in the word of life a
worse end apportioned for them, than even for those they denounce, in
case every word they utter had been true. We bless God that no weapon
formed against Zion can prosper. There was one other instance which he
had noted under this head as requiring some comment, which could not
bear omission, regarding the private members of the Christian churches
in the United States, of whom a casual hearer or reader of Mr.
Thompson's speeches would believe that the far greater part actually
owned slaves; that very few, and they almost exclusively
abolitionists, considered slavery at all wrong; that with one accord
they deprived the slaves of all religious privileges, and used them,
not only as a chattel, but as nothing else than a chattel. According
to our last census, there were about 11,000,000 of whites, 2,000,000
of slaves, and 400,000 free blacks in America, making a total of
nearly thirteen and a half millions. All the slaves were gathered into
the 12 most southerly states, free blacks were not far from half in
the free and half in the slave states, and of the whites over
7,000,000 were in the free, and less than 3,000,000 in the slave
states. The best information I possess on this subject, authorizes me
to say--about 1 person in 9, throughout the nation, black and white,
is a member of a Christian church, the proportion being somewhat
larger to the north, and comparatively smaller at the south. There
are, therefore, above 1,100,000 white Christians in the United States,
of which about 800,000 live in the 12 free States, and neither own
slaves nor think slavery right; leaving rather over 330,000 for the 12
slave States. Now, if these white Christians in the slave States own
all the slaves, and the other 8-9ths of the whites owned none at all,
there will be only about 6 slaves to each Christian there, a number
far below the average of the slave holders; and all the North, and all
the South, except Christians, free of charge and guilt, in the
specific thing. But if we divide these Christians into families, and
suppose there may be as many, as one in three or four of them, who is
a head of a family, say 100,000; and that they own all the slaves: in
that case, there would be an average of twenty slaves to every white
head of a Christian family in the slave States. But here again all the
slaves would be absorbed: all the North innocent, above two-thirds of
the Christians at the South proved to be not slave holders at all;
and all the followers of the devil wholly innocent of that crime.
These calculations demonstrate that these accusations are as
groundless and absurd as any of the preceding. And while it is
painfully true that in the slaveholding States far too many Christians
do still own slaves; it is equally true, that they bear a small
proportion to those who own none, even in those States. If we suppose
the Christians in America to be about on an equal footing as to wealth
with other people; and to have no more conscience about slavery, than
those around them in the slave States; and that twenty slaves may be
taken as the average, to each master; and a ninth of the people pious,
as stated before, it follows that only about 11,000 professors of
religion can be slaveholders; or about one in every hundred of the
whole number in the nation. Yet every one of the above suppositions is
against the churches, and yet upon this basis rests the charges of a
candid, affectionate Christian brother against them all! The only
remaining illustration of Mr. Thompson's proneness to represent a
little truth, in such a way as to have all the effects of an immense
misrepresentation, regards his own posture, doings and sufferings in
America. "Fourteen months of toil, of peril, and persecution, almost
unparalleled;" "there were paid myrmidons seeking my blood;" "there
were thousands waiting to rejoice over my destruction;" "when any
individual tells George Thompson who has put his life into his hands,
and gone where slavery is rife; when I, George Thompson, am told I am
to be spared," &c. Similar statements, ad infinitum, fill up all his
speeches; and are noticed now, not for the purpose of commenting on,
or even contradicting them, but of affording my countrymen, who may
chance to see the report of this discussion, specimens, as our
certificates often run "of the modesty, probity, and good demeanor,"
of the individual.
He would pass next to a fourth general objection against Mr.
Thompson's testimony, as regards America, which was, that much of it
was in the strictest sense, positively untrue. For instance, Mr.
Thompson had twice put a runaway slave forward upon the platform at
London; or at least connived at the doing of it; who stated of his own
knowledge, that a Mr. Garrison, of South Carolina, had paid 500
dollars for a slave, that he might burn him, and that he had done so
without hindrance or challenge, afterwards. This statement Mr. T. has
never yet contradicted in any one of his numerous speeches, although
he must have known it to be untrue. I have myself several times
directed his attention to the subject, and yet the only answer is,
"expressive silence." Then I distinctly challenge his notice of the
case; and while I solemnly declare, that according to my belief,
whoever should do such an act in any part of America, would be hung: I
as distinctly charge Mr. Thompson, with giving countenance to, and
deriving countenance from this wilful misstatement.
As an other instance of the same kind, you are told that a free man
was sold from the jail at Washington city, as a slave, without even
the form of a trial; which is farther aggravated by the assertion
that this is vouched as a fact, on the testimony of 1000 signatures.
This matter, when Mr. Thompson's own proof is produced, resolves
itself into this: that Mr. Thompson said, there had been a thousand
signatures to a certain paper, which said, that a certain man taken up
as a runaway slave, said he was free! If he was a slave, the whole
case falls; whether he was a slave or not, was a fact that could have
been judicially investigated and decided, if the person most
interested, or any other, had chosen to demand it. So that in point of
fact, Mr. Thompson's whole statements, touching this oft repeated
case, are all purely gratuitous. And with what horror, must every good
man hear that Mr. Thompson, within the last two or three weeks, told a
crowd of people in Mr. Price's Chapel, Devonshire Square, London, in
allusion to this very case, that the poor black had "DEMONSTRATED HIS
FREEDOM," and afterwards been "sold into everlasting bondage!" And yet
upon this fiction he bases one of his most effective "illustrations of
American slavery," and some of his fiercest denunciations of the
American people. Oh! shame, where is thy blush! He could if time
permitted exhibit other cases,--in principle perhaps worse than these;
in which neither the false assertions of Moses Roper--nor the
pretended evidence of misrepresented petitions existed to make a show
of evidence; and which nothing but the most extraordinary ignorance,
or recklessness could explain. Such are the assertions made by himself
or his coadjutors in his presence, that slaves are brought to the
district of Columbia from all the slave states for sale; that five
years is the average number, that slaves carried to the Southern
States live; that slaves without trial, or even examination, were
often executed, by tens, twenties, and even thirties; that the banner
of the United States, which floated over a slave dealing congress, in
the midst of the slave market of the entire nation, had the word
"_Liberty_" upon it (which single sentence contained three
misstatements;) that religious men weighed children in scales, and
sold them by the pound like meat;--that there were 2,000,000 of slaves
in America who never heard the name of Christ; that no white man would
ever be respected after he had been seen to shake hands with a man of
colour; all which _unnameable_ assertions are contained, along with
double as many others like them, in one single newspaper (the London
_Patriot_ of June 1, 1835;) and in a portion of the report of only two
of Mr. Thompson's meetings! Alas! for poor human nature! Having now
gone through all that his time permitted him to say, of the proof
against America, he would lay before them some counter testimony upon
several parts of this great subject. He had at one time greatly feared
that he might be obliged to ask them to believe his mere word, perhaps
in the face of other proof; but through the providence of God, he had
been put in possession of a very limited file of American newspapers,
from the contents of which he thought he should be able to make out as
strong a case for the truth, as he had proved the case against it to
be weak and rotten. There were so many denominations of Christians in
America, that he would only tire the meeting by enumerating them.
They were of every variety of name and opinion. As to many of them he
knew but little, and the present audience perhaps less. The Societies
of Friends generally did not tolerate slaveholding among their
members; neither did the Covenanters. The Congregationalists, or
Independents, had not, he believed, a dozen churches in all the Slave
States, and, of course, they should be considered as exempt from the
charge. It was, however, the less necessary to occupy ourselves in
general remarks, inasmuch as Mr. Thompson had laid the stress of his
accusations on the three great denominations of America. "He took all
the guilt of this system, and he laid it where? On the Church of
America. When he said the Church, he did not allude to any particular
denomination. He spoke of Baptists, Presbyterians, and Methodists, the
three great props--the all-sustaining pillars of that blood-cemented
fabric." Such were the words of Mr. T., and it would therefore be
needless to trouble ourselves about the minor, if we could settle the
major to our satisfaction. As to two of these denominations, he should
say but little; his chief and natural business being to defend that
one of which he knew most. In regard to the Baptists, he was sorry to
be obliged to say, that he believed they were the least defensible of
the three denominations, now principally implicated; indeed that some
of their Associations had taken ground on the whole case, from which
he entirely dissented,--and which, he was sure, had given great pain
to the majority of their own brethren. He begged leave to refer them
to the work of Drs. Cox and Hoby, just through the press, in which he
presumed, for he had not seen it, they would find an authentic and
ample information on this and every other point relating to that
denomination in America. In relation to the Methodists, his knowledge
was both more full and more accurate. Their discipline denounced
Slavery, and prohibited their Members from owning slaves, and though
their discipline itself was not carried into effect with rigid
exactness, he did not believe that there was a Methodist Church in the
United States, or upon the Earth, which owned slaves, as a Church. He
believed that very few Methodist preachers--indeed, almost none, owned
any slaves, and nothing but the most direct proof could for a moment
make him believe, that one of them was a slave-dealer. The whole sect,
or at least the great majority of it, might be considered as fairly
represented, in the following Resolutions passed in the Conference,
held at Baltimore; and which could be a set off to those read by Mr.
Thompson, from one of the northern Conferences.