"We respectfully ask our fellow-citizens, whether we are to be deprived of these sacred privileges,—and, if so, whether the sacrifice of our rights will not involve consequences dangerous to all mental and even personal freedom. We have violated, we mean to violate, no law. We have acted, we shall continue to act, under the sanction of the Constitution of the United States. Nothing that we propose to do can be prevented by our opposers, without violating the Charter of our rights. To the Law and to the Constitution we appeal."
Such were the sentiments of the abolitionists of the United States of America.
He (Mr. T.) would embrace the present opportunity of saying a few words respecting his own mission to the United States. It had been much denounced as an impertinent foreign interference; but he thought the charge had neither grace nor honesty when it came from those who were engaged, and, as he believed, most conscientiously and praiseworthily, in seeking, by their missionaries and agents, to overturn the institutions, social, political, and religious, of every other quarter of the globe. Mr. Breckinridge had said that it would be as just on his part to inveigh against England on account of Roman Catholicism in the west of Ireland, or Idolatry in India, as it was on his (Mr. T's.) to condemn America for the slavery existing in that country. The cases were not quite parallel. Before they could be compared, Mr. B. must prove that the population of Ireland were constrained to worship the Virgin Mary—that in India, men were forced by British Law to worship idols. No British subject was compelled by any law of this country, or any other country to which British sway extended, to be either a Papist or an Idolator. But in America, men were converted into beasts, "according to law," and their souls and bodies crushed and degraded by a system most vigorously enforced by the strong arm of the State. His opponent had said, however, that slavery was not a national sin. He (Mr. T.) had to thank a friend for suggesting an illustration of the knotty problem. Suppose a number of Agriculturists and Merchants and Highway Robbers were to meet together to form a Union, and the Highway Robbers were to say—come, let us unite for the purpose of common security, and common prosperity: we will defend each other, and trade with each other, but we will not "interfere" in each other's internal affairs. You, gentlemen, Agriculturists and Merchants, shall promise that you will take no notice of my felonious and cut-throat proceedings, and I, on my part, will pledge my honor not to intermeddle in the affairs of your farms or counting-houses: and suppose they were to shake hands, complete the bargain, and ratify an indissoluble union of Agriculturists, Merchants, and Highway Robbers! would the world hold the farmer or the merchant guiltless? Mr. B. had said much of the purity and emancipation principles of Massachusetts, and New-Hampshire and Maine. How came it to pass, then, that they were in terms of such close and cordial fellowship with South Carolina, and Georgia, and Louisiana, and so ready to mob, stone, and outlaw those who deemed it their duty to cry aloud on behalf of the oppressed? To return to his own mission. He would never condescend to apologize for speaking the truth. He had a commission direct from the skies, to rebuke sin and compassionate suffering wherever on the face of the earth they existed. This world belonged to God; and all men were His subjects and his (Mr. Thompson's) brethren. Men might be naturally divided by rivers, and oceans, and mountains; they might be politically divided by different forms of government, and specified lines of demarkation; but he (Mr. T.) took the Bible in his hand and deemed himself at liberty to address every human being on the face of the earth in reference to those eternal principles of justice and truth, which are alike in all countries and in all ages, and which the subjects of God's moral government are everywhere bound to respect. He would say to America and to England, silence your cry of foreign interference, or call home your Missionaries from India, and China, and Constantinople. To shew that the object of his mission was in accordance with the spirit of the gospel, he would read an extract from an article in the first number of the "Abolitionist," the organ of "The British and Foreign Society for the Universal Abolition of Slavery and the Slave Trade"—a Society with which he was connected when he went to America, and whose Agent he still was. The objects of his mission were thus set forth:
"1. To lecture in the principal cities and towns of the free States, upon the character, guilt, and tendency of slavery, and the duty, necessity, and advantages of immediate and entire abolition. These addresses will be founded upon those great principles of humanity and religion, which have been so fully enunciated in this country, and will consequently be wholly unconnected with particular and local politics. This work will be carried on under the advice and with the co-operation of the Anti-Slavery Societies at present in existence in the United States.
2. To aim, by every Christian means, at the overthrow of that prejudice against the colored classes, which now so lamentably prevails through all the States of America; and to regard as a principal mean to obtain this desirable object, their elevation in intellect and moral worth.
3. To suggest to the friends of negro freedom in the United States the adoption and prosecution of such measures as were found conducive to the cause of abolition in this country, and may be found applicable to existing circumstances in that.
4. To seek access to influential persons of various religious denominations, and especially to ministers of the gospel, for the purpose of explanatory conversation on the subjects of slavery and prejudice.
5. To endeavor to effect a junction between the abolitionists of the United States of America and great Britain, with a view to the abolition of slavery and the slave trade throughout the world."
The principles of the American Societies, his own principles, and the objects proposed by his mission to America, were now before his opponent. He called upon him to throw aside his quibbles on legal technicalities, and point out, if he were able, anything in the documents he had read, or the sentiments he had advanced, inconsistent with the spirit of Christianity, or the genius of rational freedom. It had been said that abolitionism was "quackery," only four years old. He would give them a little of the quackery of Benjamin Franklin, in the year 1790. He held in his hand a petition drawn up by that celebrated man, and adopted by the "Pennsylvania Society for the Abolition of Slavery," the preamble of which recognizes the doctrines which are maintained by American Abolitionists at the present day, and expresses the (now incendiary) desire of diffusing them "wherever the evils of Slavery exist." Of this Society, Dr. Franklin was elected President, and Dr. Rush the Secretary. In 1790, this Society presented to the first Congress a petition, from which the following is an extract:—