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