The next assertion of Mr. B's that we notice, is the astounding one,
that America, 'as a nation, has done every thing in her power' for the
abolition of slavery. See page 8. This, while the national domain is
the home of slavery and the seat of the slave trade! While the
domestic slave trade, so far from being abolished by the National
Legislature, as it may constitutionally be, is shielded and licensed!
This, while the moral power of the nation is slumbering, or if awake,
arrayed to a great extent, in the defence of slavery! That a man who
values his reputation--that a minister of the gospel of Mr. B's
intelligence and knowledge of the country's condition and history in
regard to this matter, should make such a declaration, is truly most
wonderful. Could he have expected it to be believed? Could he have
believed it himself?
Mr. B., page 15, by way of explaining why Mr. Thompson was so
differently received in Glasgow and Boston, applauded in the one
place, and abused in the other, says that he took up the question of
slavery as one of political organization. We give to this assertion,
the answer of the editor of the Emancipator. 'This we pronounce
_utterly and unequivocally false_. We were with Mr. Thompson, while he
was in this country, as much probably as any other one individual. We
were with him in private and in public, in the house and by the way,
in the public convention and the public lecture, and we most solemnly
declare, that we never heard George Thompson, on any occasion, take up
or discuss the question of American Slavery, 'as one of civil
organization.' He always discussed it primarily and essentially as a
moral and religious question, and never went into its political
relations and bearings, except to answer the objections of cavillers
and opponents. And we are astonished that R. J. Breckinridge should
dare to make such an assertion, when, we venture to say, he never
heard George Thompson in America.'
The same editor has furnished a better solution than Mr. B's, of
the--not very difficult--problem of Mr. Thompson's different reception
in Boston and Glasgow. 'For the same reason that Knibb, and Taylor,
and Burchell did not meet with the same reception in Glasgow and
Jamaica--because, and simply because the slave spirit was diffused
through the land, infecting and corrupting alike the leading
influences of Church and State, so that Mr. T. could not condemn
slavery and prejudice 'in Boston as in Glasgow,' without constraining
the conviction and the outcry from the implicated and the prejudiced,
"so saying thou condemnest us also."'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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