Acquainted as he (Mr. T.) was with America, he had been able to come
to no other conclusion, but that the prejudice of color was that on
which the colonization of the free negro was founded. There had been a
great deal said of the inferior intellect of the black race, and of a
marked deficiency in their moral qualities; but these were not the
grounds on which it was sought to expatriate them; the injustice
practised towards them rested solely on the prejudice which had been
excited against their external personal peculiarities. Every word
spoken by Mr. Breckinridge in defence of colonization, went directly
to prove this. The whole scheme rested on the dark color of those to
be expatriated. Had the sufferers been white in the skin, Mr. B. would
have advocated immediate, complete, and everlasting emancipation.
He would now turn to a matter, regarding which he considered Mr.
Breckinridge had treated the abolitionists of America with
injustice--with unkindness--with something which he did not like even
to name. Mr. B. had charged the abolitionists with having published a
law as the law of the state of Maryland, which had never been adopted
by the legislature of that state; and when he (Mr. T.) had required of
Mr. B. evidence in support of his grave allegations, it was in this
case precisely as in the case of Mr. Garrison and Mr. Wright,--the
proofs were non est inventus. Now, he would ask, was this fair; was it
magnanimous; was it generous; was it Christianlike?
The charge had been distinctly made, and then it had been asked of the
parties accused to prove a negative. Mr. Breckinridge was not likely
to be long in Glasgow, and it was therefore most easy, and most
convenient, to prefer charges which could not, even on the testimony
of the parties implicated, be answered until Mr. Breckinridge was far
away, and the poison had had full time to work its effect. He (Mr. T.)
would, however, give it as his opinion, that his fellow laborers on
the other side of the Atlantic, would triumphantly clear themselves of
this and every other imputation, and finally emerge from the ordeal,
however fierce, pure, untarnished, and unscathed.
Such a charge, however, should not be brought against him (Mr. T.).
The laws of Maryland, he cited, were to be found in the pages of the
Colonization Society's accredited organ, the African Repository, an
entire set of which was on the platform, open to inspection.
Mr. Breckinridge had taken great pains to make out a case for the
Maryland Colonization Society. This was not to be wondered at. That
society was a protege of his own. It had been patronized and fostered
by him. For it, it appeared, he had almost suffered martyrdom, when,
in advocating its cause in Boston, he had been mistaken for an
abolitionist,--in that same city of Boston, where a gentlemanly mob of
5000 individuals, fashionably attired, in black, and brown, and blue
cloth, had joyfully engaged in assaulting and dispersing a peaceful
meeting of forty ladies.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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