MR. THOMPSON said that before proceeding to the subject decided upon
for that evening's discussion, he must, in justice to himself and his
cause, offer a remark or two. He had on the previous evening been
struck with surprise at the extraordinary injustice of charging him
(Mr. T.) with quoting unfairly from the letter of Mr. Breckinridge in
the New-York Evangelist. It must have been obvious to all, that in the
first instance, he quoted from memory, but all would recollect with
the avowed wish of avoiding misrepresentation, he had gone to his
table--produced the letter, and read the passage entire without the
omission or interpolation of a letter or a comma. He, therefore,
emphatically denied the charge of garbling. Mr. Breckinridge did
himself, immediately afterwards, read the passage, and read it
precisely as he (Mr. Thompson) had read it. The imputation, therefore,
was equally unfounded and unfair. He (Mr. T.) was thankful that his
argument needed not such help. It would be as absurd as it would be
wicked for him to attempt to support his cause by any garbled
statement.
He begged also that it might be distinctly understood that he had by
no means exhausted the evidence in his possession on the subject of
Colonization. He could adduce a thousand times as much as that which
had been already brought forward. He had much to say of the colony at
Liberia; the means taken to establish it, the nature of the climate,
the character of the emigrants, the mortality amongst the settlers,
how much it had done towards the suppression of the slave trade, &c.
In fact, he was prepared with overwhelming evidence upon every branch
of the subject, and was willing to return to it at any moment,
confident that the arguments he could produce, and the facts by which
he could support them, would, in the estimation of the public, destroy
forever the claim of the Colonization Society to be considered a pure,
peaceful, or benevolent institution. I now, (said Mr. T.) come to the
topic immediately before us.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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