ngress, as a purely state affair, the slave trade was
deemed a fit subject, by the majority, for the executors of national
power, as being an exterior affair. And at a period prior to the very
commencement of that great plan of individual effort, guided by
Wilberforce and Clarkson, in Britain; and which required twenty years
to rouse the conscience of this nation--our distant, and now traduced
fathers, had already made up their minds, that this horrid traffic,
which they found not only existing, but encouraged by the whole power
of the King, should be abolished. It was granted, perhaps too readily
to the claims of those who thought, (as nearly the whole world
thought) that twenty years should be the limit of the trade; and at
the end of that period it was instantly prohibited, as a matter
course, and by unanimous consent. How unjust then was it to charge on
America, as a crime, what was one of the brightest virtues in her
escutcheon. Mr. Thompson had next asserted, that slavery of the most
horrid description existed in the Capital of America, and in the
surrounding District, subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of
Congress. He (Mr. Breckinridge) did not hesitate to deny this. It was
not true. Slavery did exist there; but it was not of the horrible
character which had been represented. It was well known that the
slavery existing in the United States was the mildest to be seen in
any country under Heaven. Nothing but the most profound ignorance
could lead any one to assert the contrary. Mr. Thompson had a
colleague in his recent exhibitions in London, who seemed to have
taken interludes in all Mr. T's speeches. In one of these, that
colleague had said, he knew of his own knowledge a case, in which a
man had given $500 for a slave, in order to burn him alive! Mr.
Thompson, no doubt knew, that even on the supposition that such a
monster was to be found, he was liable in every part of the United
States, to be hanged as any other murderer. Slavery was bad enough
anywhere; but to say that it was more unmitigated in America than in
the West Indies, where emigration had always been necessary to keep up
the numbers, while in America, the slave population increased faster
than any part of the human race, was a gross exaggeration, or a proof
of the profoundest ignorance. To say that the slavery of the District
of Columbia was the most horrid that ever existed, when it, along with
the whole of the slavery on that continent, was so h