e benefited by such an event, whether political, moral, or
social. The existence of slavery was one of the greatest evils of the
world, but it was not the crime of all the world. Though, therefore,
he considered slavery a national evil, it was not to be inferred that
he viewed it as a national crime. The cogency of such an argument was
equal to the candor of the citation on which it was founded. He would
now come to matters rather more personal. In enumerating the great
numbers of anti-slavery societies in America, Mr. Thompson had paraded
one as formed in Kentucky, for the whole state. Now, he would venture
to say that there were not ten persons in that whole State, holding
anti-slavery principles, in the Garrison sense of the word. If this
was to be judged a fair specimen of the hundreds of societies boasted
of by Mr. Thompson, there would turn out but a beggarly account of
them. He found also the name of Groton, Massachusetts, as the location
of one of the societies in the boasted list. He had once preached, and
spoken on the subject of slavery, in that sweet little village, and
been struck with the scene of peace and happiness which it presented.
He afterwards met the clergyman of that village in the city of
Baltimore, and asked him what had caused him to leave the field of his
labors. The clergyman answered, that the anti-slavery people had
invaded his peaceful village, and transformed it into such a scene of
strife that he preferred to leave it. And so it was. The pestilence,
which, like a storm of fire and brimstone from hell, always followed
the track of abolitionism, had overtaken many a peaceful village, and
driven its pastor to seek elsewhere a field not yet blasted by it. He
would conclude by remarking, that Mr. Thompson and he (Mr. B.) were
now speaking, as it were, in the face of two worlds, for Western
Europe was the world to America. And it was for England to know--that
the opinion of America--that America which already contained a larger
reading population than the whole of Britain--was as important to her,
as hers could be to us. What he had said of Mr. Garrison and of Mr.
Wright, he had said; and he was ready to answer for it in the face of
God and man. But he had something else to do, he thanked God, than to
go about the country carrying placards, ready to be produced on all
occasions. Nor where he was known, was such a course needful, to
establish what he said. When those gentlemen should make their