to say, that if he (Mr. B.) could
condescend to imitate his conduct, and utter ribaldrous things of the
king of Great Britain, he should richly deserve to be turned with
contempt out of this sacred place. He would proceed, then, with his
remarks on the Maryland colonization scheme. They had been told by Mr.
T. that the object of the Maryland society was compulsory
expatriation, as a condition precedent to freedom. When proof of this
was required, he could bring none; and when he (Mr. B.) had showed
that it was not so, but that its object was of unmixed good to the
blacks, an object accomplished as to many, on their showing, in the
proof produced, Mr. Thompson turned round, and said, that it was
entirely contrary to his preconceived notions, and repeated
statements, and must be false! But facts were better than notions and
statements both. And what were the facts in the present case? Why,
that on the one hand Mr. Thompson asserts that no slave can be
manumitted in Maryland except he will instantly depart the country;
whereas Messrs. Harper, Howard and Hoffman assert, in an official
report, on the 31st of last December, that 299 manumissions within
that state had been officially reported to them within a year, and
1101 within four years. At the same moment I have produced a record of
the very names and periods of emigration, of 140, bond and free, all
told, who, within the same four years, under the action of the very
laws in question, had gone from the state; admitting half of whom to
be of those particular manumitted slaves, there would be left 1021
more of them to prove that Mr. T. either totally misunderstood, or
mis-stated, that of which he affirms--either way, his assertions are
demonstrated to be untrue. As to the laws of Maryland, of which
mention had been made, he had not seen them since his visit to Boston
two years ago, and in adverting to them he had stated in general terms
what he understood them to be. The great object of these laws was said
to be the driving out of the free blacks from the state of Maryland.
Now that the means taken to promote this end were not of that grinding
and iniquitous character which Mr. Thompson had represented them as
being, would be sufficiently obvious to the meeting, when it was
considered that in that state there were three times the number of
free persons of color, than were to be found in the majority of the
free states, and considerably more than there were in any other stat