and more probable.
At this time it might have been carried South by at least 5 degrees of
latitude; and Virginia, Kentucky, Maryland, Delaware, and Missouri,
added to the free States; and the shackles of 1,000,000 slaves been in
a process of gradual melting off. If fifty years had seen the rise of
12 free States, was it too much to hope that the next fifty years
should enfranchise twelve more. For all the ruin brought on this
glorious cause during the last four years by principles and practices
of Mr. Thompson's friends, what have they to compensate suffering
humanity? Have they or theirs released from his bonds a single slave?
The abolition plan had in fact, been a signal, a total, absolute
failure. Mr. Thompson himself did not pretend to say that a twentieth
part of the population of America had embraced his views. The whole
theory was as false as the whole practice was fatal; and just and
pious men would hereafter hesitate before they sent out new missions
to advocate them, or lent the influence of their just weight to
denunciations levelled against all who did not think them worthy of
their applause. The _second_ great _principle_ of the abolitionists,
to which he would invite attention, was this--that it was the inherent
and indestructible right of every man to abide in perfect freedom in
whatever spot he was born; and that while it is a crime to deny him
there all the rights of a man, a citizen and a Christian, it was not
less so to persuade, to win, or to coerce him into what they called
exile--this principle was levelled at the Colonization Society; and
while instant abolition formed the first, and denunciation of what
they call prejudice against color formed the last; hatred to
colonization formed the middle and active principle of the band. Of
this, it might be said, first, that it had the advantage of
contradicting all the wisdom and practice of mankind. Whether it was
meant to embrace women and minors--or at what age to establish the
beginning of rights so extraordinary and unprecedented, whether at
twenty-one, as here, or twenty-five, as in some countries, or
twenty-eight, as in others, had not yet been defined. Thus much at
least might be said--that if these rights resided in black men, they
resided in no others, of whatever hue or race; and the philosophers
who discovered their existence had found out something to compensate
these unhappy men for their unparalleled sufferings. It certainly need
not creat