nd
children, left them to their fate while he prudently consulted his own
safety by flight. In regard to the alleged case of the sale of a free
man of color, at Washington city, the proof stood thus: Mr. T. broadly
asserted, again and again, that a free man had been sold, without
trial, into eternal slavery. He, (Mr. B.) without knowing the especial
facts relied on, but knowing America, and knowing abolitionism, had
flatly and emphatically denied that such a thing ever did or could
happen in the District of Columbia. Mr. Thompson re-asserts, and
triumphantly proves it, as he says. His first step in the proof is, a
printed scrap, which, he says, is the identical memorial laid on the
table of the Senate of the United States, who, as they received and
printed it, he insinuates, thereby avouched its truth. Upon which
principle I also avouch all Mr. T.'s charges, as I hear them and
consent to their publication. But, he adds, there were once one
thousand signatures to this document, all witnesses of the truth of
its contents. To which I reply--I see no name to it at all now; and
secondly, if there were a million, the paper does not assert, much
less prove, what Mr. T. produces it to sustain. It merely declares
_that the man said he was free_; without even expressing the opinion
of the writer or any signer of the paper. Now, upon this case, and
this proof, it is nearly certain that the man was not free, and
extremely probable that the whole case is fictitious. For the glorious
writ of habeas corpus, one of the main pillars of your liberty--a
privileged writ which no English judge, for his right hand, would dare
illegally refuse; that writ is one of the great heirlooms we got with
our Anglo-Saxon blood, and is dearer to us than that blood itself.
Here, by act of Parliament, you do sometimes suspend this writ; with
us the tyrant does not breathe who would dare to whisper a wish for
its suspension. Now, if this man was, or believed himself to be free,
what hindered him, from the moment of his arrest to that of his sale,
from demanding and receiving a fair trial? Will it be said he did not
know his rights? But will it be pretended that the one thousand
signers of the memorial, the many abolitionists at Washington of whom
Mr. T. boasts, did not know his rights--in a land where every man
knows and is ready to defend his rights? If they did not, they were
thrice sodden asses, fit only to be tools in gulling mankind into the
belief of