a tale that had not feasibility enough to gull a child. Upon
the face of his own proof Mr. Thompson had shown that he had not the
slightest authority for the assertions he had so often made in arguing
this case; by all of which he intended to make men believe that in
America it was not uncommon to sell free men into slavery! Mr.
Breckinridge then resumed the consideration of abolition principles;
the _third of which_ was, that all prejudice against color is sinful,
and that everything which induces us to refuse any social, personal,
religious, civil, or political right to a black man, which is allowed
to a white one, not superior to him in moral or intellectual
qualifications, is a prejudice, and therefore sinful. He believed this
to be a fair statement of their principles on that head. And he would,
in the first place, remark concerning them, that even if they were
true, which he denied, the discussion of them was worse than useless.
It could not advance the cause of emancipation, nor improve the
condition of the free blacks. And whatever the abolitionists might
say, the slaves when freed would follow their own course and
inclinations; nor could the declaration of an abstract principle alter
either their conduct or that of the whites, in any material degree.
If, as Mr. Thompson asserted, prejudice against color was the
national sin of America, the plague-spot of the nation, it had just as
often been asserted by others that the prejudice itself originated at
first out of the relation of slavery. The latter was the disease, the
former a mere symptom. If there were no black slaves on earth there
would no longer be any aversion against that color, which went beyond
the invariable and mutual restraints of nature, or was tolerated by a
proper Christian liberty. They know little of human prejudices who do
not know that they are more invincible in the bulk of mankind than the
dictates of reason, or the impulses of virtue itself. The case of the
abolitionists must therefore be pronounced foolish on their own
showing. For they undertook to break down the strongest of all
prejudices, as they themselves say, as a condition precedent to the
doing of acts which, to do at all, required great pecuniary sacrifices
and a high tone of moral feeling. But if, as I shall try to show,
their doctrines are contrary to all the course of nature and all the
teachings of Providence--their behavior is to be considered little
else than sheer madness