will venture to go a
step farther, and express the opinion that they who are acquainted
with Mr. Thompson, as he exhibits himself in the public eye, and who
have knowledge of the past success, which really did, or which he
allows himself to believe did attend his efforts in West-India
emancipation, (a success, however, which I do not comprehend, as the
case was settled against him and his party, on the two chief points on
which they staked themselves, namely, _immediate abolition_ and _no
compensation_,) they who can call to mind the preparation and
pretension with which he set out for America, the gigantic work he had
carved for himself there, the signal defeat he met with, and the
terror in which he fled the country; may find enough to justify the
fear that the fate of George Thompson has fully as large a share in
his recollections of America as the fate of the poor slave. In the
_second place_, I charge upon Mr. Thompson that those parts of his
statements which might possibly be in part true, are so put as to
create false impressions, and have nearly the same effect as if they
were wholly false on the minds of those who read or hear them. This
results from the constant manner of stating what might possibly be
true; and it is not only calculated to produce a false impression, and
make the casual reader believe in a result different from what would
be presented if Mr. Thompson were on oath and forced to tell the whole
truth, but the uniformity and dexterity with which this is done,
leaves us astonished how it could be accidental. He (Mr. B.) assumed
that all of them had read or would read Mr. Thompson's charges. After
doing so they would the better apprehend what was now meant; but, in
the mean time, he would illustrate it by a case or two. Thus, when Mr.
T. spoke of the ministers in the United States being slave-holders, he
did it in such a way as to lead the reader to believe that this was a
general thing; that the most of them, if not the whole of them, were
slave-owners. He did not tell them that none of the ministers in
twelve whole States were or could easily be slave-holders, seeing they
were not inhabitants of a slave State; he did not tell them that the
cases of ministers owning slaves were rare even in some of the slave
States; and a fair sample of the majority in not a single State of the
Union; he left the charge indefinite, and did not condescend to tell
whether the number of ministers so accused was one h