would be an amount of
slaves equal to 1,570,000 owned by the Baptist of the Southern States.
If this be true, and the census of 1830 true also, there were only
left about 500,000 slaves to divide among all the other churches;
leaving for the remainder of the people, none at all! So that after
all this, though churches be bad, the nation is clean enough.

Let us now make some allowance for this gentleman's extravagance,
especially as he did think he was speaking under correction, and
divide his 157,000 Baptists into 52,000 families, of three professors
of religion in each. This is more than the average for each family;
especially in a church admitting only adults; and the true number of
families, for that number of professors, would be nearer one hundred
than fifty thousand. Twenty slaves to the family is below the average
of the slave owning families of the South; so that at the lowest rate,
the Baptists in a few States, according to this person, own 1,040,000
slaves at the least, or above half the number that our last census
gives to the whole union. The extraordinary folly of such statements,
would appear more clearly to the audience when they understood, that
as large a proportion of all the blacks, as of all the whites in
America are professors of religion; that above half of all slaves who
profess religion, are Baptists; and that, therefore, if there are
157,000 Baptists in the Southern States, instead of being "almost all
slave holders," at least a third of them are themselves slaves. He
gave these instances to show that Mr. Thompson had taken extreme cases
containing some show of truth as specimens of the whole of America,
and had thereby produced totally false impressions. What truth there
was in them, was so terrifically exaggerated, that no dependence
whatever could be placed upon any of his testimony. And this would be
still more manifest after examining the charge brought by Mr.
Thompson, that the very churches in America own slaves; and several of
his speeches contain a pretty little dialogue with some slaves in the
fields, the whole interest of which turns on their calling themselves
"_the Church's Slaves_." This was spoken of as it were in accordance
with the usual course of things in the United States. Indeed, Mr.
Thompson had not only spoken with his usual violence and generality of
the "slave holding churches of America," and declared his conviction
that "all the guilt of the system" should be laid "o