was pretended that this was not a political question! Their first
principle was, that every human being has an instant right to be free,
irrespective of all consequences; and incapable of restriction or
modification. The second was like unto it, that the right of
citizenship, inherent in every man, in the spot where he is born,
is so perfect, that to deprive him of its exercise in any way
whatever--even by emigration, under strong moral constraint, is a
sin. Their third principle was, that all prejudice against color was
sinful; and that all our judgments and all our feelings towards others
should be regulated exclusively by their moral and intellectual worth.
Mr. B. said he stated these principles from memory only--as he did
most of the facts on which he relied. But he was willing to stand or
fall, in both countries, upon the substantial accuracy of his
statements. Mr. Breckinridge here closed his address, the period
allotted to him having expired.

* * * * *

MR. THOMPSON was anxious to lay before the meeting documentary
testimony, in preference to any thing he could say himself. Rather
than set forth his own views, as he had done on many former occasions,
he wished to bring forward such documents as even his opponent would
admit to be really American. He pledged himself to show that this was
an American question. He was not prepared for this branch of the
subject, because he had not expected that Mr. Breckinridge would
exonerate America from the charge of being a slaveholding nation;
nevertheless, he was perfectly ready to take it up. He would undertake
to prove that the existence of slavery in the United States was the
result of a compromise--that the Constitution of the United States
was, in fact, based upon a compromise, in relation to this subject. At
the time when the Constitution was agreed to, the then slaveholding
states refused to come into what was called the confederacy of
republics, unless slaveholding was permitted. At that time there were
only three hundred thousand slaves in the Union; now there were two
millions and a half. So much, said Mr. Thompson, for what the good and
influential men of the South, spoken of by Mr. Breckinridge, had done
for the abolition of slavery. Then there were three hundred thousand;
now there were two million four hundred thousand. The method by which
these good and influential people had gone about extirpating slavery,
had been an Irish met